Suddenly I am completely grateful for my crappy on-base housing.

To be fair, in many locations where military housing has been revamped and even scrapped for new construction, the houses are better than what you could buy locally for the same amount of money. Still, living in someone else’s house, especially someone who has the right to dictate every move you make, gets old fast.

When we moved into housing in Hawaii the housing rep told us in no uncertain terms that we were not allowed to hang anything on the wall, that no play structures were to be put in the backyard for children, we were not allowed to grow anything of any kind in our yard and nothing but cars were allowed in the garage, even though there is an entire wall of built-in shelves. Garages are for parking, not storage. Period.

Welcome home. Don’t. Touch. Anything.

So, like many military spouses who dream of owning their own home and painting something an obnoxious color just because they can, I’ve been waiting for this moment, when our military life becomes a memory and we finally begin house hunting for our own home.

That moment is here and it stinks - mainly because we are doing everything from a continent away.

Moves are never easy for military families. There isn’t time to settle in or take a few weeks to look for the perfect place. You have to move in and move on - and in many cases that means searching for your new home sweet home from very far, far away.

Because of our children’s medical and educational special needs, moving more than once isn’t an option. Changing schools is a nightmare. We need to simply figure out where home is and get there.

While I love online house hunting sites like Zillow.com, pictures can only say so much. What does the layout look like? Will our king bed really fit in that room? And why are there no photos of the closets?

Shopping for a house, sight unseen with only photos for a guide, is in a word, frustrating. I can pull years’ worth of property tax records, sale histories of the property, aerial maps, a list of dimensions of each room and even tell you with the help of Google Earth what color car the neighbor drives.

But I feel like with each property we see everything and absolutely nothing at the same time. What does it feel like to stand in that kitchen? Can I see my kids playing in the backyard through the window? Can the neighbor see through our windows? Can we see through theirs? And god almighty why are there no photos of the closets? With five kids, closet space is prime real estate in our house.

As I search in vain in the comfort of my military-issued house with a layout I hate, cheaply made cupboards whose varnish chip with every use, the worst designed driveway in the history of driveways, but fantastic closets throughout, I am thankful.

For the last 12 years we’ve simply been handed a place to live. Good, bad, ugly, stinky, falling down or brand new, but almost always with fabulous closets, the military has made going home a very simple process.

We sign a paper, they give us a key and a house number. Done. Home was, as so many of us have emblazoned in artwork on our walls, where the Army sent us.

Now we wade in a sea of choices and have no idea how to get home. As we search for our dream house, the one we’ll live in ‘til the end of our days, finding it has become a task more than a joy. It’s become a dreadful feeling full of what ifs -Did we pick the right one? What if the neighbors are mean? Should we wait and risk losing to another buyer? What if there are no closets?

There’s no place like home. Now, we just have to figure out where that is.