Unwitttingly diving in the deep end

So in this on-going saga (I'm calling it a saga) about our house move, we're learning the rules the hard way -

- Please check out the house throughly before buying, i.e. go through ALL the rooms, open ALL the cupboards, visit the house at least twice and walk through thoroughly, check the floors, the tiling
- Get a proper valuation BEFORE making an offer
- Take a general contractor to the house to see what might need doing BEFORE making an offer
- Inspect the roof and electricity (the latter is good in this place, NOT the former)
- Check the plumbing, inspect the ceiling for leaks
- Talk to the neighbours about possible natural disasters, safety, crime, traffic (flooding, earthquake)

Of course, you're probably guessing by now that we didn't do most of these things until it was too late, and now we are learning the hard way.

We dove in the deep end first. Seems to the story of my family's life. We always learn by doing, even if it means making terrible mistakes.

My only silver-lining of hope is that when the house is renovated, we will have a very nice, fairly modern home on a quiet street.

And that little peace of mine may be worth all the expense.

Almost all packed up and nowhere to go

If it there was ever a JOINT POP song I thoroughly miss hearing whenever they play live is 'Nice Shirt'. I was addicted to that song. There was a line in it where Gary Hector would say rather casually  'Now I'm all dressed up and nowhere to go.'

Oh! how I loved that line. I always scream for that song whenever they gig out, but they don't perform it, they haven't since 1999. Ah! those were the days.

But now here, back on the home front, we're almost packed up our home, and now we can't move. Ha! isn't life funny. We're all packed up and nowhere to go.

We've sold our home of almost 50 years and bought another house. And we foolishly thought that after the previous owners had moved out, that we'd move right in. But we forgot to cater for renovations.

And now that our new home is empty, we see where we can change a few things and there are repairs needed, especially to the roof. That's the thing when buying a home, you always inherit the previously unattended repairs. That's just how it is in the real estate biz.

So here we are, almost packed up and unable to move for a bit till the new place is fixed up, might take a few months. And it's a bit overwhelming - renovations, all these unforeseen expenses when moving houses. It's definitely an experience. Perhaps we'll look back on all of this in a few months time and laugh.

But one thing has occurred to me since most of our belongings - clothes, bed sheets, cutlery and pots are packed up in boxes.

How much of this stuff do we really need to exist comfortably?

Probably not much.