My wife and I spent most of 2022 on the move. We decided this was going to be the year we’d buy our first house together so we sold our respective places and moved out in January with nowhere to go.
Back then the property market was absolutely wild, compared to the moderately wild state it’s currently in.
So we thought it would be super smart to sell up, move out and try to be the brilliant chain-free buyers everyone was looking for.
Turns out that’s not such a great idea as it would take us another 10 months before we found and secured the right home.
We spent time living with family and renting Airbnbs while we hunted.
It also meant living out of a few bags and boxes for most of the year as the vast majority of our belongings were boxed up and put in a storage unit.
There are lots of life lessons to draw from this.
First and foremost: it turns out you don’t need 90% of the stuff in your house.
Secondly, despite knowing that, you’ll do hee haw about it.
Moving house means making room for all these things again
When we eventually moved into our lovely new home in Markinch, I thought the most exciting day of the year would be the day the delivery guys came with everything from our storage unit.
Not so.
As lovely as it was to have all our stuff in one place, finally and for the first time ever, there was just so much of it.
It was so overwhelming and actually really stressful.
A combined 70 years on this planet’s worth of random crockery, trinkets, books and chargers for goodness knows what antique electronics.
How do they disappear but the plugs always live on?
When I was a teenager I thought 40 was almost dead, it was such a big number.
How grown up, serious and responsible you must be at that age.
Now I’m wondering whether it’ll be 50 or 60 before I have four mugs that match?
Of course, I could go and buy four today but I’d have to rid myself of some of the others to make space and I just can’t do that.
They’ve all got meaning.
Gifts from friends, stolen from places of work, bought to mark a certain moment or place.
There’s actually only two or three we like to drink out of it.
The rest just sit there like time capsules of moments gone by.
This Christmas I’m grateful for what really matters
When we were moving into our new house at the end of October, we set about a pretty ambitious plan to decorate before Christmas.
Those closest to us scoffed and said you’ll never get that all done in four weeks.
Not the challenge you want to set two of the most stubborn and determined woman in Scotland.
In truth we got 90% of what we set out to do done before Christmas Eve.
Because there was so much painting and joinery work going on, we weren’t able to get any Christmas decorations up until the very last moment.
So we bought a real 7ft Christmas tree on the Dec 23 for a bargainous £20 and all our new decorations were at least 50% off.
I’m normally the first person in the queue to buy a tree at the start of December and fully embrace the season the minute Halloween has been and gone.
But as it turns out, Christmas concentrated is also Christmas heavily discounted. I thoroughly recommend it.
And if Christmas represents a time both of excess and being grateful for what really matters, then I understand both sentiments most sincerely this year.
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