I walked the dog past the house we used to live in. The house we moved into, in a rush, when our previous place was sold – where we made a home as quickly as possible, during Melbourne’s COVID lockdown era, repurposing furniture and picture frames and baskets brimming with the kids’ toys. The house we lived in for 10 months before the owner sold it.
At the time, when my husband first found out the owner wanted to show someone around our rental home, the significance had landed with a thud between us. We had a hunch that our landlord wanted to sell. That we might have to look for somewhere else to live soon.
I’ve always poured a lot of myself into the space I live in. To me, it makes sense to start and end each day in a home that isn’t just comfortable, but feels undeniably your own
The day of the landlord’s visit coincided with the schools reopening. As my daughter got ready for school, I felt excited for her. I hit every room like a tornado, making beds, plumping cushions, gathering dirty clothes. I cleaned the kitchen quickly, grabbed both kids and our over-friendly dog, and left.
When we didn’t hear anything for weeks, we kept our worries quiet. Until the call came to say that the house had been sold directly from that private viewing. I felt winded.
Maybe I should have left toy cars on the floor and hung dirty underwear on the door handles and piled the sink with debris, I thought. Anything to stop potential buyers from falling in love with our home. Either way, I felt uprooted. Instead of getting to enjoy the space that I had worked so hard to turn into a home, now we had to find a new one. And we only had two months to look.
The news hit me harder than I expected. It was only much later that I realised what I felt was akin to grief. From the moment we moved into our short-lived rental, I’d tried to make it our own: watching where the afternoon light fell through a window and placing a vintage bowl to catch it on a sideboard, deciding where our jungle-print sofa would go (in front of a floor-length window so our toddler wouldn’t run into the glass) and scouring for the kind of secondhand tables and shelves that would give the feeling we’d been there for years.
The news hit me harder than I expected. It was only much later that I realised what I felt was akin to grief
I’d even organised our books to fit the mood of each room: cooking books in the kitchen, children’s literature in their room and near the sofa, on their own shelf, around which thrillers and memoirs and art books were arranged carefully. I’d envisioned the kids playing, and my husband and I picking up a book, turning on the kettle and winding down in our cosy universe.
Looking back, I wanted each room to tell the same story: we are here, and we’re here to stay.
I’ve always poured a lot of myself into the space I live in. To me, it makes sense to start and end each day in a home that isn’t just comfortable, but feels undeniably your own. But this also means the thought of starting again can cause palpitations.
The author at home. Source: Supplied
I’d envisioned the kids playing, and my husband and I picking up a book, turning on the kettle and winding down in our cosy universe
After the news, we started searching anxiously for our next home. At night my husband and I would panic, worrying that our time and options might run out.
But what kept me up wasn’t just the unexpected move. It was, increasingly, the niggling suspicion that I wasn’t good enough at being an adult. I had moved from marketing work to freelance writing when our son was a baby, and I wanted this career to work. Having to move homes against my wishes triggered my fear of an unstable future. Without realising, I’d been burnt out by two years of uncertainty: housing, parenthood, my professional life. It took patience, and many tough conversations with my partner to quell those fears.
In time, we found a new rental that worked for us, with a landlord accepting of pets, and neighbours who are tolerant of active small humans.
For my children, all is settled and stable because we are each other’s home
There are many things to like about our new home. But the best feature, perhaps, is our two-year tenancy. With a longer lease now there is more certainty, and I noticed that I am slowly regaining confidence to make our new space our own. We kept our blue dining table that’s lived in all three of our homes in Australia. I hunted down pre-loved bar stools, so now my school-aged son could eat his cereal at the kitchen island, which he calls “the bar”. For my children, all is settled and stable – not so much owing to my clever choice of furniture – but because we are each other’s home.
I know that the space I call mine does not belong to me. One day I would like that. But for now I will not regret building an emotional connection to the place I wake up in every day.
