Finding furniture to remember a parent, growing up without a fixed address, and more Every week, Curbed publishes Personal Space, a column of first-person essays about how our homes define us and reflect our relationships. Below, we present 10 of our favorites from 2019, all with original illustrations by Natalie Nelson.

I bought a house?and then moved into a van
By Britany Robinson
A psychic in upstate New York once told me I?d meet the love of my life on the road. That?s not why I moved into my campervan just two years after buying my first home. But I can?t say I didn?t consider the romantic possibilities of life in motion. I was broke and bored, terrified of settling for the wrong place or person, and looking in all directions for an alternative.
The roommates who taught me to love being alive
By Jessica Gross
I moved into the small upstairs room, for which I paid $1,000. (It was 2009.) Valerie lived there the previous year and had painted the whole thing baby blue, except for one wall of thick black-and-white stripes. I would never do something so bold?to date, I?ve kept the walls in all other apartments white?but when she moved to one of the bigger bedrooms and I took over the balcony, I kept the paint. I hoped something of it would enter me through osmosis, and transform me. And it did, though of course it wasn?t the paint. The decor only expressed what seemed obvious from a moment spent in Valerie and Elena?s company: Th...