YOUTH MATTERS Kelly Wickham...The stresses and strains of having to move house

My family and I moved into a lovely house in Aldwick around 12 years ago, complete with my granny who would be living in the adjoining annexe.

The arrangement suited everyone, my granny had company and people to look in on her, and we had our own free bakery with fresh cakes and crumbles every week.

My granny began to go on OAP holidays and after a while, found love at the grand age of 86. Soon after she moved out, the house went up for sale and the comedy value of telling people why we were moving proved to be priceless.

However, it hasn’t been a laughing matter. The preparation of moving and making ourselves disappear for viewings turned out to be an inconvenience.

Unfortunately, we had already seen a few houses in between, but had failed to make our bids, as we had no buyer ourselves, and therefore sadly saw some beautiful buildings sold without us being able to do a thing about it.

Therefore it was a mad rush to try to find a new place to live, but without making any sacrifices on our requirements.

Making our offer seemed to be the easy part of moving, albeit slightly nerve-racking, but as the apprehension deteriorated the excitement set in of the new chalet-style house we would be moving to.

Since that date, it’s all been exchanging contracts, signing papers, packing up possessions and even more cleaning.

I’ve recently been accustomed to sharing my bedroom with cardboard boxes in a variety of sizes and neatly sealed with brown sticky tape.

The problem is, I keep realising I need something, and suddenly the brown tape is torn off in a frenzy, items pulled out and re-packing to be done.