It is crazy to think we have lived in our house for just over a year! It was The best thing we ever did moving away from Northumberland to Scunthorpe! Northumberland is wonderful but the area we lived wasn't!
This blog post was supposed to go live a few months after we have moved house, once we had got settled in but it got lost in my draft blog posts and forgotten about until now. I thought now would be a good time to post it, now we've been here a year.
We moved over 150 miles and I expected way more stress than we actually had! I stress about everything. My fella calls me a stress head so when it came to moving house he expected me to lose my mind but I didn't, mostly. It was all straight forward and went so well. I do feel that we were very lucky.
I think it was easier moving a long distance than just somewhere in the same town. We missed out on the stress of having two houses to deal with, decorating before we moved and moving things slowly into the new house rather than all at one go.
This blog post was supposed to go live a few months after we have moved house, once we had got settled in but it got lost in my draft blog posts and forgotten about until now. I thought now would be a good time to post it, now we've been here a year.
We moved over 150 miles and I expected way more stress than we actually had! I stress about everything. My fella calls me a stress head so when it came to moving house he expected me to lose my mind but I didn't, mostly. It was all straight forward and went so well. I do feel that we were very lucky.
I think it was easier moving a long distance than just somewhere in the same town. We missed out on the stress of having two houses to deal with, decorating before we moved and moving things slowly into the new house rather than all at one go.
We knew for quite a while that we were going to be moving, almost a year. It made it easier to plan but to be honest we didn't really start dealing with moving until a few months before we did.
We applied to our now local college for Becky just before Christmas 2018. I said we weren't moving until the summer of 2019 and they were absolutely fine with that. They took her application and said get in touch when we were settled and we did. She had an interview and a look around the college and then she started and has settled in so well. She has just finished her first year and is starting a new course in September!
We scheduled the mail to being redirected about six weeks before we moved and gave them a date to start redirecting our mail. I thought we had told everyone who needed to be told we were moving but I wanted to be sure. It cost just over £40 and I think it was worth every penny. We did have a couple of letters from people I forgot to tell. Oops.
With Ellie we told the SENDCO woman in her school and she informed everyone else at the school who needed to know. A few days before Ellie left school we handed a letter into Ellie's head of year officially saying she was leaving and that was it. We applied through the council for a place at a new school for Ellie near where we live. We probably could have had her starting for the last couple of weeks before the end of the school year last July but we thought it was best to give her a long summer to settle into the new house and area. After the stress she had at her old school with bullying I think she deserved a break. In hindsight she made friends so quickly so if I could go back and do it all again I would have started her at her new school as soon as we moved and then she would have had all the summer to hang out with her new friends.
Luckily for us Stu worked in a high street shop and there was plenty of cardboard boxes going spare and we bought the bubble wrap from the pound shop. We didn't really start the packing until about a month before we moved and then continued packing until the day we left. The packing did drag on but it was a fantastic way to declutter! I felt like I was organised with the packing. All the clothes went in black bags so we knew they had to go upstairs and the boxes had written on them where they needed to go.
Stu was supposed to be transferred to our new local store of the high street shop he worked for but that didn't work out. It was actually probably for the best with coronavirus happening. He would have been classed as a key worker. He spent a couple of months being unemployed when we moved house but soon found a job 15 minutes away from where we live. It's totally different from the shop work he used to do, working outside 90% of the time but he loves it.
Stu was supposed to be transferred to our new local store of the high street shop he worked for but that didn't work out. It was actually probably for the best with coronavirus happening. He would have been classed as a key worker. He spent a couple of months being unemployed when we moved house but soon found a job 15 minutes away from where we live. It's totally different from the shop work he used to do, working outside 90% of the time but he loves it.
What surprised me was getting the internet set up in our new house. We rang Sky a couple of weeks before we moved and they were fantastic. We were disconnected in the early hours of the day we moved and reconnected the day after. We didn't have chance to miss the internet as we were so busy unpacking! We did upgrade to super fast, fibre broadband and had had a few teething problems but it was soon sorted out. I am now getting 45mbs via wireless which is expected and Stu gets much more through a wire!
My dad hired a big van for us to move and he drove up from Scunthorpe to pick us and all of our belongings up. I would have loved to have hired a proper removal company but we just couldn't afford it. It worked, we didn't have the stress of dealing with people we didn't know. I did have a moment where I cried and screamed everything is not going to fit in the van. My dad was calm as usual and everything did go in apart from a big bookcase which we weren't too bothered about anyway. Our old next door neighbours claimed that!
We had takeaway the first night in here. Fish and chips which saved us having to cook. I couldn't have if I wanted too as we had emptied the freezer and most things out of the cupboards before we moved.That takeaway shop has turned into our favourite. I must find out the recipe for their coleslaw, it's the best I've ever tasted. I got the shopping delivered from Tesco the day after we had moved and yes it cost a small fortune filling the cupboards, fridge and freezer but it was worth it not to have boxes and bags of food to deal with in the move. The money I had saved in previous weeks paid for the big shop.
