Home – It’s funny to think that one word, and one that we all use daily, can conjure up a whole host of emotions, but for me that’s exactly what the word does!
What does the word “home” make you think of? For me, the first things that come to mind are words like family, relaxing, comfort, security, cosy, and happiness.
It’s also the place that I’m always the most eager to return to, and if there’s anywhere that embodies the things that I hold most dear, it’s my home.
Our home is definitely the hub of our family life! It’s also where I try to unwind (eventually, when I get Alfie and Betsy to bed) and most of all it’s the place where many of my most treasured memories (happy and sad) have been made.
Our current home is where I found love and built my family. We have lived at our current abode 10 years in May and within that time we’ve got married, owned 3 cats and had 2 children.
It’s been a decade filled of memories, ups and downs and hard graft! We’ve changed or tried to “tart up” every room to make our small house as practical and as large as we possibly can but without doing any physical building work. We’ve turned our once dining room into a play room, my wardrobe into a nursery and our spare room into a children’s bedroom for both Alfie and Betsy! We’ve even talked about making our under-stair’s cupboard into a library…
I’m so obsessed with tidying and making sure everything is put back at the end of the day in its rightful place. Everything has to look orderly otherwise our house looks smaller! Darren’s not so tidy but you can’t fault his eagerness for DIY or his mad ideas to improve our house.
Every so often he comes up with an idea for a house improvement. He then heads off to what he calls his “Dad’s B&Q work shop”, returns with various tools and then begins his latest project!
It’s not just been the house that’s been transformed, the garden is now a children’s playground with a Wendy house full of Lego blocks, a wooden play train, a climbing frame with balance bars and a seated sand pit.
Realistically, there’s nothing more we can do to create any more space and now we’re forced to face the reality that our house just isn’t big enough for the four of us!
So the predicament we find ourselves in is do we extend our house or do we move? Or as Kirstie and Phil would say – are we going to love it or list it?
The TV programme on channel 4 is the high light of our week at the moment. Darren’s team Phil and I’m team Kirstie all the way! I would love both those property gurus to either make our house work for us or help us find a house that does.
Darren is busy, most evenings, searching for houses for sale near by that could shape up to be our “Forever house” but I keep thinking that our house could be the “one”. Occasionally, he changes his mind, grabs the tape measure and starts measuring walls and dreams with me about extension possibilities…
Essentially all we need is an extra bedroom upstairs and a further room downstairs to re-jig our living space. A few other rooms, such as a downstairs bathroom would be ideal but not essential!
Like most people, I’m put off moving just by the shear cost of it. However, what does sway me to move is schools. It’s weird how schooling suddenly becomes the be-all and end-all in life!
Even if we decide that we need to move on, the idea of moving out and moving on is just going to be a bit of an emotional one for me!
That said maybe “home” isn’t a place it’s a feeling that never goes – no matter where the bricks and malter lay…
#MyWorld 