Not entirely my decision - my landlord decided to sell up, which will probably take several more months but I couldn't be arsed to hang around waiting to be turfed out.

Plus I managed to find somewhere nice quite quickly.  As lovely as my old flat was my housing needs have changed a lot in the last 3 years.  The new place has a garage (no more kayak in the living room!), gas central heating (mm, warmth), and walls that aren't paper thin (so hopefully no more being woken up by out of tune singing from neighbours).  Oh, and windows that actually open and go outside. Yay fresh air!

Moving also means de-cluttering and throwing stuff out.  The charity shops of Gloucester either love or hate me at the moment...

Unexpected finds in kitchen cupboards:

• a lot more cake tins/etc than I thought I owned.. oops!
• one disposable BBQ
• carrier bags
• a hand blender I thought my ex-boyfriend had had (obviously not)
• more carrier bags
• a spare kettle
• teeny tiny pieces of shredded carrier bag (is this how they start to decompose?)

Bathroom:

• old contact lens pots... do I really need 6 or 7 spares?  no.
• collection of miniature bottles of shampoo/body lotion acquired from various posh hotels
• several Lush bath bombs... bought at least 4 years ago
• half a block of henna (no current plans to go ginger again)

Living Room:

• loads of jiffy bags, saved "just in case" I need one.  apparently not.
• giant dust bunnies

Moving all my stuff 'only' took 3 van loads and 6 car loads... turns out it's not so bad when you only move a mile up the road!  Been in the new flat for a week now, and I'm mostly unpacked and settled - though there are large amounts of floor space still hidden under boxes.

Traffic in the mornings seems to be a bit more unpredictable - yesterday it took me 7 minutes total to get into work, but at the same time on Thursday it took me that long to get 500 metres down the road to the roundabout.  But as I seem to be waking up a lot earlier by the sunlight through the curtains, that's less of an issue anyway

tags: flat