Unexpected consequences of moving home...

sandelf you seem to have hit a vein about how dramatic a move can be and usually, in the long term if not the short term, for the better.

Your OP certainly has good news that situations can be changed. I um and ah about moving and don't feel I can at them moment because of ties to family members who depend on me but you have certainly shown it can be a life enhancing act.

There may be other feelings like insecurity causing that Unsure. Being a Nan is rather like walking on eggs - you're bound to leave a lot of cracked ones behind you.

And Harris you are right. Geordie is another language.

I thought becoming a nanna would be great. Far from it. My DL seems to resent me being around.

GRANNY ACTIVIST. .... I love your post.....made me smile !

We upsized and moved to a different town and a lovely detached house 15 years ago for our old age.....so no noisy neighbours to get on our nerves.

I thought I'd moved to Camelot at first....people actually said sorry if they bumped into you with their trolly in supermarkets and drivers were polite and let one in from exits.
I still feel like that now.

SO different from where we came from !! We're 5 minutes from lovely countryside even though we're on a modern estate.

If you feel like moving house and find your dream home then just go for it....Life's too short not to follow your instinct.

PS....Isn't the BBC1 animated advert of father and daughter just so delightful ?
It's the only advert we watch throughout....
Well Done BBC

We left our home of 30 years a few months ago to move closer to our DS and our two GC. My hubby retired and I am taking a year off to get my bearings in the new area. We are in a small community in the country, where we were city dwellers before. I have had to get used to shopping differently as the stores are now a half hour away, except a few expensive local ones, which cost a lot if you shop there regularly. It is wonderful to see my GC every day as we agreed to do daycare before and after school every day, getting them on and off the bus and feeding them endless snacks. We are getting to know the neighbours who have been very friendly. It has been very positive but also stressful to leave behind everything you have known for so long. It is impossible to get a doctor here without waiting two to five years, which is very distressing so for now we will drive more than 2 hours to see ours. Hopefully that will change. We are in Canada and the distances here don’t seem as far as they would there I don’t imagine!

I've moved twice in the last 8 years. First move from my much-loved home of 30 years into my new husband's old marital home, then we bought "our" house where we have been so happy that sometimes I get scared it won't last (it almost didn't as 4 years ago DH had major open-heart surgery to replace/repair 3 valves that gave up at the same time). We haven't moved very far in miles, but it's light years from the unhappy marriages we both had before!

We moved finally, 6 weeks ago. There was some resistance from one of our daughters and some doom and gloom from people saying we’d regret moving further away from the children ( about 100 miles) .

Couldn’t be further from the truth. We’ve seen them for less visits but for far longer ( no 20 min drop ins)! We’re loving our new little house , lots of decluttering ongoing.

The village is exactly what we hoped .

All I can see is a wonderful retirement stretching out before us .

In our three bedroomed house we had three children at home so the young homeless nurse who came to stay took over the sitting room and we turned our dining room into our living room. In our next, four bedroomed, house we had three children and an au-pair in the bedrooms, so when a young Zimbabwean turned up needing a home we turned the study into bedroom for him. When we moved into this big old house twenty years ago we finally had enough bedrooms to house the hundreds of people who have come to live with us over the years. During the Christmas period we will have our baby grandson and his parents staying, an ex-lodger, an asylum seeker, a new lodger - and best of all The Wonderful Man has his room and I have my own! (Visits between rooms are permitted - it is Christmas after all. )

We sold our large house two years ago and downsized to a smaller one in another area nearer my daughter. We did this to enable my husband to take early retirement from a stressful job. He now has a part time driving job which he loves and is much happier,no moans and groans anymore. I have met a nice bunch of women and I'm going to aerobics,dance and Zumba classes which I would never have down where we lived before. So a really good move ,plus next week I start to look after my little granddaughter a few days a week. What could be better?

SarahC I wish you happiness x

DH & I recently left a three bedroom semi with biggish garden & are currently living in a (nice but compact!) static caravan whilst our new residential park home is built and "sited" in a nearby area. Had mega clear-outs and I expect more when we unpack our goods and chattels, which are currently in storage. What is amazing is just how little we've brought with us; I've just jeans, trousers, tops, underwear & nighties. (Not many of anything except undies.) Same with kitchen items and general living. It's very liberating to see what we really need. (But we did bring our "smart" TV!)

"pit yacker" same here, I miss hearing the accent so much. I used to ring the pension office at Longbenton just to hear it spoken.
We're not moving up there at first, but hope to eventually.

Yes, Harris 27. I am so proud to be one. Whenever I touch down in the north-east, I just love to be part of it. I am more of a pit yacker myself but hey, that's just as good and I love it when someone tells me I'm a Geordie.

