MrG has had to work away for the past couple of weeks. He has returned home at the weekends though and we seem to have developed a possibly slightly unhealthy obsession with watching A Place In The Sun (Scarlette is by far my favourite, in case you were wondering). It got me to thinking about what happens next and whether we would ever consider buying another property abroad to use as a holiday home once the children have all flown the nest – especially now that I have health concerns.
Aside from how sad it makes me feel to think of them all leaving home – not least because I would then a) have to do their chores myself, but also b) there would be only MrG and I left. We might actually have to spend some time together. Jesus. Maybe 10 years wasn’t long enough to really consider the implications of this whole marriage thing.. There is also the issue of what we would do with a 4bed house and only the 2 of us in it?
Don’t get me wrong, it would be good to keep a bedroom free for guests and MrG has already nabbed the fourth room for his home office. So, we would easily use the space. But by then we will hopefully have paid off the lions share of our mortgage and it would be nice to change it up a little. A quaint little Spanish villa that we could jet off to for the winter would be lovely!
Shifting my focus
Or perhaps we ought to be thinking less about what we will do and more about how Bess will manage. After all, university isn’t cheap and accommodation costs could be huge.
According to a recent article from Age Uk Mobility about how Uk homeowners have changed their home during lockdown, lots of people have made some really positive adaptations to their property lately. Maybe now is a good time to be looking for a little place to let to her and a maybe a couple of housemates?
At least that would be an investment of sorts and would kill 2 birds with 1 stone by giving her a helping hand at the same time.
Even though she is only 15, Bess is already researching the universities she would like to apply to. It would make total sense to buy somewhere to do up ourselves over the course of the next few years but I’m not totally convinced that we could manage that on top of both of us working full time too.
Love where you live
At the moment we love it here. We have lived in this house for 12 years and in that time we have added a kitchen/diner extension and a shower room downstairs which has created a space for me to be able to use to work from home as well as a bedroom upstairs and remodelling the old separate WC and tiny bathroom to create a decent sized family bathroom and an airing cupboard. You never realise how useful an airing cupboard is until you move into a house without one!
So we have done a fair bit of work and I am just not sure we could actually find a house which could offer the same space outdoors as we have at the moment. The garden is narrowish but it’s pretty long and the front of the house has parking for 6 cars – if they aren’t huge and you have a skill for Tetris.
We have been really lucky in terms of the street we are on. It’s very quiet and our neighbours are, with one exception, lovely!
Everywhere I have looked at online seems to be full of compromises which frankly I don’t really want to make again.
The pull of that glass of red on a beautiful balcony overlooking a Spanish sunset is rather strong though..
