MOVING ON

                                        

Apparently, every year in the UK one in nine people move house. I don’t know if that’s one in nine households on the move or one in nine individuals. Either way, there’s a lot more of it going on than I realised.

I definitely have mixed feelings about the house moving experience. On one hand it’s exciting and fun looking for a new home. On the other hand it is stressful and inconvenient, particularly having strangers poking around your home.

 Ok, so I don’t mind poking around theirs, but that’s different…really it is. I imagine that other people always live in a state of readiness for the critical scrutiny of strangers at a moment’s notice. But I go through agonies of inadequacy before I leave my private space, leaving it wide open to the [probable] criticism of viewers. In my more rational moments I know that nobody really lives in a show home, but that doesn’t stop me feeling that they do. But anyway, why should I care for the opinion of strangers?

Because I want to sell my house, that’s why.

The course of true homebuying never did run smooth. When our whole recent sale and purchase collapsed like a house of cards, I knew it had been too good to be true. Things had been far too simple. So in a way we weren’t surprised or even particularly fazed. It just seemed like a nuisance to have to go through all the nosey stranger stuff again.

 But, hey! A week on and we’re sold again. Also we have found a cosy bungalow which I am trying very hard not to get emotionally involved with. Nothing is definite before the signatures are dry on the contracts, and not always then.

Meanwhile I must get on with sorting out 14 years’ worth of clutter and getting rid of excess furniture and stuff. I mean,  do I really need three sets of single bedding when we only have double beds? And fingers crossed one of those doubles will fit into our new second bedroom…

Its no wonder that moving house is listed on the stress scale*, although it only scores 20/100 where death of a spouse scores 100 and Christmas scores 12. For some reason its not so stressful as ‘revision of personal habits’, whatever THAT means. I beg to differ on that one.

Anyway, must go and get on with list writing, decluttering and nail biting…

*Holmes and Rahe 1967