Eight Weeks In… It’s Starting to Feel Like Ours
Well hello there friends…
Somehow we have now been in our first home for eight weeks.
EIGHT WEEKS!!
Which feels slightly ridiculous because or course there are parts of this house that still look like we moved in approximately three hours ago… and other parts where Its genuinely starting to feel like our home.
I think before we moved, I had this idea that there would be a very obvious moment where we were in... Like IN IN... Pick up the keys, move some stuff in, make a cuppa and DONE... Home.
Except that is not really how it works is it?..
It has happened much more quietly than that.
It has been learning which windows open and close, which floorboards move so much that they might topple furniture, It's working out where things naturally end up, in the drop zones, rather than where we temporarily decided they were going to live. Discovering which jobs are actually urgent and which bits of slightly questionable 101-year-old-house existence can probably stay questionable for another month.. or two..., or a year. Like the downstairs toilet taps which arent currently connected to the waste pipe.... or the front bay window which has too many cracks to be ignored for TOOO long. but it can be ignored for now... right?....
There are still boxes and furniture to move in and we're slowly moving in.
There are jobs that we thought would take an afternoon, like some of the wallpaper stripping, that then somehow developed entire side quests and lists, and endless tasks before you can get to the one you planned...
But, there are mugs in cupboards now! There are things on shelves because we actually USE them, rather than because we needed somewhere to store them. There are little routines beginning to happen without us thinking about them.
And then, around week six, the house got considerably fuller.
Buddy and Tula moved in.
Which, I think, was probably the point where it stopped feeling quite so much like Mr S and I were camping in somebody else's house and it started actually feeling like our household had arrived.
Buddy has settled in remarkably well considering his age and the fact that we have essentially taken his entire known universe and plonked it into a completely different one. Add that to his diminishing eyesight, deafness and creaky old body, and yes.... hes done remarkably well...
He has discovered most of the garden. though there not enough fencing for him to be let in to the extended garden alone just yet, he does enjoy a supervised long wander. Which works as his walk for the day with all the new scents the foxes bring to us ( bones, birds, Neighbours underwear!!) He has discovered several excellent sleeping locations. In the less heat wave areas of the house and he has also discovered that if he stands in certain places looking mildly confused, one of us will almost certainly appear and assist him with whatever problem he may or may not actually have. (usually including a snack) lol.
So that IS going well.
Tula has spent the last few weeks inside because, obviously, moving a cat comes with the slightly terrifying responsibility of having to convince said cat that THIS is now her home before opening the door and hoping she agrees with you. She has been kept busy by finding some mice to eradicate, so shes happy enough at night waiting for them to appear....however in the daytime she has not been particularly subtle about her opinion on the indoor arrangement. Often yowling, howling, screaammming at the door if we ( or buddy) exits without her....
So this weekend, if all goes to plan, she will finally be allowed out properly!
That should be completely relaxing and not at all result in me helicopter parenting my way around the garden calling her every five seconds to make sure shes not going out onto the the considerably more busy road than shes used to...
I am sure she will come back.
I am choosing to believe she will stay close.
Please nobody speak to me until she comes back. ahaaaaaa.
The funny thing is, when I look around, we really haven't transformed the house. I'm not sure this house or our budget is that way inclined.
There is to be no dramatic reveal.
There are unfinished walls. Half-done jobs. Rooms we have barely touched. Rooms we've filled with just ... stuff.
A garden that has approximately seventeen different ideas and plans attached to it (depending on what day you ask me. XD)
But I don't think that is what has changed most anyway. We KNOW this house now,... or at least we are begging to, we know where the morning light hits, we know where buddy wants to nap, we know where it gets too warm without a window open all the time, we know which door has to open a certain way, we know the toilet flush has to be jiggled so it doesn't stick down and constantly run, we know... just about... what jobs can wait.
And perhaps most importantly, we are beginning to understand what we actually need this house to become.
Not the version we imagined before we owned it. Not the vision board version. Not what somebody else wants it to be or what they would make with more money, more time or no chronic illnesses.
Its Ours.
I think that has probably been the biggest lesson of these first eight weeks.
Buying the house was never really the finished goal it just gave us somewhere to start building. and at the moment that build looks like the pets settling in, furniture gifted second-hand, jobs done slowly, SO MUCH CLEANINGGG.....things reused where we can, a cuppa coffee in the garden on our little swing seat, and rooms that are gradually becoming useful.
It isn't finished.
It isn't remotely finished!
But eight weeks in…
it is starting to feel like ours.
And I think that might be better than finished anyway!
Much love,
one step at a time.
Jazz x
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