Oh Boy!

 

Yes, I had heard tell that moving home can be up there with all of life's other big stressors but never did I imagine how difficult it can be. Given a deadline of just under 5 weeks to find a rental property and vacate our own home, it was never going to be easy, but a paucity of suitable lettings meant I didn't for a moment appreciate just how tough the challenge we faced would turn out.

In the end the loss adjuster appointed a relocation agent to assist and although we had to identify and view potential properties, they at least did the negotiating for us. Finding a house to take all of our possessions as well as ourselves in the  area where we live was always going to be tricky and ultimately a compromise had to be made. We've moved 10 miles to the east, to the edge of suburbia into a modern estate home, some 1,000 square feet smaller then we've been accustomed to.

Reducing our entourage of belongings was a battlefield in itself. I'm still sorting through piles of old books and other miscellanea but confess that ridding ourselves of clutter has been essentially liberating. In fact now the ordeal has been overcome, it's almost a privilege to think that we are to be given the opportunity to return to our own much loved home divested of a surfeit of "stuff" that we always knew we didn't need but which was somehow easier to store than dispose of.

What I hadn't expected, however, was just how ingrained the grime in our house hiding behind unmoved furnishings would be. Moving back might be something to look forward to but there's going to be a lot of hard work first when the whole place is now clearly in need of a complete makeover (I've finished the superficial cleaning). In for a penny in for a pound as they say, and of course the only obvious choice is to view it as an opportunity rather than wallow in misery over the situation.

That said, it is incredibly frustrating that, despite our moving out for the deadline set by the insurers, the next stage of the remediation work is yet to start which will inevitably prolong our absence beyond the original 6 month time estimate. At least we've been able to have family to stay with us once again here and are enjoying the novelty of a local bus service, not to mention a station within walking distance. I'm also lucky that, although now 4 miles further away, I can drive to the gym in the same length of time that I am accustomed to. Mind putting the car into the garage afterwards is a challenge. Why do today's house builders think everyone drives round in things the size of golf buggies or alternatively only use garages to store junk of the type we've worked so hard to disassociate ourselves from?

It's been an arduous way to experience a lesson on the benefit of decluttering. A process I've been trying to embrace throughout retirement has been accelerated and our heads continue to spin as we land back down on Earth with a bump, so to speak. Forced to adopt a more minimalist lifestyle and update our home within a constrained timescale is a shock to the system. In the rented accommodation, however, we are presently experiencing the reward of living in a jumble-free house with no property maintenance and the consequent benefit of yet more leisure time! They are definite plusses that we shall be taking back to our own home (eventually!).

On the downside, of course, we are going to have to go through that whole darned moving process again, in what I hope will be the not so distant future!