It was the moment that I realised my life had to change. I am moving house, which I do quite a lot, and I’d invited a charity to come round and see if they’d like any furniture. The men from the charity duly arrived to look at my wares, and announced that the only thing they’d be taking were two mirrors which they tucked under their arms as they left, briskly. I was mortified. There is a special sort of humiliation in having your furniture rejected by a charity shop.
Still, they had a point. When I studied the items they’d turned their noses up to, I could see the scuffs and scratches – the legacy of three decades of being carried on and off vans and up and down stairs while moving house.
You see, I love moving house – or at least, I did. My furniture and I (plus kids and pets) have upped sticks 17 times in the past 35 years. That’s about once every two years. I haven’t done this out of necessity, which I know many renters are forced to do. I have moved by choice. I even wrote a piece for The Telegraph in 2016 detailing my addiction to house moving and declaring that I had no intention of stopping.
However, eight years and four house moves on, I surveyed my rejected coffee table and realised I was knackered. I simply don’t have it in me to do this all again. So, after this house sale and purchase, I’m done.
No more moving house. No more scanning property websites, no more having other people trudge through my home which I’ve been up all night cleaning, no more packing and unpacking boxes, no more hanging new curtains, no more going up ladders with litres of emulsion. None of it. I am going to buy my next house and then not move again. Ever.
‘I love the hurly burly of moving’
My family are sceptical. They think that the charity chaps got me at a bad moment; that I’ll move and get itchy feet again. And there’s definitely a chance that could happen because I’ve always loved the hurly burly of moving; the possibility inherent in finding a new home. For me, buying a house is like booking a holiday. Yes, the airport queues are hideous but I still get really excited when I’m there. It’s the thrill of the unknown.
But maybe that’s the issue – my pursuit of newness, novelty and excitement is what has driven my house moves and also led me into my first career in fashion. It is why I prefer working on contract and love doing live TV. It’s also what has enabled me to switch careers without fear. Fifteen years ago I retrained as a nutritionist/hypnotherapist, and in 2020 I retrained again as a dog groomer.
Today I juggle journalism, nutrition, hypnotherapy and have my own dog grooming salon. If that sounds exhausting, I am beginning to realise that it is. This year I will be 60 and while I’m not about to retire, I am considering slowing down a bit.
In making my decision to stop moving house, it is significant that one of my siblings has recently been diagnosed with ADHD. Two of the children in my wider family have already been diagnosed with the same condition and one of my own kids is now being tested. I was sceptical. ADHD is very fashionable right now. But as part of this process of getting my own child help, I had to answer a whole raft of questions about their behaviour and I realised that a lot of it was rather familiar. They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and the psychiatrist has now suggested that I consider being tested as well.
‘I’ve paid about £300,000 in stamp duty’
It got me thinking quite deeply about the freneticism with which I have approached most things in my life, including my living arrangements. I enjoy being busy; I love a challenge; I have lots of energy.
There are definite negatives to moving house constantly. One is financial. It costs a fortune to move. A back-of-the-envelope calculation of the stamp duty I have paid over the years comes to around £200,000 to £300,000. If you add solicitors and estate agency costs, the bill goes higher. Then there is hiring removals companies – although last time I drove the van, and two moves ago we used a horse box. We had to wedge furniture in around the hay racks.
It was quite different when I started house flipping at the end of the 1980s. Stamp duty was low and it was easy to make a profit. My best ever purchase was in the 1990s: a two-bedroom flat in Marylebone, central London, priced at £139,000. When I bought it, it had a hideous green carpet and a plastic concertina screen instead of a door on the tiny bathroom. I turned it into a one-bed with a proper bathroom and sold it for £220,000.
As a single mother, flipping has helped me balance the books for years, but it’s not just about the money. I love interior design and the chance to take a sow’s ear and turn it into a silk purse is really rewarding.
Another great buy was an art deco house in Southgate, north London. I loved that house and enjoyed every moment of sourcing original Bakelite door handles and a stained glass front door. The house I’m selling now is Edwardian. When I peeled the corner of the beige hall carpet back and saw the original black and white floor tiles underneath, I literally did a jig of delight.
There have been some horrors too. I once bought an old dairy that had been used as offices. A week after I moved in, it rained heavily overnight. When I walked into the kitchen the next morning, the lino was floating on about two inches of water that had come in through the roof.
Terrible plumbing has been a theme. I moved into a house to discover every single toilet was blocked. In another, the loo flushed hot water because there was no cold water supply at all to the first floor bathroom. At another property, builders were laying a new dining room floor when they discovered a river running underneath it. Someone had installed a downstairs bathroom but neglected to connect any of the plumbing to a drain.
Never mind my lovely floor, we had to dig a trench through the whole ground floor to lay pipes.
‘The moving maths have changed’
All of this sounds terrible, and it was pretty stressful, but it was worth it because overall, I’ve been able to make a profit. But the pandemic has changed the maths. I have done two renovations since 2020 and the labour and materials costs have both escalated massively. During the pandemic, my builder rang me to say that I needed to pay for some architrave over the phone now because the timber merchant was increasing prices daily. A job that was priced at £20,000 became £35,000.
So if you can’t make a profit, you have to ask yourself, is the stress is really worth it? The answer for me, now, is probably no.
I do wonder if I’ll get bored. But I have a plan. I’m leaving London. I was born in the capital and never thought I’d say that, but part of wanting to slow down is leaving the hustle and bustle of city life. For years, I was constrained by school catchment areas but now my kids are 23, 21 and 17 and two are at university, so I can now live where I like – and I want to live by the sea. A cliché, I know, but there we are.
A year ago my twin sister moved to Whitstable in Kent and I now spend a lot of time there. This is where my last home is going to be, where we are going to live together. I haven’t found the house yet, but I am practising my new life. We have a pair of folding beach chairs plus a smaller one for the dog that we can balance on the pebbles. Those chairs are about as movable as I intend to be.
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