A room of one’s own – and a spare one for family and friends

Kirsty Mcluckie on the personal properties of a happy homelife

Research from Barclays Mortgages reveals that 85 per cent of Scots are happy in their home, with people living in Edinburgh the happiest in the UK.

The study asked both adults and children for their opinions on how satisfied they were where they were currently living, and what would prompt them to move.

Scotland’s children seem particularly content to stay put.

Some 96 per cent responded that they like their home and more than one-third admitted they would be upset if their parents told them they were moving.

My feeling is that the number who would be upset at a move would dramatically increase if they had to change schools as well as home, but the levels of trauma at actually moving house can differ from person to person.

Friends of ours have just moved their family to Australia for the second time. Having made the flit ten years ago, with primary school-aged children, they returned after four years and settled back in Scotland.

A job opportunity has now meant they have sold their home here and packed up goods, chattels and pets to fly the 10,500 miles back to Melbourne.

Their remaining secondary school-aged child is apparently not best pleased.

For me, it was the thought of the organisation involved in selling a property, moving continents and starting again which would put me off – although the image of an outdoor life in a sunny country does definitely have a pull.

As the child of an army family, who was uprooted every few years to cross continents, I became fairly immune to such troubles, whereas my own snowflake children never got over the trauma of moving primary schools – once – when we relocated across Scotland.

They protest at even the mention of us selling up now, despite one living away at university and the others about to go.

I also have mixed feelings about making a move, although I would like the convenience of living closer to a city.

We dream about practicalities, such as decent wifi, good public transport and living in an area where you can get groceries and takeaways delivered.

The bliss of going to the theatre, restaurant or the pub without someone always having to be a designated driver is another thing we rural dwellers fantasise about when we consider moving to a city.

But there are drawbacks and they are mostly about space.

A property the same value as our current house anywhere else in the country will be a shoebox, and giving up the space we now enjoy would be difficult even when we become official empty nesters.

Are we ready to forego the opportunity to fill the house with friends and family, even if it happens only a few times a year?

I suspect the same argument rages in most downsizer’s heads and certainly respondents to the Barclays survey agreed.

No spare rooms for family members was the most common reason to dislike a property.

But, in our case, keeping a house that is too big for two in the hope that the kids will keep coming home for Christmas and holidays could be seen as a vicarious way of living.

One which, I suspect, will end up with me as some kind of yearning Miss Havisham figure in an empty house, while my offspring are off backpacking in Vietnam.