[Moving House Torrent
Edelira Longinotti
In the UK I think people only ever move house, unless they're talking about more than one household moving at the same time. But in the vernacular, house builders and estate agents (US realtors) might well talk of "moving houses" to mean "selling houses".
If I intend to relocate my belongings to a new residence (be it a standalone home, apartment, dorm room, or work cubicle), then I would say I plan to "move house", or simply "move". If I'm moving a large distance, I might say I'm "moving away".
Alternatively, if I am in the business of physically picking up and hauling around buildings, I might say I plan to "move the house". (I would probably tend to preface this statement with an explanatory remark, like "I'm a housemover".)
If someone told me "I'm planning to move houses next month", I would probably have a moment of cognitive dissonance thinking that they were in the housemoving business before deciding that they really just meant they were moving their belongings into a new house.
As an older American who has lived in the Mid-West, South and California, I have never heard or read this in American material. I first came across "move house" in British ESL/EFL material, where it is already introduced in pre-intermediate material, e.g., Fun for Flyers from Cambridge Books.
Looking at the Goolge ngram viewer, I found that "move house" and "moving house" are in fact present in American-English books, but at about 1/6 the frequency found in the British material. Interestingly, besides the surge of the phrases in the later 20th century, there was a lesser surge in the 1820s, in which the US and British frequencies were about the same but with the British activity starting later and carrying on longer.
In our experience, people refer to a change of residence as "The move houses." However, the traditional way people express about service sometimes says "I plan to move house next month" and with this is implicit that is speaking from one direction to another.
After having lived in the same house for 17 years, I had a dream that wouldn't let me rest. I wanted to renovate an old home and turn it into the house I wanted. My husband bought into my vision and for over ten years we looked for a house that we could transform.
In January 2019, we finally found it - an old, weatherboard Californian bungalow that was about to be demolished. It didn't have many features - except for some diamond lead light windows, floorboards and a chimney. It had an outdoor toilet and a tiny, dirty kitchen that was barely functional. Even the electricity had even been removed. Fortunately, it had land, was located close to our children's school and it was in a suburb I never thought I could afford to live in again (thanks to Melbourne's booming property market).
There is something about living in a house for a long time - you accrue a lot of things. Given that both my husband are self-employed, we also have a lot of equipment for work. And dare I say, my husband is most probably a hoarder. We had quite a big garage, but the amount of stuff he stored in there was phenomenal (that even excluded all the equipment he stored at another location).
Planning the move took a lot of time and lots of tiny decisions. We planned on moving out the big things, the things we could see. Anything we didn't need for a couple of years we packed up and sent to our new shipping container that we stored in regional Victoria. I spent countless nights boxing things. By the time we had our first open for inspection, it looked like we lived this magical, idealised life of a tidy house and lots of floor space (see courtyard photo above).
When we finally moved (and had five months) to prepare, we thought it would be easy. After all, we had most of our things in storage and we had also sold or donated a lot of things. I booked a big truck for a day.
By 2pm on moving day, it became painfully obvious things weren't going well. There were still so many boxes to get into the truck. By the time we arrived at our new house, it was dusk. Under torch light, the movers literally shoved all the furniture into our small house (so we couldn't use any rooms).
The next day was even worse. It was settlement day. I started cleaning and packing up the bits and pieces strewn around the home at 6am. By 11.30am, we were getting frantic calls from our real estate agent about when we would hand in the keys. At 12pm, our real estate agent helped us out by booking another removals van.
We got out of there by 3pm with the purchaser's conveyancer threatening to not settle. It wasn't until we were driving to our new house (a solid 45 minute drive) that we got a call that the sale had gone through. It seemed like a tiny cause for celebration, except we knew that we were about to endure living in our caravan parked on the front lawn, in the middle of winter (it ended up being three weeks).
In the end, it wasn't the big pieces of furniture that made our move so traumatic. It was all the bits of stuff we had accrued that I didn't know existed, as well as all the little things I didn't know what to do with. Random cables, pieces of plastic from unknown items, toys, storage containers, pet toys and countless empty Yumi's hummus tubs and ginormous pickle jars. Items I should have thrown out, but was limited by lack of bin space and a fear of disappointing others. Not only that, leaving our comfortable house to something very uncomfortable was also highly triggering.
Our second move was 15 months later. During another Melbourne lockdown, our neighbours fled to New Zealand, pleading with us to move into their two-storey five bedroom house. "It will be great for you - you can start renovating," they said. And they were right - it was wonderful and the push we needed (we had become oddly comfortable with our small, lopsided house).
The move was easy. We just walked over what we needed, when we needed it (crossing the road and feeling illegal because we weren't allowed to visit neighbour's houses during lockdown). What was tricky was living with other people's stuff and not having a place for our own things. It was quite unsettling and weird.
We also didn't know when they would be back. The uncertainty meant I lost a lot of weight and barely slept (but hey, I got to write a book on sleepless nights). In the end, we lived in our neighbour's big house for seven months and had one month to find a place to live. We had started building an extension and our house was now more unliveable than when we bought it.
Our third move was to a small unit located close by. It was chosen under the mistaken belief we only needed it for less than six months. Again, it was a difficult move. Something about deadlines just don't work well for my family. Nor does moving from a big house to a tiny place. We still thought we didn't have much stuff to deal with, but we were suddenly left with a lot of furniture to store and lots of things we used regularly. The lack of house space meant I had to pack up things again and live minimally.
Fast forward to our fourth move (and the last for decades!), I mistakenly thought moving would be easy. Again, I was wrong. While it wasn't as traumatic as the first or third move (as we had progressively been moving items over for weeks), the last day was more work than I realised. Even with a cleaner helping me out, removalists and my husband, I underestimated the amount of little bits of crap hiding under furniture, stored in the carport and in my teenager's wardrobe (on the plus side, I did find a lot of dusty socks and hairbands that had been missing for months).
Yet, what I severely underestimated was that it just wasn't our physical stuff that took a long time to sort, it was also the emotional baggage that lay trapped underneath. From exposing a hidden conflict with my husband - his deep need to be surrounded by a lot of stuff and my need to have very little, as well as the more vocal emotions of our kids (who were still traumatised by leaving their childhood home).
The annual house moves took a toll on both our children (as well as lockdowns, changing schools and their respective neuro-diversity challenges). They had change fatigue and refused to believe we were finally moving back home to a settled and easier life. The vision of a beautiful, clean and big house that was all ours had long lost its shine (or as my 18 year old proclaimed, "You have been promising this house to me since I was eight and now I'm planning when I can leave home."
For leaders, the change can be exciting because they have wanted to launch a new project for a long period of time. Yet, what we forget is that other people have hidden emotions associated with change. They get the vision, but they're not quite ready for a change that is long and hard. Sometimes, we even let employees know it will be difficult - that there will be issues and it will probably take longer than we expect. For some employees, it is never good enough. Like demanding, coddled teenagers, they expect everything to work out easily and smoothly (with very little effort on their part).
Telling employees too early of a new change is probably not as motivational as we think. If some of your people are also neuro-diverse (or suffer from Pathological Demand Avoidance, like my children, change might be doubly frightening).
We all get into a comfortable groove where our daily routines become settled and feel safe. Employees (children and pets) know what to expect from us and their day. We fall into a comfort zone (or what I label the Abatement Zone, the zone where we are declining in performance, but don't realise it).
Leading with the vision is important and so is working out all of the big goals that need to happen. This takes time and planning. It also needs other people's contribution to find out all of the other little things that need to be dealt with. This takes patience and the willingness to provide the space for people to share all of the small, unseen things that are hiding in their heads that stop them from committing their full selves to the the change.
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