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moving house Archives - Megan Taylor

HOW TO HAVE A STRESS FREE HOUSE MOVE

Moving house is up there as one of the most stressful experiences you will ever have in your life. I am a crazed list maker and love organising things so I was excited to label a new notebook from my notebook shelf (yes, I do have one of those) my new house book. I got straight down to action making notes, timelines, chapters as different rooms from the house etc etc etc…

During my whole moving journey I made some errors but also some amazing tricks that I am here to share with you that will definitely make your house move a bit less stressful.

CHECK LIST

Having a checklist for everything is imperative. It can help you know what is going on, what has already happened and what is about to happen during your most stressful moments. Make a list of everyone you need to pay, have a column for the date you need to pay it and tick it when you have. Also have a list of companies that you need to tell you change of address.

GET A DECENT MORTGAGE ADVISOR AND SOLICITOR

Without my mortgage advisor and solicitor I would still be at square one. Both of these guys helped guide me along the way answering my emails at ridiculous times of the day when I was freaking out that I had done something wrong or not done something that I should. You need a nice mortgage advisor and solicitor that you don’t have to talk to a receptionist every time you call and take a day to get back to you. The whole reason moving can take a ridiculous amount of time can often be because of a slow solicitor that takes a day to tackle one simple question and another factor is a tricky mortgage lender. We managed to complete our move in a record six weeks from offer on our property to date of exchange and I credit this down to these two men and also mine and Liam’s speediness at filling out forms.

GET EARLY ACCESS

This was something I didn’t realise was possible but if you are buying an empty property (ours was a previous buy-to-let) you can ask for temporary access between exchange and completion. All you need to do is ask your solicitor to ask your future properties solicitor (ugh, how much easier would the whole process be if we could just send a quick DM on social to the seller haha) if they will grant you access. If they say yes you then sign a document that says things like, “you can only go in to decorate, do works on the property or clean”, “that you will not move in”, “that you can not stay the night” etc. We were allowed to keep the keys until the night before completing.

CLEANERS

(*we were gifted the cleaning by Fantastic Services) By getting early access we were able to send in a cleaner the day before we moved in. This was an absolute God Send!! I am quite particular about the scent of a house. I found that our house had those awful smelling plug in scent sprayers so I immediately threw them out. Fantastic Services kindly sent me a cleaner and carpet cleaners for a few hours and I could not recommend them more. You may have spotted my stories last week where I gave you a little behind the scenes of them working. The female cleaner actually scratched old paint off the light switches!!!!!!! I mean who on earth does this? I thanked her profusely and she replied,”well, of course”. Just standard practice for her…amazing. We even had our carpets cleaned which felt amazing as we knew that we would be having a fresh start smelling only of us not the previous tenants. I have been given a £10 off code for all my readers, click through to here and the offer code is itsmegan . Let me know if you use them…they do everything, they will even buy your Christmas tree if you like.

DECORATING

Not everyone has the same opinion when it comes to paint colours. This was definitely apparent in our house. Our dining room, lime green. Our kitchen, poop brown. Our bedroom, dark purple. I couldn’t hold back but to get in there and white wash the place. It is always easier to paint in an empty, furniture free house so if you can get in early I would strongly recommend you do this too.

Have you got any extra stress free tips for those moving house? I actually think I could write an essay on my moving process but I will leave it at the above for now 😉

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE

Wahhh… fourteen months after putting our gorgeous and rather large maisonette on the market we have finally sold and bought ourselves a HOUSE!! Oh my goodness, what a long process this has been. I personally blame a duff estate agent and Brexit haha. It’s a bit like every influencer and their mum blaming the Instagram algorithm for their failed engagement (yep, I am one of those complainers). Yet, I truly believe Brexit has been a major factor is our lack of sale for so blummin’ long. Anyhow…we have finally sold our property and are on to a new and exciting venture.
Have a little glimpse of our house here.

THE MOST STRESSFUL TIME

Selling, buying and moving is blummin’ stressful, like seriously stressful. I actually personally think I have handled it pretty well. With a whole ton of advice and notebooks filled with To-Do lists I think the whole process has been ok-ish. That being said I have almost given up on the whole selling and buying thing many many times! Liam and I have argued, I have cried on the phone to my mum and I have thought in depth about the amount of money I am spending on in the short run downsizing and moving into a house that needs a fair bit of work!! Yet, then I have these amazing giddy exciting days that I think, wow, my adult life is really about to start and I can finally move on from our gorgeous maisonette that we have been in for eleven years and mentally outgrown.

WHY ARE YOU DOWNSIZING

So, we live in a horribly expensive part of the UK and seriously lucked out on our current home of a super large maisonette with a garage and garden (super small one at that!). Yet, although this flat is absolutely gorgeous and almost immaculate (there is always something you can do to improve though) we live above a shop and amongst other shops (all good ones, no fast food chains or anything) and as we are now both in our 30s we have got grumpier and quite frankly want a bit of a quieter environment and want to be freeholders not leaseholders! When you are moving up to a house in this area but can’t take a humungous leap in price the houses are diddy!!!! Seriously DIDDY!!!! We have managed to find a nice semi-detached house which has a potential to be extended but currently the square footage is smaller than our flats so we are technically downsizing haha. The bathroom is bigger though so I can store all my kindly gifted beauty products. We have such amazing plans which once we earn a bit of money back after the move we will slowly do. Therefore, don’t expect a whole renovation blog/vlog within a month or so, it will be sporadically drip fed to your feed over many years, I am sure.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT TO SEE

I am so excited for the home content that is to come. I am getting older (not old but you know what I mean) and my tastes are changing. I am growing up and although I still love writing about beauty and fashion and still will continue to do so I am now going to include a bit more home life inspo and development. I have loved home interiors and improvements my whole life. My mum often talks about how when I went to bed as a child they could hear my upstairs moving all the furniture around in my room and redecorating haha, well, now I can do it a little bit better and I have a big strong hubby to help me drag my dressing table to the other side of the room.
I will be sharing the long form content with a whole load of photos on here, a bit of IGTV behind the scenes on Instagram. The more nitty gritty details of our home life and some before and afters of our interiors will be featured over on mine and Liam’s joint Instagram account @wearehisandhers (we may even bring back our podcast when things settle down a bit). The biggest challenge and hope for me is that I will be creating some vlogging behind the scenes and typical YouTuber stuff like ‘Empty House Tours’ ‘How To Renovate On The Cheap’ etc. Subscribe to my YouTube channel over here.

Have you ever bought or sold? How excited are you to see our house? I can’t wait to share it with you all.