Remember that blog I recently wrote about how shit renting is, I have the sequel fresh off the press, apparently the story wasn’t quite finished yet. Not long after my decompression session on the injustice of renting and how if every Australian who owns a third home or more released it onto the market we’d be flooded with 2.5 millions homes, I was presented with the next ridiculous rental episode.
After an extremely stressful week we came home one Friday to find a blocked sewerage system that had been pumping out all of the waste water from our house onto the back lawn for the last 2 to 3 days. It had been raining all week so no-one had been outside to notice when it started but it had to have been a while because it was foul. There is nothing more confronting then having to deal with your own human waste and that of your families.
It took several days for a plumber to arrive because it wasn’t considered an “emergency” ie - shit wasn’t pumping into the house it was ONLY in the backyard. Eventually the plumber unblocked the drain and we had to clean up the mess - well Matt did because I kept gagging.
This happened about 4 weeks ago and I cracked the shits - quite literally - FYI there are going to be a few pooh puns in this blog today - and decided we needed to move. Enough is enough - we’ve been having open homes every two weeks for nearly 10 months, the landlords had refused to fix the leaking shower, there was shit all over the lawn and we just got over $1000 worth of utility bills from heating the place that has a constant draft.
I jumped online at the time, adamant that this was the final straw only to be put back in my place when there was not one rental property in our area that wasn’t over $100 dollars a week more than what we’re currently paying. To say I was devastated was an understatement. With our tail between our legs we had to settle back into our below standard housing situation and just hope that nothing got worse.
Fast forward a few weeks and Matt arrives home on friday night (this always happens on a friday when tradies sign off for the weekend) with more shit pumping out onto the lawn. It took all my might not to burst into tears. It’s so awful. Again it took a few days to get the plumber in so we spent the whole weekend trying not to use water. As someone who bases most of my life around my washing routine this didn’t go down well. No washing, one second showers, ‘if it’s yellow, let it mellow’ mantra became the new family motto and on Sunday morning we all went to see the earliest movie session they had of Inside Out 2 so everyone could crap into a working sewerage system rather than our lawn.
Last week we got a tip (thanks grandma) that there were a few more properties available for rent and we found one 800m up the road from where we are now. Matt looked at it Wednesday, we applied Thursday. A few invasive and completely degrading credit checks Friday and we had a successful application by Monday. I’m writing this on Thursday evening (in the eye of the storm I like to think of it as) and we’re moving tomorrow.
Boom - just like that. New address, new me! I obviously feel really good about the decision because I’ve been sleeping very well all week, Matt has a spring in his step and the kids are bouncing off the walls with excitement. Although Frank did take a while to come around, he’s such a sentimental soul that he didn’t want to leave all the memories behind that we’d created in our current home. Once we sorted out that we can take all the memories with us and will create new ones in the new house he was onboard. FYI the analogy of a new house being like a new skin in Fortnite won him over.
So this week we’ve been packing. Compared to moving the factory only a few months ago, I dear say it's been a breeze. The biggest problem I’ve had is Alice and her uncontrollable urge to craft with cardboard. Normally when a cardboard box enters our house it has about 30 seconds before Alice has comendared it, grabbed her arts and craft supplies and starts converting it into something else. Maybe it's an extravagant bed for the most popular soft toy at the time or some kind of elaborate diorama. I’ve had to stop her at least 5 times a day from sneaking one of the packing boxes off to her room with a pair of scissors.
The most ironic thing about the timing of this whole experience is that on Monday we’ve been invited by the Treasurer Tim Pallas to the ‘More Homes for Victoria Housing Forum’. If I wasn’t already super passionate about building more affordable, energy efficient homes in Victoria then I sure as shit am now.
