Katherine Ormerod on the highs and lows of creating a non-permanent family home

As I approach middle age (terrifyingly, the exact mid-point of my life expectancy, according to Google), it’s impossible not to take a little step back to evaluate how things have gone. In so many ways, I am the woman I always hoped I would be and I’m living much of the life I’d dreamt of. I have two gorgeous, healthy sons, I have a partner I love and respect and professionally I’m reaping the rewards of the hard graft of my 20s and 30s. However, there is one area though that hasn’t panned out quite as I’d hoped or expected, and that has been the roof – or more accurately the many rooves – over my head.

To date, I have lived in 16 abodes. When you consider that I lived at one address age 5-18, that’s 15 moves in 26 years. On average that’s packing cardboard boxes every 20 months. Now, that’s all fine and dandy when you’re a young whippersnapper with nothing but a LACK table and two Oliver Bonas cushions to your name. But still renting when you’ve got kids in school, kids who have a fricking bunk bed no less, it’s a very different story.

I won’t pull any punches; I’m not thrilled at the situation. Over a fifth of Britons live in private rentals and the number of parents in their 30s and 40s who are still unable to own a family home is sky rocketing. It didn’t help that I purchased (through blood, sweat and tears, following a major industry change and leaving the job I loved simply to earn enough to do so) a shoebox, second-floor gardenless flat the week before Brexit. Unable to sell it three years later, in the midst of the pandemic with a 2-year-old quite literally climbing the walls and 6 months pregnant again, we made the decision to get a tenant and dip back into the mad, bad world of renting.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with the idea of renting conceptually – my dad rented for 28 years in Munich, the city I was born in, and like anyone in continental Europe there were none of the hang-ups we Brits seems to have about ‘paying someone else’s mortgage’. No, my issue is how renters are treated in this country and the scandalous lack of protection we’re afforded. Off the back of that legislative vacuum, the rampant profiteering amongst landlords and estate agents creates a truly toxic situation for all of us who just cannot get that deposit together.

But, no matter how precarious it’s been, I have decorated every single flat and house I’ve lived in. There was the defunct fireplace I hand-painted in a Broughton Street in Edinburgh, the huge French posters I pinned to every wall in a bijoux maisonette above a bank, the perfectly proportioned shoe shelves I added to a Queen’s Park 2-bed I lived in with my boyfriend and brother… Wherever I lay my spirit level – that’s my home. Why bother people often ask? My biggest answer to this question is with another – why should I live with rental optic white walls and bare bulbs just because of my financial reality? Our homes are our sanctuaries, and they’re also the base from which we foster our mental health. If we feel disconnected and depressed by our surroundings at home, guess what? We feel depressed and disconnected too. I don’t want that for myself and I definitely don’t want that for my kids.

I spent three months decorating the family home we moved in to in West London and it is gorgeous. Obviously, I didn’t give myself carte blanche from a budget point of view and I did everything myself – from upholstery to cabinetry – learning countless skills in the process. For the past two years, it has been that refuge as well as a true space for self-expression. I regret nothing. However, the rent has now been hiked by 58%, so we are forced back into what is now an even more intense scrum. I’ve had to put myself in a strict Rightmove regimen - only two visits a day - to prevent myself from compulsive refreshing in my desperate quest for new listings.  So far, I’ve put twelve offers—at asking—on rental properties, with move in dates within a fortnight. I’ve been outbid every time by other tenants who have offered more for longer time periods. Our flat is back on the market and we’re hoping to high heaven that it will finally sell to give us the chance to start the accounting acrobatics required for two self-employed people to get a new mortgage. No one knows how long it will take (we first put it on the market in 2019, so the piece of string is already very long), but understandably we don’t want to commit to three years of crippling rent in the meantime. The result of which is that we find ourselves the equivalent of chopped liver when it comes to prospective tenants.   Advice from friends has included to ‘white lie’ and pledge two years with a 12-month break clause, to bribe agents, to go in with offers £500 over the listed price. Considering we’re already getting about 30% less space for 30% more money, it’s really hard to not feel like it’s another step backwards. When you add this last chapter to our housing journey, it just feels like a story of a constant boot to the face. Think you’re getting somewhere? Starting to feel properly settled? Finally managed to save enough to take that next step? Think again friends! 

What I do know is that when we do finally land, wherever and however many times that might be, I will make it beautiful and full of memories. I will put my time and energy into creating special spaces while the kids sleep and know that every stitch and staple is imbued with love for both them and myself. You need superhuman reserves (or at least a positivity trait which borders on the psychotic) to keep your chin up with it sometimes – and when you look around you and see the beautiful homes your friends and people on Instagram live in, it can make you feel really low. But I know when we finally to do make it to our forever home, the different walls we have made homes in will all be part of that story and all the richer for it. Should that all fail, I’ll certainly have gained enough skills for a new side hustle as a handywoman.

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