Wednesday Waffle - no Hodgepodge today

Well there's no Hodgepodge today as Joyce is in the process of moving house so we'll have to make do with a bit of waffle.

I've only done one major move in my life. I'd always lived at home until I got married and moving in with hubby was a bit of a gradual thing.  We bought our first house about a year before our wedding and took time to get jobs done in it.  Hubby moved in before the wedding once we'd managed to get sufficient furniture but I waited until we were married to actually live there.  That was June 1984.

It was a nice house, not far from where we are now, and with 3 bedrooms it served us well until our 3rd child arrived.  We could still have managed there for a while and we hadn't even discussed moving.  Then a friend of mine was talking about how her house sale had just collapsed and needing to find a new buyer so that she didn't lose the house they wanted to buy.  The chat led to me coming to see her house.  I fell in love with it there and then and went home to tell hubby I'd found our next home.

Of course it wasn't that simple.  He insisted on viewing other properties but eventually we did make the move here, finally arriving in July 1993.  So that was our only major move so far during our married life.  It was a bit of a nightmare packing up with 3 young children (they were 3, 5 & 7 at the time) but we managed it somehow.  We nearly left the tumble dryer behind and the extra leaf for the dining room table nearly ended up being put in the new loft in a box of Christmas stuff.  We could have been searching for that for a long time!  I was also convinced we'd lost one box somewhere in transit but of course it turned out we hadn't.  They say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do and I was certainly glad once we were all safely here and unpacked.

We've helped the kids move a few times though.  

Our daughter has moved from home to uni, from uni accommodation to rented accommodation, then home.  Then to two different rented properties.  Then home.  Then to move in with her partner.  Thankfully when they moved to their current flat they hired a removal company but that's still 7 moves we've helped with not counting the trips backwards and forwards to uni for holidays.

Our eldest son spent a year at Oxford university and each term everything had to come home so that was 3 times we moved all his personal stuff during that year.  He then took a year out before going back to uni but this time in Nottingham.  The first year he was in halls but he could leave stuff there during the holidays so we only really did one move that year but he spent each of the following two years in different rented accommodation so that was another two moves.  He then spent time at home before returning to Nottingham to set up home with his girlfriend and yes we helped move him back.
So that's 7 moves as well.

The youngest son went to uni in Bristol and again lived in halls the first year and then two different rented properties so that was 3 moves.  He's now married so we helped him move out to live with friends and then recently into a rented flat on their own so we're only up to 5 moves for him.

The hardest thing with all their moves is that the majority of their homes have been on at least the first, second or even third floors.  And most of them didn't have lifts!  Thankfully as they've all mainly been in furnished properties we've only been moving their personal possessions but even carrying those up and down stairs is hard work.

When we move again I think I'm going to go the whole hog and have the removal company come and do the packing as well as transporting everything to the new location!