Grey carpet, loud voices, and not coming from generational wealth
Why we still haven't moved.
Friends have been asking about our not-impending move ever since the asbestos exposure incident in our flat, followed by two farcical months without hot water. It’s embarrassing that we haven’t ditched our flat of six years yet, considering I’ve been gently threatening to move for four of them, but also, the question is relatively short, and the answer is long.
Why haven’t we moved yet?
TLDR: London is so expensive that I could puke, but my boyfriend works there, so we have to be there or nearby. Mostly though, I’m a walking nightmare with sensory issues, a meagre bank balance, plus unreasonably strong opinions on how things should look and feel. It’s all a bad combination.
If you’ve got a minute and you’re interested enough to hear the long, honest answer, keep going and I’ll share it…
I have a few personality cornerstones (sarcasm, complaining, panicking about safety, etc), but saying we’re moving and then not moving makes up the very fibre of my being. Some would say The Boy Who Cried Wolf walked so I could run.
I’m not even sure who I’d be if I weren’t spending 30 hours a week scouring the rental section of Rightmove. I’ll hazard a guess that I’d be better rested and happier, but whatever…
I’ve been thinking/talking/writing about moving for years, including here and here on Substack, and here and here for House & Garden. I crumble internally whenever I see someone I haven’t spoken to in a while. I know the question’s coming – they’re going to ask if we’ve found a new place yet.
Aside from the one Barbican flat that we loved (pics at the bottom of this post) but didn’t get because the landlord chose another couple (still gutted), we haven’t even come close to committing.
Every time I whinge about our Gen Z neighbour doing things like chatting and smoking weed out of his bedroom window at 3am, when our bedroom window (a few feet from his) is open, people always say the same thing: Move!
Believe me, I want to. I want to move way more than you want me to stop talking about moving. I currently spend most of my week trying to move, but we haven’t.
This is why:
I’ve mentioned it before, but I can’t overstate my obsession with noise, and if you don’t live with this niche affliction, you won’t be able to understand the hold it can have. Everyone gets annoyed by certain sounds, but this is way beyond that. It dictates where I go, where I can stay, and generally how I live my life.
I wish I could ignore the sounds from our neighbours or the street outside. I dream of waking up one day, feeling serene and unbothered by heavy footsteps, bass-y sound systems, booming voices through walls, cackling laughter as people walk home from the pub, parked cars playing music too loud, and the occasional sound of a cannonball (or similar weight) being dropped on the ceiling above us in the middle of the night.
Instead, I’m usually on the verge of tears/an anxiety attack when I can hear the music upstairs, or the droning voice of Dickwad McPrickface next door. I’ve thought of myriad ways to gently annoy him without doing anything illegal, but I’m too straightlaced and anxious to actually send an envelope full of glitter or ring his doorbell at 5am, as much as it scratches an itch to imagine it.
If I ever make light of my noise issue, it’s only because joking about things that bother me is my go-to coping mechanism, but I feel completely controlled by it. Six months of talking therapy didn’t help, CBT didn’t help, medication didn’t help. I haven’t tried hypnotherapy yet, but I want to. Not sure what else there is.
Noise in our previous flat was the trigger for a nervous breakdown in 2019, and I would never book an Airbnb or hotel based on location or good looks alone. If it’s a holiday home, I need it to be detached or designed/laid out in a way that guarantees I won’t hear anything. If it’s a hotel, I call or email in advance to request a quiet room on a top floor or at the end of a hallway, with as few neighbours as possible, nowhere near a lift, no connecting rooms, and definitely not near any potential rowdy guests or group bookings of friends.
We recently stayed in a beautiful hotel suite for one night. It was a press stay, and the room should have cost a fortune. I spent the entire night stalking the hallways like a madwoman, trying to investigate the origin of a thudding sound in our bedroom. I eventually roped the night porter in to help, and we found the cause (an issue with the service elevator), but by then it was bedtime. I’d hardly spent any time in our dreamy room because I’d been padding up and down in my slippers, with my ear at various doors and walls. We left the next morning, and I’d spoiled another experience that won’t come along again. I know I’m an annoying guest to have, but I annoy myself most of all.
At my lowest, I’ve fantasised about suffering some degree of hearing loss because I’m worried I’ll never be able to escape my obsession with sound, and I know it will always limit where I can bear to live.
Victorian conversions with their flimsy walls and wooden floors with no soundproofing are ruled out, as are new builds that aren’t structurally sound. We also can’t live near students, house shares or close to pubs/bars. Ideally, I’m looking for solid buildings such as school conversions or factory conversions, because they have thick brick walls and floors. Or buildings like the one we live in (the Barbican Estate), which is entirely made of concrete.
The latest layer of complication (kick-started by my neighbour) is my new fear of balconies, nearby roof terraces, and rows of gardens at the back of terraced houses, because of their potential for neighbours to hang out outside in good weather, smoking or making noise.
When estate agents ask, what are you looking for? I don’t even know where to start...
Initially, we were looking at moving to the countryside so I could find peace in a detached house, but we don’t want to be in a remote area. We like living in a city, and there are many, many things that we love about London. I’d miss it if I left. Also, I can’t drive, and I have the concentration span of a gnat, so I’m not sure I ever will.
