8+

The waiting game

So just over 8 weeks into the house purchase and we have reached that 'nearly there, but not quite' stage, that drags on, and on, and on!

I have moved a number of times before.  I was a single mother, two small children, privately renting and getting those letters that I had to move on a regular basis.  Twenty years ago privately rented houses were being sold regularly by landlords as the 'negative equity' problem arose.

I had it down to a fine art.

You start by packing everything that you don't use, but want to keep.  Things like pictures, books, irregularly used cooking items (like those you only use at Christmas) and anything else you know you can manage without.  You store these boxes out of the way (I used to use my bedroom), the best part of this being you sort through and throw away what you don't want or use (I adhere by the 6 month rule, if you haven't used it in 6 months and there is no emotional attachment, you don't need it).

Then, a couple of days before moving you sweep through the house packing what is left.  Last items to be packed are the first things you need when you arrive at the new house. Label boxes with the room they need to be in, and really, moving is pretty simple.

However, my previous experiences of moving did not have one thing I have now.  The husband!

The children are gone so you would expect this to be easier, but the children were as used to moving as I was, and pretty well trained in how to go about it.  The husband has never actually moved in his life!  When he moved in with me, he just moved odd bits over 6 months (including his children that moved in with me at the start of the school term 2 months ahead of when he officially moved).

So I cleared the spare room, cleared the sewing room, packed everything we didn't need and allocated the sewing room as the 'packed and ready to go' room.

My husband appears to have difficulty with this concept.  I keep finding 'things' have been put in the room.  I am unsure whether these 'things' are to be kept or not.  There is no sign of any of these 'things' being put in boxes ready to go to the new house.

'Things' are also appearing in the spare room! The spare room still has a travel cot and mattress in case the grandchildren need to sleep here, but I had emptied it, now there are 'things' in there.

I had also cleared out the downstairs toilet.  Then the husband 'packed his tools' (do you see how many times I am using quotes here?) and put the packed boxes of tools on empty shelves in the cleared out toilet.

The last time I went into the toilet there was a box on the floor, the lid was off the box, next to the box was a tesco carrier bag with a few screws and items from MY pink toolkit (it was bought so that when I wanted a tool I could go to the toolkit and get it out without having to rummage through all his stuff to find a screwdriver)!  Why things from MY pink toolkit are not in the toolkit but in a tesco carrier bag is beyond me but there is also an electric drill in front of the open box next to the tesco bag.  I expect there is a reason why the husband has not put the electric drill into either a) The bag, or b) the box, but I can't see that it will be a good one!

So now, the toilet that was clear except for an empty set of shelves with one box on it, is now not empty, or tidy, or even completely packed ready to go.

I am going round and round in circles, repacking rooms that were empty a few days before, and feel like I am living in a nightmare instead of that lovely, getting ready to move organisational wonder, that I have previously experienced!

I wonder if I could just pack away the husband for a few weeks?

How long is a piece of string?

So after enthusiastically returning to my blog, things began to go horribly wrong!  We were informed by our landlord that, due to a very negative EPC viewing, we had to leave the house for repairs to be carried out.  Our first reaction was inevitable panic.  We have lived here for 17 years and originally told we would never have to leave, now we had no  choice.  Then we thought about it and wondered why we had to leave for work to be done, approached the landlord, who told us that we had to move out but as we were good tenants he would be happy for us to move back in again.  We had a look at other rentals in the area and realised that by the time we had paid out what had to paid out, we would be unable to move back in (probably also stuck in a lease for months when the house became available).  So we moved onto plan B, we have a caravan in the garden, why  not stay there while work is carried out?  

The letting agents thought it was a good idea and would approach the landlord on our behalf.  We set about doing up the caravan, painted the interior, new carpet, new curtains and were ready to live in it for a few months.  The landlord said no!

Let me give you some details here on why we didn't want to leave:

In the last 17 years our 4 daughters grew up here so there is the inevitable emotional attachment.

