Leaving the house where dcs have grown up..

[pinkhousesarebest]

I am struggling with the thought of this. We have lived in this area for 16 years, this house for 13. Our house needs too much work and we have found a beautiful house closer to the dcs school, although the area is much less pretty (flat countryside as opposed to high and hilly, but you get more for your money). It's a new chapter I suppose, but it is filling me with such sadness.
Anyone experienced the same thing, or am I just too sentimental?

[MuttersDarkly]

Can I sit next to you ?

I'm a forces baby, so moving is more normal to me than not, but DS has grown up in this house and the conversation last night about moving at some point in the not too distant future has caused a reaction I didn't expect.

Our house is too big for us now. Costs a fortune to heat. Takes ages to clean. Is 300 years old so needs eye watering maintence sometimes. And although the plan was for me to learn to drive so I wouldn't feel trapped, I haven't got past my phobia. So I feel very stuck at the end of a track 4k from town.

The plan is to buy something smaller and more modern (and warm ! I am so over the romance of draughty characterfull farmhouses) in our small town.

So I can get around, and so can DS. I'm hoping that when he considers the advantages of more teenage freedom (cos he won't need to organise his social life based on lift availability) he'll come around to the idea.

DH is just looking moarnful. He grew up in one house, spent a few years grumbling at my need to change house "every five minutes" and then put down deep roots in this one. I think when he is released from being our family taxi he'll realise that the loss of this house is worth the gain.

I feel like crap. I can't take much more of being snowed in for days, having to heat by wood (which is hard work) and worrying about which aged part of the hpuse will. break next. But I feel mean for forcing the issue in the face of their not too well hidden reluctance. Even if it is sentimental reluctance rather than " but here is a real/practical/tangible benefit of not moving from my perspective".

[RaphaellaTheSpanishWaterDog]

We did this a few years back when DS went to uni - having fully restored our 3500 sq ft Victorian house in a lovely conservation area on the South coast, we decided that the house and its associated running costs (and humungous mortgage!) were no longer worth the hassle, so sold up and bought a (still very pretty) house for cash in a less attractive/popular location.

It was the wrong decision and we (both of us, although I probably felt it slightly more than DH) regretted it for the three years we managed to stick it out. We then moved again, slightly closer to our original location but we could no longer afford to buy there without taking out another huge mortgage which, having been mortgage-free for three years we wanted to avoid. Whilst this was a better move, location-wise, this time the house - a huge, Georgian thatched project house which sounds like some peoples' dream - was wrong.

To make matters worse during the time we were away we lost both our fathers and my mum became seriously ill.......

Last week we moved again and hopefully, whilst we are still far from our original dream location, this time we've got it right - I'm pretty certain we have!!

So, my advice would be to think very long and hard before leaping in to such a far-reaching decision. Financially we are far better off - although three lots of moving costs have eaten into our capital - but tbh until we moved here I've not had a week go by where I haven't regretted moving.....

[Somethingtodo]

Rent yours out and rent in new location for 6 months to be sure....?

We will be moving in the next couple of years from big money pit in home counties to flat in central London - my bumpkin kids think this is ridiculous - but as 3 out of 4 will have cleared off to uni I dont give a shit....they are all sentimental for their childhood village....whilst they will be living in Edinburgh?Newcastle?Leeds? whatever. We are desperate to get back to a social life involving the arts -- I trust my instincts that they will come round to it all when they come back for visits and we all pop to an exhibition or play followed by supper and some hipster hangout...and I think that they will be visiting more that if we stay in home counties.

[MuttersDarkly]

big money pit in home counties to flat

Wish I could swing a flat. But DH won't budge on that one. Now he's had a garden there is no going back as far as he is concerned.

I am so sick of lugging the hoover upstairs. Maybe I can persuade him re the advantages of a bungalow? If we have just one floor we won't have to move again when we are old.

I want a tiny tiny flat one storey house, throw away everything anything we don't actually use or need, put in some clever storage and be able to clean the whole thing from top to bottom in a jiffy.

Ironically, I will likely end selling this to a family from the big city from whence we came, who are desperate for more space. That's how we ended up here. We needed more space, but the reason for that needed space is no longer with us. I don't want to go back to the city, the small town here is much more my cup of tea.

But I do miss the compactness of our flat back then.

