Though I moved out of my childhood home many years ago, it’s still the address that comes to mind when someone asks me about “home.” Very recently, my parents put the house I grew up in on the market. It sold quickly, which only reaffirmed my belief that it was the greatest house ever to be built.

While I could go on for hours waxing poetic about all of the memories I made in the red-brick house at the end of the cul-de-sac, I’m here to offer those enduring the rather difficult task of leaving a well-seasoned home some cathartic advice: take a tour.

On the last night before we turned the keys of my childhood home over to the new owners, I took one last walk through, but this time I saw the house through the eyes of a stranger. iPhone in hand, I tapped the red button to record and started “The Final Tour: Lee Household.” I walked through rooms filled with memories, rooms that had become so familiar, and told the story as an insider for the last time.

In a way, it felt like one last love letter to the home I had come to know as a member of the family. But really, the video tour I took that night is a time capsule, a relic of a bygone era. I’ll bury the video in the cloud for a few years and when the time is right–when my own children want to know about the home I grew up in–I’ll brush off the dust from the digital file (and undoubtedly endure snickers about how Mom lived in the stone age when things were still stored “in the cloud”) and start the tour down memory lane.

Have you ever had to say farewell to your childhood home? If so, how did you handle it?

Looking for a family home of your own?  Take a tour of this spectacular 6 bedroom Colonial that looks like a great place to raise a family.