The landlord had done no internal decoration. Our own time, and money has gone into keeping it in decent order.  We recently spent a lot of money on new carpets, worktops in the kitchen and decorating throughout, on the understanding we would be staying here for many years to come.  

Three years ago the landlord told us we were responsible for an area of garden we had previously been told was not ours but belonged to next door (previously owned by the landlords brother).  We spent yet more time and money on bringing a field of weeds to a fully fledged garden.

We looked around us and saw all our efforts being taken away.

We appealed to housing associations in the area to no avail, unless we were homeless there  was nothing they could do.  I even wrote to my MP, who was about as much help as ... well I will let you answer that yourselves.

So we started looking for somewhere else to rent.  At the time we had just acquired two kittens, of course this was on the understanding we could stay where we were, then realised that the majority of private rentals don't allow pets!

Put into the equation the fact that I am the main carer for my 82 year old mother, and you can see that there were certain limitations on areas we could live.  Things were definitely not looking good.

Then I had the thought that maybe we could buy somewhere.  So a few months down the line (luckily we had the time to sort things out) and we are waiting to see if the purchase of a house nearby is going through.

Also down the line, we have got more eager to leave the house we thought we would stay in forever.  Three years ago landlords brother sold the house to landlords son.  They moved in with two children and three dogs.  There are now four children and four dogs.

Now the children I can live with, but four dogs that are not kept under control, bark incessantly, and run manically towards any car that comes up the drive, does not equal a peaceful life.  To be honest, I can't wait to leave!

If the house buying falls through then I will rent another place... away from any dogs!

Whatever happens in the next few weeks, I will be moving.  I will be making curtains for a new place.  I will be making panto costumes with my daughter.  I will be adding to this blog!

In the meantime I have to work out how to condense three bedrooms into two, and reduce my sewing stash to a manageable amount (at the moment it takes up a room on its own).  Find someone who would like my collection of antique sewing machines and pack up and sort through 17 years of living somewhere while waiting to hear from solicitors who seem to be the only people that know how long it takes to buy a house, and how your own purchase is going.  The only answer that seems to fit the situation is the same as you get from 'how long is a piece of string?'

I just hope our piece of string is not a huge ball of the stuff!

I'm back!

I haven't written this blog for so long I had forgotten about it.  Then, while looking through Pinterest, I saw someone had pinned one of my pics on Professor McGonnagalls robes.  I took a look back over my own blog and felt sad that it had abruptly come to a halt.  The reasons were personal, ending in me suffering from severe depression.  I stopped making costumes, in fact I stopped sewing all together, and took time out to pull myself out of wherever it was I had descended.  At this point I need to apologise to anyone that asked me questions or made comments when I did not reply to them, it was not me being ignorant, just me being withdrawn.
However, things are much better in my own world now and I have ventured back into the sewing room, if only to make caravan curtains, or an occasional foray into something quick and easy.
The reason it seems that now is a good time to start again is that the making of pantomime costumes has returned to my family in the form of my eldest daughter.  After the initial year when the pantomime was cancelled at the last minute, it was resurrected!  My daughter has stuck with them, acting in every production (even the year she starred as Maleficent while 7 months pregnant!) and is now part of the pantomime committee.
This year she has volunteered to make the costumes! Neither of us are naive enough to assume she would just be making the costumes, she will need a guiding hand from me during the process and it seems that this guiding hand may as well be documented to help others at the same time.
She is not the most experienced with a sewing machine, in fact the last time she touched one was  over four years ago when she made the Victorian dress I wrote about in this blog.  Neither of us are expecting it to be easy and as it is possible I will have to move in the middle of it, the whole kit and caboodle may have to be uplifted to her house at some point to be continued!
While we wait for new season panto sewing to begin I will try and post a bit to keep you up to date on any other sewing I may attempt before then.
Thanks for reading this, I feel quite excited about the prospect of mother/daughter sewing time, even if we do need to negotiate through two pre-schoolers while doing it!