We took one room at a time. I took over unpacking the kitchen while Stu wired up the electronics, did all the building of things and carrying things upstairs. The next day we did the living room and then worked our way through the other rooms. We got all of downstairs done and tried to just ignore upstairs, living out of black bags until one day when I couldn't find something to wear and I lost my mind! There was shouting and swearing from me. I got on with unpacking everything upstairs. It took a day but it was worth it!
We got rid of all of our large furniture before we moved house but thankfully there is a fab auction nearby which runs every Saturday which sells furniture at fantastic prices. We arrived with no sofa, armchairs, dining room chair and tables and within a month we had everything we needed and it didn't cost us much at all. My dad was buying things before we moved here and then we bought things like a big chest of drawers for £5 and a computer table for Ellie for £3
We moved on the Thursday and were 90% unpacked by the following Monday. We informed most of the people we needed to before we moved house and only had a few people to deal with when we moved. The doctors was a complete nightmare, nothing to do with them but all the forms we had to fill in. There was not enough space on one form for all Ellie's medical issues. lol It took about 40 minutes for each set of forms and I had 4 lots to do. Since then the girls have both had a heart check at our local hospital but we're still waiting for a hearing check for Ellie. When she was due to have one we were in the middle of lockdown.
All in all it really was stress free and we actually had fun moving house. I don't want to rush to do it again though!
Over the last year the kids have settled into school and college, we've all made new friends and seen so much more of my family. The house is being decorated slowly. The kids bedrooms are done, the hall, living room and bathroom all that's really left to do is the dining room. I have made a little video (below) about the progress we've made. I do think if it wasn't for Stu being home because of Coronavirus we wouldn't have got as much done.
Have you got any tips on how to have a stress free house move?
My dad hired a big van for us to move and he drove up from Scunthorpe to pick us and all of our belongings up. I would have loved to have hired a proper removal company but we just couldn't afford it. It worked, we didn't have the stress of dealing with people we didn't know. I did have a moment where I cried and screamed everything is not going to fit in the van. My dad was calm as usual and everything did go in apart from a big bookcase which we weren't too bothered about anyway. Our old next door neighbours claimed that!
We had takeaway the first night in here. Fish and chips which saved us having to cook. I couldn't have if I wanted too as we had emptied the freezer and most things out of the cupboards before we moved.That takeaway shop has turned into our favourite. I must find out the recipe for their coleslaw, it's the best I've ever tasted. I got the shopping delivered from Tesco the day after we had moved and yes it cost a small fortune filling the cupboards, fridge and freezer but it was worth it not to have boxes and bags of food to deal with in the move. The money I had saved in previous weeks paid for the big shop.
We took one room at a time. I took over unpacking the kitchen while Stu wired up the electronics, did all the building of things and carrying things upstairs. The next day we did the living room and then worked our way through the other rooms. We got all of downstairs done and tried to just ignore upstairs, living out of black bags until one day when I couldn't find something to wear and I lost my mind! There was shouting and swearing from me. I got on with unpacking everything upstairs. It took a day but it was worth it!
We got rid of all of our large furniture before we moved house but thankfully there is a fab auction nearby which runs every Saturday which sells furniture at fantastic prices. We arrived with no sofa, armchairs, dining room chair and tables and within a month we had everything we needed and it didn't cost us much at all. My dad was buying things before we moved here and then we bought things like a big chest of drawers for £5 and a computer table for Ellie for £3
We moved on the Thursday and were 90% unpacked by the following Monday. We informed most of the people we needed to before we moved house and only had a few people to deal with when we moved. The doctors was a complete nightmare, nothing to do with them but all the forms we had to fill in. There was not enough space on one form for all Ellie's medical issues. lol It took about 40 minutes for each set of forms and I had 4 lots to do. Since then the girls have both had a heart check at our local hospital but we're still waiting for a hearing check for Ellie. When she was due to have one we were in the middle of lockdown.
All in all it really was stress free and we actually had fun moving house. I don't want to rush to do it again though!
Over the last year the kids have settled into school and college, we've all made new friends and seen so much more of my family. The house is being decorated slowly. The kids bedrooms are done, the hall, living room and bathroom all that's really left to do is the dining room. I have made a little video (below) about the progress we've made. I do think if it wasn't for Stu being home because of Coronavirus we wouldn't have got as much done.
Have you got any tips on how to have a stress free house move?
This is so reassuring. I'm still planning on moving back to the UK in the next year or so, maybe three years if I wait until Juliette finishes at school, and it makes me panic like mad just thinking about it. I hope it's as simple for us as it was for you ! :-/
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad that the move was stress-free on the whole for you and I can't believe it's been a whole year already since you moved. I have to say, you all seem so much happier for it from your blog posts and it does sound like such a lovely area. That auction sounds amazing for getting furniture. Our move into the house we live in was much more stressful than your move sounded.
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