Other towns or cities, maybe? We thought about various places that are commutable, including Brighton, Bath, Lewes, Rye, Bristol, and Frome. An internet friend and I recently chatted about us renting her house in Bath for a while to get a feel for life outside London, then we checked the commuting cost. It’s £120-ish a day for a return train ticket – sometimes more – so roughly £1000 a month for my boyfriend to get to his office twice a week. That makes the affordable terraced cottage in Bath more expensive than the rent for our central London flat, where he can walk to work.
Tickets vary massively depending on which area or station you’re going to (actual distance travelled seems to matter very little), so there are some options for sure, but not as many as I’d first imagined.
Which brings me to my next point. Money.
I’m from a working-class family (a rarity in the London design/journalism world), and my boyfriend was similarly born sans silver spoon, so hopping on the property ladder with a leg-up from family isn’t an option. Neither is living at home with either of our parents to save for a deposit. It’d be quite the commute from Yorkshire or Wales…
An estate agent I know well told me she rents my dream flat types to students and 22-year-old graduates whose wealthy parents are footing the bill. We’ll never have financial help (and I don’t care about that), but the search results within our budget don’t exactly whet my whistle. Especially after discounting the majority of them because of noise potential.
Who has £3,500+ a month for a one or two-bedroom, distinctly average flat in London? It’s out of control. Commutable towns and cities are barely better.
Noise and price aren’t the only problems. It’s shallow to care so much, but I hate almost everything I see in our budget. I’m picky AF and I can’t even pretend otherwise. It’s my cross to bear (and my boyfriend’s, because he chooses to live with me).
To quote Richie from The Bear: I blame my elegance.
I work in design by choice. I care how my home looks because, in turn, it will affect how I feel. I notice everything, I have a strong sense of personal style where interiors are concerned, and I have a lot of opinions.
Not just opinions about obvious things, like wall colour. I have thoughts on everything from window size to functionality of layout to tap shape, and I have A LOT of thoughts about flooring – specifically the epidemic of grey carpet that has ruined 90% of the flats and houses on the market.
I loathe grey carpet with a passion – especially the shiny silver sort that all developers seem to be obsessed with. My hit list also includes white UPVC window frames, high-shine marble floors fresh from a Dubai shopping mall, internal doors that feel like they belong in a corporate office, hideous kitchen extractor fans such as this, wardrobes like these, glass-fronted wine fridges (I don’t like wine and I don’t want a transparent fridge to showcase it), and high-gloss kitchens. The glossy kitchens I have beef with are usually grey too, with a cheap laminated worktop. Greyscale is an ongoing theme. Also, a flooring transition in an open-plan kitchen/living space, like this.
We’ve seen two flats recently where the kitchen work surfaces looked like marble in the photos, but they were a marble-effect plastic coating. Both times, my heart sank like the old lady’s necklace at the end of Titanic.
The last roadblock is Britain’s weird preference for rentals that are fully furnished. Is it so wild that I don’t want to live with the crap that someone bought in one quick, emotionally-void shopping spree?!
No personality, no individuality, just a block of 178 new flats, all with the same sofa, sideboard, table and chairs. Or a house full of someone’s old stuff that they didn’t want to get rid of, so they’re storing it in their buy-to-let instead. I prefer to furnish and style my home in a way that makes it feel my own, and if that’s wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
I saw an amazing warehouse flat a couple of weeks ago, but it was furnished to the hilt, including lamps, cushions, and artwork. The letting agent emphasised that there was no way the furniture could be removed, as the landlord had paid extra to buy the flat with everything included. It drives me nuts!
To demonstrate my point, I’ve just done a quick search of all flats and houses in Greater London listed on Rightmove in the last seven days. There are 8,915 homes at the time of writing, only 2,260 of those are unfurnished.
We have our own furniture already. We’re in our late 30s – we’ve had years to carefully collect rugs and kettles, paintings and chairs. Being surrounded by things that I bought because I love them and I enjoy using them is a non-negotiable pleasure in life, so I can instantly discount three-quarters of all listings.
So yeah, that’s why we haven’t moved.
That and flats being taken within hours of being listed, often for more than the asking price, because just trying to secure a place instigates a savage bidding war. In the past week, we’ve had multiple appointments cancelled because the person who saw it first already made an offer and had it accepted. People in the same boat as us (there are many) will know that you have to be actively checking for new listings all the time, and available to drop everything to get in there first.
If you ask me in person, though, you’ll get the succinct version of this. Instead of 2000 words (I could have written more), it’ll be something along the lines of, ‘we haven’t found the right place yet’. 😬
Are you a fellow renter? Feel free to go off in the comments!
Thanks for reading and have a lovely week. I’m writing this from Copenhagen, so I’m going to need to dash outside now and lay my hands on a cinnamon bun before we leave tomorrow. I still haven’t eaten one yet!
Back soon,
E x
You should move to Switzerland where noise is illegal between 10pm-6am and on holidays. You literally are not allowed to vacuum or sing or throw out the rubbish :)
Give me Dickwad McPrickface‘s address. *I* will send him an envelope full of glitter.