We Have (Finally) Bought a House

(I thought about calling this post "A House, A House, My Kingdom for a House" but decided that one truly awful Shakespearian pun in a week was enough, so I went for a more straight-forward title.)

After house-hunting for so long that all the local real estate agents know us by our first names, we have finally signed a contract to buy a house here in Adelaide.

The house is lovely, a beautifully-renovated early 20th-century home on a good-sized block of land. There is a herb garden and room for a small vegetable patch and maybe even a few chooks. There are two citrus trees - an orange and a lemon I think - although it's difficult to tell from the few unripe fruit. To my delight there is an abundance of rose bushes.

Buying the house feels like an act of commitment to our life in Adelaide. While we were still renting it was easy believe that I could go 'home' at any time, whether to Sydney or Melbourne. However, owning a home means that we are planning to stay and put down roots.

Certainly, for the past 18 months I have felt unsettled. While fortunate to have found a rental home in a very tight market, I have never felt at home in this house. We could never change the garden, paint the rooms, have pets, or express our personalities in any other way. And I have truly missed the very dear friendships I had in Melbourne, all those wonderful people who were having babies at the same time I was, whose babies started school with mine, and with whom I shared 15 years of laughter and tears from my early 20s onward.

Now I will have the opportunity to be myself again, albeit amongst different people; to grow and nurture a garden, decorate and tend my home, and entertain. The first on my guest list will be all those lovely people who, when we were utter newcomers, invited us for meals and shared their homes and lives with us. I will never forget their kindness, and there were many of them.

We will be moving in March so the next few weeks will extremely busy with the school year newly underway and three different schools to contend with, a four day-a-week job, church commitments, loads of packing to do, and all the myriad other tasks involved with being a mother-of-four.

Over the next few weeks I will intersperse ordinary posts with tips and hints for moving house.

Thank you to all those who, through this blog, travelled with me from Melbourne to Adelaide and who have patiently waited with me through this time of transition. I look forward to sharing the next chapter of my life with you.