I don't know how to decide? Moving out of the house where we brought up our children

[Beckton]

We have loved our house and where it is.Just the right size, good transport links, great long-standing neighbours. Brought our two children up here, feel very embedded in the neighbourhood.

However, retirement is on the horizon. We'd like more space to garden and for hobbies. To live with less hassle in a town rather than a city. To not have to fight to park our car or hear parties most weekends.

But, leaving all that aside, how do you come to the decision to leave a house where all your memories of raising a family have been made in? It feels so hard.

Can those who have struggled with this, but done it anyway help me out? DH is very keen to start the process but I don't know how I can help myself stop feeling sad about it.

We did this when both of our children were at university, so we would be nearer them because travel to and from our family house was just too far at the beginning and end of every term. I was sad to go, but I think now it was quite sensible. All of my memories of that house include the children growing up and I think I might find it unbearably sad to be there without them, and for them to have flown the nest from that house.

This house has memories too now 10 years on, but of them becoming independent, first jobs in London and now buying their own houses with partners. They still have their own rooms here but obviously we see less of them now, they have their own lives.

So now the memories being made are by just me, dh and ddog and do you know what life is sweet and I still can remember every stone of the house we lived in happily for their first 18 years.