As many of you know, Mr E and I have just moved house. We’ve downsized, sold a biggish house in a Kent town centre and moved to a smaller one in the London suburbs which is where we came from in the first place. Perhaps we should have called the new house “Full Circle”. Anyway, all of this – after almost 39 years at the same address – has been a huge learning curve. Here are ten things I have learned:
- Don’t judge others by your own standards or expect people to behave as you do. We had a buyer who failed to produce the deposit on contract exchange day and a vendor who was still running round the house packing chaotically at 8pm on completion day despite being contractually obliged to be clear by early afternoon.
- Hire the best removers you can find and afford. You are putting everything you’ve worked for and everything you own into their hands. Bournes of Rye – yes, I’m naming names and deservedly so – cost us £3,000 but did a fantastic job (under difficult circumstances) and were worth every single penny. Nice guys too.
- Go though every cupboard before you move. There is no point in paying someone to move stuff you’re going to chuck out anyway.
- Accept that it will take time to get the new house as you want it and to make it feel like home. We have some sort of builder/odd job man/ installer/ helpful sons with tool boxes et al here almost every day this month. Meanwhile the bedrooms, in particular, are a bit of a tip. You have to look positively towards the future. If you’re systematic it gets better every day.
- Be prepared to sort each cupboard twice more on arrival – once when you throw stuff in piecemeal to get it out of sight and a second time when you organise it as you actually want it. I’m planning to “do” the shed later today.
- Put your animals into a cattery/kennel or get them looked after by someone else for a week across the moving date. We put our cat in a cattery near our new house and it was a very good decision. When we collected him we had some semblance of a home to settle him into.
- Some things will go to earth in storage boxes in the new house and won’t emerge for a while. I haven’t seen my dressing gown, light-up cosmetic mirror or toothbrush charger since we left the old house. (Don’t worry – I’ve improvised!)
- Photograph your utility meters both when you leave your old place and when you take possession of your new one so that you have evidence in the case of disputes – a useful tip from our younger son.
- Your selling agent and your solicitor are your friends – stressful as it is to feel that your life is out of your own control. Get good ones (and we made a mistake initially by signing up with a crummy agent before we changed to an excellent one) and they can make your life a whole lot easier.
- Stock up with arnica. Adjusting to a new space and humping bits of furniture when you change your mind about where to put it is a painful business. I have bruises on every limb from walking into furniture – and one on my nose where the unfamiliar wheelie bin closed unexpectedly and bit me with its lid.