We downsized 12 years ago to a smaller house and a much smaller garden in a market town to give us time to build new friends and life before we got too set in our ways.

The expected consequences were that we can now toddle the short distance to the shops, doctors and everything else we need. We have new friends and a new and much more social life. All we'd hoped for.

Unexpected was finding out quite how much time and money we spent in running the old house and how much more time we now have to travel and enjoy ourselves.

More unexpected was last year our DS moving back with his family to live 100 yards from our old home. I'm still unsure if it's a good thing or a bad that we're not still living there.

yes, a positive move three years ago to the Algarve with Grump as he is affectionally known, husband of six years.
We lived in Norfolk, so we were nearer to Grandchildren but saw even less of them when we lived in France so we took the gigantic decision to move to Portugal, regrets none, we see just as much of our grandchildren as we did living in the UK and I have made lots of friends of all nationalities and enjoy life to the full, even though we have had some life-changing illnesses and even Grump loves it. O joy, shall we ever mover back, NO!

nanaloca. Exactly the same thing happened to me. It is very hard to take. It was exactly 10 years ago at Christmas. You are lucky to have your lovely husband. Care for him with the love you do. Happy Christmas to you all.

Life can certainly change in a heart beat! A year ago this week I was cooking dinner when my husband screamed out with a pain in his chest, it was the start of the nightmare to come, his aortic stent had started to leak and he had to have life saving surgery at the Royal Brompton Hospital, three months later on returning home he had a stroke and my once active involved partner is now reliant on me for everything. We had been due to go on a world cruise on the Queen Mary to Sydney, it was to be our final big holiday before settling down to slippers by the fire, but it was not to be. Sometimes it is hard to be cheerful as I see stretching before me a life I did not expect to have when I retired, we had made so many plans, get to know England better, take up hobbies etc, but it was not to be. When I feel like having a pity party I remind myself what it must be like for my husband, so I out on a smile and go into his room with a cup of tea and talk about when he gets better what we will do. I would love to hear from other gransnetters in the same boat.

Nothing wrong with Geordie we are blessed with our own language ha ha !!!

My life went the opposite way, hitting so low that I couldn’t work out why I was getting out of bed. I went from being a gregarious, professional woman in the UK, who was noted for never standing still for a single moment, to what is there to get up for in the outback of Spain and a ‘does it matter what I wear’ attitude, as I’m not going to see any other humans.
Arriving in Spain in February 2006, the first six months were so strange, as I didn’t need a diary. A year later, by default, I ended up teaching English over the phone to Spanish bankers in Madrid. I think that that work of twenty eight hours a week blinded me to the fact that there was nothing for me in North-West Spain, as I was speaking English those twenty hours every week and so was, in effect, still in England.
I finished the job in 2011 as, due to having a problem with my eyes, I decided I needed to get out and live, rather than sitting there at my desk.
And it was then it hit me.
There was nowhere to go, nobody to visit and no-one to talk to. We had to get in a car to find another English person and, though I spoke very good Spanish, our neighbours spoke what I refer to as Geordie Spanish – the rest of Spain don’t understand them. So we bought a house back in the north-east of England (where they speak proper Geordie, might I add) and we are currently between two houses.
I am back to being me and it is so wonderful to see that I didn’t lose the person I was, as I used to like me and seemed to have lost that feeling in the Spanish outback.

Thank you!

Good luck for tomorrow saraC.

Wow - so lovely to hear other people's experiences. But to Anniebach a GN hug. It has not been all S&L for us - spent a big part of our first year on op's and chemo, and learnt more than anyone wants to about our new area's hospitals and clinics. Re the 'shadowing' don't know how I slipped into it - the examples of older female relatives, and the mores of the times I guess - anyway no need to now, grown a backbone!

It is always good to read positive news.
“Nothing comes from nothing” (Sound of Music)
So good luck to all whose lives are taking an upward step
I’d rather not comment on how my life has changed completely

Well now ... left very damaged (and damaging ...) man last year having (just about ..) survived a marriage of 38 years; moved from the UK to Australia (on my own) four months ago - living closer to daughter and two little GC’s (son now only a 4.5 hour flight away). Working at building new friendships, joining interest groups, looking for work (job interview tomorrow ?) cope with the climate (it’s VERY hot!) and trying to settle into a workable/mutually respectful family relationship (which, with H’s influence, has got pretty damaged along the way ....) All pretty hard work/tiring, but I’m in a lovely little rental house, nice neighbours and there are definitely, on balance, more good days than bad now! Have no idea what the future will hold, I’m just grateful I’ve almost got through 2017 with, hopefully, a more settled year ahead!