Brunswick Road 03 – Flitting

Penrith, Cumbria. July-2021

I have added a new word to my Scottish vocabulary “flitting“. It has cropped up twice in different contexts in the last couple of weeks. It means "moving house". Although in our case, flitting has been more like a cross between Tetris and Tower of Hanoi.

Tetris:

Tower of Hanoi:

We have done multiple, partial moves. Given that moving house is supposed to be one of life‘s more stressful events we seem to be holding up pretty well.

Move 1: Leaving Heathfield Square. We sold our main home in April 2021. We were not moving into a new property but still had to clear everything out. Its contents went in multiple directions:

• Part A - Some stuff went to our London garage.
• Part B - Other belongings went to Bolting House, one of our buy-to-let properties, which was untenanted and up for sale. We used it as a temporary storage for some of our excess furniture and also allowing for the possibility of reletting it. 
• Part C - Some stuff came up to Penrith and into our Benson Row home which as a result was bulging with furniture. 
• Part D - Some then got transferred into a garage and a lock-up we have rented as temporary storage. 

In June we bought Brunswick Road and continued the multipart moves:

Move 2: Leaving Benson Row. Benson Row will be tenanted from mid-August and so we have had to clear out most of our stuff which we did in stages using a local removal company and our trusty car. With the two houses only 6 minutes walk apart some was also done on foot with a sack trolley. 

• Part A - moving our bed, mattress, bedroom furniture from Heathfield Square and assorted belongings across to Brunswick Road. We left some furniture behind as we had a house full of guests due to visit. 
• Part B - multiple car trips between the two properties with a boot full of boxes, clothes, et cetera. 
• Part C - once our guests had left we completed the big furniture move of the sofas and as much else as needed man, van and muscle to move.

Move 3: Leaving Bolting House and Garage. We have found a buyer for Bolting House and fortunately they want to take a fair selection of the furniture but we still have to clear out the remainder. We used a man and van to transport both that and as much of our belongings from the garage as would fit in the van.

• Part A - from Bolting House double bed, mattress, wardrobe and a load of kitchen stuff most of which had come from Heathfield Square.
• Part B - from the garage as much as filled up the van including a Chiminea, shelving, a sundial, boxes of books, Christmas tree and decorations, two bicycles, a partridge and a pear tree...

Now the organising, sorting and rearranging begins - Tetris on steroids.