Why is moving house always such a terrible experience?
My family and I are currently moving house. Nothing about this process has become any easier across the years, but I have developed a hardcore streak as regards clutter. I am sick to death of trawling through old boxes and finding remnants of tat that I have clung onto for no apparent reason. It has been enormously satisfying to dump said tat because therein lies the only benefit of tat – one person’s tat is another person’s treasure.
The old handbags, the defunct swimming armbands, the letter rack, the knick-knackery. All tat. The umpteen mugs and innumerable baking trays. More tat.
The never-ending piles of soft toys. Tattus Maximus.
I am totally determined that when we move into our new home, it will be without superfluous bits and bobs.
My husband, given half a chance, will sneak stuff from the ‘Tat’ piles back into the ‘Keep’ piles, but I have cottoned onto this nonsense and have kept him in my
eye-line for the duration of the task. No more lone packing for him. We are surrounded by bubble wrap, boxes, reams of packing paper, and reels of sticky tape.
I am marking all boxes with their contents and destination, and have every intention of being good to go as soon as we have a confirmed date to move.
Which leads me to another point of stress during this process, and that is the dreaded wait to exchange.
Waiting for that point feels much like waiting for the stars to align.
Why on earth there cannot be a simpler way of managing home moves in England is a complete mystery to me.
There are clear points of peak stress during the process, from start to finish, so why is nobody looking at those and finding ways in which to solve them?
According to those infamous lists of life’s most stressful events, moving is apparently worse than getting divorced.
How can we still be living in a society where willingly uprooting yourself and all of your possessions is made harder than actually divorcing your partner and ripping your life apart?