I think there's some confusion over the timings in question:
Houses are demolished after 45 days of not being entered (when the demolition timer is running anyway...)
Those objects are then held by the caretaker NPC for a further 35 days.
As to why there is a limited time to retrieve items, officially they've never said why, but personally I believe it's because housing was supposed to be a gil sink and this way they take money and items worth money out of the system.
The official post on reclamation is here: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...3e7ccabefa9954
To the OP though, sorry that you lost your house :(
More housing is coming just after 4.2 releases, although initially it's only for companies and we're unsure at this point when personal houses can be bought, but what I'm trying to say is you possibly have a little time to get some money together to be ready to get another one.
