As someone who had spent most of her life having parents who were still together and had been living in the same house for her whole life, it's safe to say that when my parents began the proceedings for their divorce, it was only inevitable that the family home would also be sold. Even though we eventually (as you will understand once you've read the rest of this post) moved house, the whole experience was quite stressful, and all I had to do was pack a few of my things into boxes and then turn up at my new house after school on moving day. I can only imagine the real stress that my Mum was under when she was trying to find a home for her, me, and my brothers to move into; as well as having to deal with her divorcing my Dad and getting him to move his things out of my old house. As this was one of the most stressful things that I have ever had to deal with (as well as happening at an already stressful time in my life) I thought that I would tell you all about my experience with my first ever house move (as per the title of this post).
It all started at the start of last year around February/March time. My parents had been split up since November 2014 and my Mum sat me and my brother down because she wanted to talk to us. That's when she mentioned that the house was being sold. The house that had been my home for my entire life. The house that held so many memories. Granted, not all of these memories were entirely good and looking back all I can ever really remember happening there was birthdays, Christmas's, BBQs, and my Mum and Dad constantly arguing and screaming at each other 24/7. That combined with the fact that my old house was completely in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest corner shop being two or three miles away and all of my friends living at least seven miles away (if I was lucky), meant that I didn't mind too much at first over my parents decision to sell the family 'home'. I mean, if it meant a fresh start and a chance to be closer to my friends then who was I to try and persuade them otherwise?
The house was then put on the market within a few weeks of us finding out that it was being sold and within two months an offer had been made and accepted. At this point my mum was still looking at houses for us to move into and even though I knew it would take a while for the sale to be completed, it looked as though we might have ended up without anywhere to stay. I mean, obviously we had family we could stay with but at the same time my Uncle had sold his house and hadn't found anywhere to live, leaving the only other option to move in with my Nan and Grandad, who only have a two bedroom house that is quite small and probably wouldn't accommodate seven people and three houses worth of things. However, my mum was able to find somewhere for us to live and had an offer accepted on a house.
Now, at this point you might be thinking, 'why are you telling us all this if that's where it ends?' Well, it doesn't end there, and that's only part of the story.
My Mum's offer on a house may have been accepted but life was never going to be easy as far as we were concerned. The people who were buying our house were starting to mess us around a bit by asking questions. Buyers are entitled to do this (obviously) because they want to make sure that they aren't wasting their own time by buying a house that they're going to then end up not enjoying living in. But the problem with these questions was the fact that there were certain questions that they kept on asking over and over again, which did become quite annoying (even I got annoyed, which is very easily done, but I wasn't even involved with having to answer any questions or with the whole buying/selling process) and seemed to be taking their time in terms of deciding whether or not they were actually going to buy the house (baring in mind at this point they had already come to view it at least twice). It did become very annoying and considering their offer had been accepted around June/July at the time, they did seem to be taking their time in deciding whether or not they wanted to buy the house. But this wasn't the only trouble we were having.
I can't remember exactly when this happened, but some time after August the sale on the house we were meant to be buying fell through and we were in immediate panic, especially as we had already gone past the original date for the sale on our house to be completed and for us to move out and the new people to move in. My mum then had the struggle of trying to find another house that we could all move in to, preferably almost straight away as we had the worry of not knowing when the people buying our house were going to move in and we didn't all want to try and fit into my Nan and Grandad's house as it wouldn't really be fair on them to have all of us living with them and basically taking over their relatively easy and quiet life.
After constantly being on RightMove 24/7, my Mum was eventually able to find a house that was a good size for all of us, affordable, and in a good location. Even though it was great that her offer was also accepted on this one, we were still unsure of when the people buying our house were going to move in and by now it was around October/November time, so technically they should have moved in around two months prior to this.
Anyway, the same sort of things that I've already mentioned continued to happen until December, when my Mum gave the people moving into our old house an ultimatum, leading to them moving in around the middle of December. This seems all well and good, except for the fact that we were given pretty much less than 24 hours notice of having to move all of our stuff out and into our new house so that the new people could move in. As we had been messed around for almost four months this was pretty annoying, only being made up by for the fact that we were going to be moving to a much better area that had a little bit more life to it than where I previously lived.
Moving day did seem a bit stressful and I wasn't even that much involved with it. All I'd had to do was make sure that all of my things were packed away and that I remembered to go to my new house after school and not my old one. Sounds simple doesn't it? Well, yeah, that bit was but other things happened that made it more complicated. For example, the people who were meant to be moving into my house text my dad at some point that afternoon saying they would be there in half an hour - at which point only half of our stuff had been moved to our new house and my mum was still trying to pack a load of stuff into boxes, only when the new people turned up it turned out they had literally only gone there to pick up the keys. THE KEYS! I was fuming and I wasn't even there! They had literally driven for around FOUR HOURS just to pick up the sodding keys and to say that they were moving in on Monday, AFTER making us all stress out even more into thinking that we would have to be out of our old house pretty quick so that they could move in. In the end my Mum made them go to a pub a couple of miles away so that she could finish packing everything and get out of our old house.
I guess this experience wasn't the best in terms of moving, especially as I thought I'd lost a few pretty important things in the move (some A-Level folders and some jewellery - which have all now been found by the way) and has definitely put me off wanting to move out of here and into my own place any time soon. But I guess that that will inevitably happen one day, so I can only hope that when that does happen that I am prepared for anything and everything that could possibly go wrong.
Thank you for reading and I'd love to know your moving experiences in the comments below. I'll see you all next week for a new post!
(P.S. I hope that my experience with moving out hasn't put anyone else off moving house because it is all worth it in the end if it means being in a house that you love.)
Love Beth xx
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