At the end of my Bachelorette Pad 2 post, I said that I had a somewhat drastic solution to help me overcome the loneliness I had been feeling while living alone and I never fully addressed what that solution was although I did allude to it in my Bin The Mince Pies post.
I moved house again! See what I mean about it being slightly drastic?
After housesitting all summer for my clients, when I got back to my own flat again last October, the one thing that I really noticed was the lack of a lounge. As a keen cook, I had set about making my kitchen/living space the best kitchen it could be. The island I created in the middle of the room meant there wasn't a lot of room left over for any sort of cosy seating area and a sofa wouldn't have fitted even without my island (it really was a tiny flat). This hadn't been a problem before the summer as I was perfectly happy sitting on my bed to do work or watch something on my laptop and had a bar stool at my island to eat my dinner from. But whilst I was housesitting, I had gotten into the habit of sitting with the client dogs in their living rooms of an evening, sometimes watching TV, sometimes reading and when I got back to my tiny flat, I missed having a zone that was entirely for relaxing. Suddenly, only having a kitchen and bedroom wasn't enough anymore and I decided that my first flat had served it's purpose and it was time to move on.
As fate would have it, the flat next door to mine which was also owned by my landlord came up for rent and after viewing it as soon as possible, I rang my landlord straightaway to ask him directly if I could move in, estate agents be damned! The flat was twice the size of my bachelorette pad, with a proper lounge, separate kitchen, a bath and my own private garden for the boys. It would be heaven. Or so I thought.
To cut a long story short, the flat was terribly damp and I struggled to keep it warm enough during the winter because the bedroom windows were so draughty. So my first three months there were pretty miserable but with Spring came a new wave of positivity and as the weather warmed I began to enjoy living there more and more. I settled into my new routine of Watson coming over every Wednesday for dinner and then on Friday's the boys and I would ship out to his for the weekend. I enjoyed waking up to my pretty bedroom and in the evenings I loved sitting on my brand new sofa, with my feet up on my fabulous HomeSense footstool, watching TV guilt-free. Fairy lights twinkled, scented candles burned and everything was as I wanted it to be.
Then in May, I had one of those Aha! moments. By this point, I had been in my flat nearly five months and every weekend I was going to Watson's. I would clean my flat on a Friday afternoon before leaving and by the time I got back on a Monday, the dust (and dog hair) had settled and it needed cleaning again. It was one morning while I was sitting in bed, addressing my business goals for the month ahead when it dawned on me that I couldn't manage the three main areas of my life to the same standard anymore. Both my business and my relationship with Watson were going from strength to strength but the third key area of my life, my home, left something to be desired. After long days at work and still getting my strength back after a nasty bout of flu, I had no energy in the evenings for housework or hobbies and so would potter about doing little bits here and there to keep the flat tidy before going to bed. The only real time I was properly switching off and relaxing was on the weekends at Watson's.
From Friday evenings to Monday mornings I was at my most relaxed and was actually indulging in my hobbies. We were going National Trusting, cooking new recipes together, playing board games and before long, my own flat started to feel less like home and more like some apartment that I was staying at during the week whilst I was at work. The weekends began to feel like coming home and it was becoming apparent that the dogs thought so too. They say when you know, you know and that morning it dawned on me that I was fed up of feeling like I was living two separate lives, being business Aislinn during the week and home Aislinn on the weekends. I was fed up of packing a bag to visit Watson every weekend and unpacking it every time I got back. I was ready to move in with him.
Now, when I created this year's vision board, the largest picture I included is of a couple stood in front of a house, with their arms around each other. Next to it is a picture of a key in a door. These pictures symbolise me wanting, by the end of 2023, for Watson and I to be talking about what moving in together would look like. When I made the board, I thought that I would want a long time to talk about where we would live, whether or not we would rent together first or if I would move into his flat, but when he asked me if I would like to move in with him just two days after my epiphany, all the questions I had around where we would live dissolved and it suddenly seemed so obvious that of course I would move into his flat. I still thought that I would wait until the tenancy ended on my own flat in December and move in after Christmas but as the weeks passed, I found myself feeling an overwhelming sense of Why Wait?
So my move in date started as April 2024 and soon got moved up to February, then January. Then I began to wonder if I could get in before Christmas if I moved in December? But I didn't want Christmas to be affected by the move so how about November? What if I started sleeping at Watson's when I finished housesitting for the year at the end of September and then spend October moving my stuff in gradually? You can see where this is going and you won't be surprised to learn that as I write this mid-August, all of my stuff is currently filling Watson's flat and my own flat is sitting almost empty. We have hired a van for next weekend and whilst I am currently housesitting for a client, "home" is now most definitely at Watson's. Except, now it isn't "Watson's" anymore, it's "ours".
In hindsight, I shouldn't have moved from my tiny first flat into the second one. If I had stayed where I was, I still would have been spending every weekend at Watson's and we still would have reached this point but I wouldn't have gone through three very cold, damp months and I wouldn't have bought a fridge and a sofa which are now facing uncertain futures. However, I don't regret moving. Despite it looking like a big waste of money (and energy) on paper, I know that if I had stayed in my first flat, I never would have felt as though I had lived on my own properly. My first bachelorette was a starter flat and I loved it for what it was but if I had moved in with Watson from there, I would have felt as though it had been a stepping stone before moving in with him and I didn't want that. I wanted to fully experience living on my own. The bachelorette pad was too small to be considered a proper home. I couldn't entertain friends there or have my mum or sister come to stay, not that those things happen often, but it definitely didn't have the makings of a forever home. My second flat did; although I would never have stayed there forever, it was a proper grown-up home that I was proud of and I love the aesthetic that I achieved.
So that's where I'm currently at; finishing the end of one chapter of my life and about to embark on the next big adventure and boy, is it exciting. I haven't set myself any business goals this month so that I can fully focus on the move and be present with what's happening around me now and I'm so glad that I did that. To say that I'm excited to start living in my new home is an understatement. I can't wait to start finding homes for things and start the next phase of decorating too. When I thought that I could move in before Christmas and not impact December (because I want to spend my evenings in December watching Christmas films and eating all the food), I massively underestimated what a big job moving in would actually be. We have a lot of work ahead of us in terms of sorting through and decluttering some of Watson's stuff and then we will set about creating zones for the possessions and hobbies we love most. No doubt there will be a lot more on that later and I look forward to taking you along on the ride so that you can share in the vast amount of overthinking that is sure to go into Watson and I creating our first home together.
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