[Somethingtodo]

I look out on our huge garden with despair, bitterness and resentment....it looks like another whole house to clean and tidy. Was great for kids - would not change what we have done - but enough already! Pining for a small flat with view over park or river and just enough outdoor space to sit with a glass of wine! Plan to ditch all possessions and live out of a carryon suitcase. Cant wait

[FATEdestiny]

I bought my parental home off my Mum and Dad after Dad died and Mum was looking to downsize. So I am now raising my own children in the house I grew up in.

My brother brought our grandparents house after they passed away.

[MuttersDarkly]

I look out on our huge garden with despair, bitterness and resentment



I had such dreams, a vegetable garden ! With succulent tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and aubergines !

CHICKENS !

A lovely lawn, with brillant boarders.

Turns out that

A) The only thing I am really good at growing is weeds.

B) I have the worst slug and snail population explosion ever seen in a hot and sunny (in summer at least) country,

C) Med. Veg sucks up more water than I am pleased to have to lug over to it. Again. And again. And again. In temps of 30+ . For 12 solid weeks of Scorchio ! Only to be eaten by the slime gang in the end.

D) Both dogs and cats are really good at eating/chewing/unearthing/disconecting/killing automatic watering systems.

E) My husband is chicken phobic when said fowl is not plucked and oven ready. Which we discovered when we went to choose some feathered and alive ones. He screamed and gibbered. Becuase ... something to do with beady eyes, scaly legs and a demonic expression.

F) Plants are very expensive. Especially when they drop dead with alarming regularity.

G) Mowing a lawn is intolerable when it means a huge cloud of midges and mosquitoes surround you and bite the crap out of you as you slog around, for hours, dreaming of concreting the fucking thing over. Which wouldn't feel as bad if I hadn't paid three grand to turn it from huge concrete slab to lawn when we first moved in.

Bastard Huge Garden.

[Somethingtodo]

Mutter that is sooooo funny!!

[Waitingfordolly]

Do it. My parents sold the house I grew up in about five years ago. I thought I would be very sad but tbh it has just been like every other house move I have made (many!) that once it's gone you move on. The only thing I would think about would be will the DCs have somewhere to come back to to reconnect with old school friends?

[Waitingfordolly]

Sorry re-read original post and looks like you are not moving far! Definitely do it! The other thing is that as you take all your stuff with you anyway a lot of the sentimental value is attached to those things not just the building.

[MuttersDarkly]

Somethingtodo

What won't be funny is trying to make it appealing to buyers.

Slug/Snail arramageddon is step one.

I am buying myself one of those Miner's Lamp headtorch things.

From March onwards I will be out evening with a bucket of salty water and an abundance of grim intent.

[Trumpton]

I am so ready to move. We are both in our 60s DH still working, I help with DGC and look after MIL.
House is large Victorian and I lack the will to keep up with repairs.
Garden is huge which is lovely for DGC but means I have to be out there with them as they are too small to be in such a garden.
I lost it completely with the garden last year and we now have someone in 4 hours a week and it's so worth it.
DD1 lives in my Dad's bungalow annex and tbh that's the only reason I am still here as it's so amazing having them close. We lived with Dad next door for 16 years and have knocked all the rough corners off inter generational living.

I need a small warm lockup and leave house and have holidays !

[RaphaellaTheSpanishWaterDog]

Merry Christmas all!!!

Regarding the requirement for the DCs to meet up with old school friends, what we have found us that most of DS's school friends dispersed around the country after uni and many are now settled in London or elsewhere - in fact only one that I'm aware of are still living at home in a village on the outskirts of our former home city......although you need to bear in mind that they attended an independent school where many of DS's friends lived outside the immediate area anyway......

Even if we had stayed in our large family home, DS (now 25) would have most likely gravitated to where his old friends were now based. He and his GF of nine years have just bought their second home (in Brighton - he works nearby and she is doing a masters in London) and they see far more of their old school friends living there than they ever would have if we'd opted not to move away.

[RaphaellaTheSpanishWaterDog]

is not us, lol!

[Bonsoir]

I hated the houses my parents loved best: they were too large and had too vast gardens for my parents to ever have the resources to make them properly comfortable and they were too far from school/work to mean that we were ever anything but exhausted from getting up early/commuting.

I am incredibly unsentimental about homes. I like them convenient, centrally located and maintained communally.