Five things I’ll do differently when I move house again
5x5 I’d lived in the same house for 16 years until this summer. Think about that: in 2000, you didn’t need to know about broadband or TV options, mobile coverage wasn’t much of an issue, and at 27 I’d hardly begun accumulating more crap than would fit in a single room.
When I decided to downsize and turn my old three-bed home into a rental property, I needed a one-bedroom flat nearby so I could keep an eye on the renovations. Once I fired the starting gun, I had to move in a hurry so there wasn’t a lot of time for flat-hunting and careful research (I barely had time to put together a spreadsheet).
1 Stop hoarding now I’ll just hang on to that, it’s kind of cool, you never know when it could be useful, someone might want it…WHY DO I HAVE BOXES OF SHIT I DON’T NEED? Hoarding is not crazy people crawling through tunnels of newspaper, it’s owning four sets of mini-binoculars, five travel mugs, and enough glasses to stock a small bar (they may have come from a small bar, but that’s not the point). It’s much easier to de-clutter someone else’s home, as I found out at Chris’s house last week (half a dozen Swiss Army knives?), so be ruthless with the six month rule: if you haven’t used it for six months or it doesn’t have a recognisable role in your life, chuck it out. You will thank yourself.
2 Check for a BT line You may want to go with Virgin Media, but a BT line gives you broadband options. Estate and letting agents generally don’t have a clue about technology (I was sent a tenancy agreement as a set of haphazardly-scanned JPEGs, a PDF was not available), so you might have to make enquiries via BT or another BT-based provider. If you leave it until you’ve moved, you could be stuck waiting weeks for a reconnection date. It’s also incredible how many places don’t have a TV aerial, especially if they’ve been sub-divided. Ask early or suffer later.
3 Make sure your address exists My banks, car insurer and the DVLA were just about the only things I had to inform of a change to my address when I last moved. This time it seemed like there was a never-ending list of organisations who needed to know where I’d gone, and on the plus side you can do almost all of it online. Almost. Whoever’s in charge of the databases of UK postal addresses aren’t updating them very often, and some service providers use them so rigidly that you can’t edit the details which your postcode delivers. Which is a problem when your address isn’t in there.
So start with your post redirection, and if you can’t do it online you can be confident of exciting times explaining your new address on the phone to numerous customer service departments. Either find somewhere else to move into, or head to the Post Office with several forms of ID for yourself, your new and old addresses, and a utility bill for your parents, grandparents and maternal grandmother’s addresses just to be on the safe side. Eventually your new address will be acknowledged.
4 Check car insurance costs We all know some places are more criminally-risky than others and there are online lists of the best and worst postcodes for car crime. These are bullshit. SE15 was already one of the worst areas, but moving half a mile away in the same postcode and parking on the street instead of an estate car park has almost doubled my premium. On the other hand, I have seen how people rat-run around the corner; I can guess why there’s a high risk. So get a quote, just in case your move costs more than you expected.
5 Summer hides a smoky neighbour It’s a sunny day in July. The windows are open and the breeze is blowing, there might even be a patio. Your new neighbour could be chuffing away like Ivor The Engine and you wouldn’t know. When the weather turns, all of a sudden those shared areas can take on a smoky hue. I don’t mind the occasional fag or spliff, but it’s a heavy fug that can take days to clear if they’re a chainsmoker or bulk-ordering king size Rizlas. And converted flats often have ventilation that’s still connected or sealed very badly, so you get to share your neighbour’s habit, like it or not.
