Commitments : Making Yourself at Home : Setting down emotional roots in a new house takes time. But encouraging cultural traditions and family experiences is a sure way to warm up to your new digs.

Tears welled up in Joy Crosby’s eyes as she wandered through her new Tudor home in Yorba Linda, surveying its rooms and checking the kitchen. After an ordeal of offers and counteroffers, she had finally closed on the house of her dreams.

“I wasn’t through a third of the home the first time I saw it and I knew it was for me,” she said.

But such instant attachment to a new house is unusual, real estate agents say. For most of us it takes months or even years to bond with our home. Setting down emotional roots is a gradual process, so it takes time to feel “at home” in a new home.

How do you turn the bricks and mortar of a new house into a well-loved home?

“By making new experiences and laying down new memories in it,” explained Constance Ahrons, professor of sociology at USC.

“Building a relationship with a house is like building a friendship,” added Glendale family therapist Devora Lockton. “It takes time.”

Ultimately, Lockton said, how well people bond with their home depends on whom they live with. If you are unhappy with your housemates, it does not matter how desirable your dwelling may be, it will not feel like home.

A house can represent the good or bad times of our lives. “You can look at a corner and remember that’s where my son played with his blocks,” Lockton said. “Or you can see a room and remember a fight when your spouse stormed out.”

*

To begin the house-warming process, many cultures perform various rituals to help them bond with their new dwelling.

In a dedication ceremony held shortly after arriving, Jewish families often affix a mezuza by the front door. Rabbi Daniel Gordis of Beverly Woods explains that this is a small box made of stone, wood or pottery holding certain sacred texts, indicating that the home is a place where life is imbued with ancient Judaic values.

Before Marilyn Rich moved to her Los Angeles home, she went even further. She made her kitchen kosher by scrubbing the cabinets and floor and leaving the stove burners and oven on for a prescribed length of time to clean them.

She even applied a blowtorch to the top of the stove to remove any non-kosher morsels of food and poured boiling water on the countertops.

Even though this was a lot of hard work, Rich said going through the rituals of preparing her new house for her family helped her to claim it as her own.

Filipino families may have a Catholic priest bless each room of the new home with holy water. And he may be followed by a band of merrymakers who toss coins in the air that are then gathered up by jubilant guests.

“But don’t spend the money,” said Precy Salud of the National Institute of Filipino Art in Los Angeles. “It’s considered lucky.”

Soon after moving in, Filipino families may also install a small shrine to the Virgin Mary in a corner of the house.

Even before she moved into her home, Salud observed the Filipino custom of bringing in a sack of rice and some salt and sugar to assure prosperity and good luck in her new abode.

“I could have moved in without doing these things,” Salud said, “but it would bother me. If something bad happened to me, it would be because I didn’t do them.”

*

Americans from all backgrounds traditionally have celebrated a move into a new home by throwing a housewarming party. It’s a lot like a wedding or birthday party in that it welcomes a new addition to the family, for in a way a house is like a family member.

But even this tradition is waning, said Don Brenneis, professor of anthropology at Pitzer College in Pomona.

He said its decline has to do with Americans’ mobility and how they view their homes. He said our warm feelings about our houses are now tempered by steely-eyed financial considerations. The home is no longer just the center of family life, he said, but also an important investment.

Still, families that move every few years manage to set down emotional roots in their new homes, no matter how tenuous.

Lyleen Ewing, a Newport Beach broker, said such families “quickly get their pictures up on the walls, build their bookcases and put a cloth on the table. They make themselves at home as fast as possible.”

*

One of the toughest adjustments to a new residence is the one that faces an older person moving into a nursing home. The loss of independence and familiar surroundings can be made a little easier if the person brings along a few cherished possessions.

Bringing a favorite chair or table, photographs and personal curios “creates a feeling of familiarity that says, ‘This is my spot,’ ” said Dr. Jon Pynoos, associate professor of gerontology at USC.

Family members sometimes overlook the importance of this in their eagerness to make the new place as nice as possible.

Ruth Davis of the Mt. San Antonio Gardens Life Care Center in Claremont recalled how one well-meaning daughter decorated her elderly mother’s quarters with new furniture and accessories rather than with her familiar, old furnishings.

“The resident never made a successful adjustment,” Davis recalled.

In the end, Lockton said, what makes a house a home is the interaction we have with people in it.

“An intimate conversation you have had with somebody there, having a party, having people come in and fill the place with laughter and music, games and activities,” she said, “having kids run through the house, having a place where people want to come. I think that’s how you make a home.”