A Moving Day Story | The Yorkshire Dad of 4

A Moving Day Story

Apparently, the average person in Britain will move house 8 times in their lifetime and will end up just 63 miles from their birthplace. Well, I am approaching 40 and have moved just 3 times, and that includes moving out of my parent’s house to get started. But, presently I am about 80 miles from where I was born. Am I bucking a trend? Moving house is never easy so I thought I would share our three experience so far in the hope someone learns something.

Moving out of the parents

For anyone, this is a huge deal – to move out of the family home. 

I was just 21-years-old and Helen 20 when we bought our first home together. We have nothing! Really, we have just the furniture from our bedrooms at home and that was it.

Moving in was pretty easy really, given that we have pretty much nothing to move with. In fact, those early months in our new home were largely spent in the bedroom as that’s the only room we had furniture for. Gradually we got more. My parents got us a couple second-hand sofas and donated their old dining table and chairs. To say it was a gradual start to home ownership would be an understatement.

When the time comes for our girls to fly the nest I am damn sure they’ll be more prepared than we were.

The difficult sending move

So, we’d been in our little 2-bedroom terraced house for about 3 years. Lydia was a few months old and life was changing for our small family. We then found out we were expecting a second baby!

There was no way on Earth that we would all fit into that tiny house. So, it was time to look for something bigger.

Time seems to evaporate when you really need time. We found a house, got an offer accepted then waited. And waited. And waited…..

Eventually, it was go-go-go and the moving day came. Money was tight so to keep moving costs down we opted to hire a self-drive van for the move as it was only a mile down the road.

Crazy day

I remember this crazy day vividly. We had packed Lydia off to my sisters and Helen’s sister and her husband came to help us. Despite us packing lots into boxes in advance, there was still the whole house to pack into a van. To add to the stress, it was one of those moves where you got one shot at it – we had to hand in our keys to the house we were selling and collect the keys to the house we bought. We got one hit at it!

We utilised every square inch of space in that van. Then every nook and cranny of our estate car was packed up. Finally, my sister-in-law’s car was rammed with the last remnants of life from our first home together.

I went and did the key exchange, then returned and picked up the van. Having driven to the new house I legged it back to the old house to collect my car.

Lydia ended up spending the night at my sisters. Oh, I also didn’t mention that our moving day was just 2 weeks prior to Helen’s due date!!! Crazy!

Moving on the third time

This move was a little different from the last. Actually, it was very different from the last!

For a start, it was as unplanned and it’s possible to be.

I went for a job interview and got offered the job on the spot. Except, I’d misjudged where the place was and I wasn’t sure that I could commute. So I told them this. Not a problem, they had a house we could rent! I went home, told Helen I’d got the job and we could move to the country. Six weeks later we did just that!

Moving is stressful as it is. But preparing to move whilst trying to prepare a house for a quick sale is way more stressful. At the time I wasn’t getting home from work until about 6pm. Once we’d eaten and got the girls to bed I was then working on DIY until about midnight. It was crazy.

I commuted to my new job for a week before we moved. This meant I could take boxes with me to store at the new house. We actually moved on a Saturday. Although there wasn’t the pressure of a one-time move like last time, because of the distance we wanted to get as much moved in one go as we possibly could.

Man with a van

We hired a man and a van, plus this time my sister her husband helped too. The difference this time was we were moving a family of 6 from a 3-bedroom house and that means more stuff! We crammed as much as possible into the van, and we loaded up both cars as much as possible. The man with the van was very keen to get going, we later found out why.

By the time we arrived at the new house the van was almost empty. Except, we had the house keys. He’d put almost everything on the driveway as he had another job to get back to and hadn’t realised how far away the new house was. We regretted not using professional removal services greatly. If it wasn’t for my sister and brother-in-law that day we would never have managed it all!

Next time…

There will be a next time, but not for a while. We’re happy where we are for now. But, we’ll think carefully about how we do the next move – that’s for sure.

Thanks for reading.

Dave


 

 

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