Caroline O'Donoghue: Four tips for moving into your new home
I moved house a few weeks ago. Along with, it seems, almost everyone of my generation. Every account I follow on social media is full to the brim with boxes, bewildered pets, and carefully framed photographs of the one corner of the room that the new owners have managed to look nice while carefully nudging the cardboard box marked ‘POTS’ out of shot.
It’s no surprise as to why this is happening. A big part of choosing your home is your proximity to the office, and with no office, there’s no need for proximity. People are moving further out. In our case, we’re on a suburban street that’s further from the centre of London.
In my friend Sarah’s case, she’s moved from Dublin city to halfway up one of the Wicklow mountains. We’ve been trading stressed-out messages all month. “WHY do I own over a hundred pairs of black knickers?” and “WHY can’t I just be a woman who owns one white shirt and one vintage armoire, instead of this grotesque child who has somehow kept every phone she has ever had?”
We decided to make life as difficult for ourselves as possible by renting an unfurnished flat, and because we are sadists, we waited until the height of the pandemic to do it. That meant decorating while all the shops were closed, waiting three weeks for a lampshade because the postal system is so clogged with orders, and watching every DVD me and my boyfriend have ever purchased while waiting for the internet to get hooked up.
As a result, I’m no Martha Stewart, but I do have a few tips on how to make new-house life a bit more livable.
Since the internet began, there has always been little designated areas for bargains. Like gold rush towns in the Klondike, people hear of gold and promise and authentic BIBA dresses for £50, and they flock to these platforms. Ebay, Craigslist, Gumtree. And then, like any gold rush, the only people who make any money are the ones selling shovels. Then there are too many shovels. Then the muggings start. The town either dies or it becomes a tourist trap to what the promise once was, the promise of something good for very little effort.
Reader: Facebook Marketplace is currently that goldrush town.
You will find insane things on there. A glass ouija board, an entire collection of Sylvanian families, a whole stash of hen party decorations that are bitterly described as ‘never used’. But you will find other marvels, too. Framed woodcuts for a fiver. A vintage sideboard from a snooty Danish brand for £100.
Best of all, Facebook Marketplace seems to be the place where people offload their plants when they can’t be bothered moving house with them. Brighten up your empty depressing home by bulk-buying someone else’s carefully raised plant collection for £30.
Candles do a lot of heavy lifting in winter anyway, but even more so when you have an empty house and not enough lamps and you desperately need some ambiance before you get SAD and end it all.
Here’s the thing about candles. Most of them are horrible. The good ones cost the same as a pet chinchilla, and every time you light them, all you can think is “that’s another fiver, gone”. For the first few months of settling in, you will need to have a candle on the go near constantly, and the only candle that is both a) cheap and b) pleasant is the Aldi ‘hotel collection’ range.
There was a lot of fanfare about them last year because they claimed to be a Jo Malone dupe. They are not as nice as Jo Malone. What they are is four quid. Keep them burning in every room and soon the house won’t smell like wet paint and unsettled dog.
My boyfriend and I have been discussing feminism and gender roles for almost a decade. These discussions, and the beliefs that attend to them, are currently on hold.
Our weekends are filled with him putting up shelves and me making dinners. I don’t let him in the kitchen and he doesn’t let me near the toolbox. It is simply better this way. Normal service will resume in 2021.
I remember shuddering in mortification the first time I was in a shop where someone asked “Can you do us a deal on that?” Legally, I don’t think you’re allowed to have children in Ireland unless you are willing to utter these words to a small business owner. Particularly if you have spent over three figures.
This was back in a time where the person behind the counter was often the person who owned the shop, so there wasn’t an easy ‘let me speak to the manager’ out. They just had to squirm and let you have four quid off.
These days, I’m so committed to the art of the deal that I might as well be Trump. I am haggling all over Ebay, Etsy and Facebook.
My shame has been whittled down to nothing. I haggled an art print down from £80 to £40, simply by typing ‘nah’ everytime he said his price was firm. I was even more satisfied when I went to pick up the print, and found that the seller lived in Notting Hill. Well good, I thought. You didn’t need that extra £40 anyway.
