Jackie's Blog

 We had a weekly countdown, and once we hit May it all became a reality. The house was due to close on May 16th, therefore the moving jobs became a little more personal. Literally cooking everything left in the freezer, and not buying anything other than fresh food. Starting to go through all my herbs and spices and getting rid of older ones or getting rid of those you buy for one recipe and never use again! I do buy some spices (especially Indian cooking ones) in bulk so some of those were vacuum sealed and packed away. The only foods you can pack are non perishable ones, so some dried food was also packed but why take up valuable container space with things you can buy later?  Starting to pull out clothes to take with us in the large soft but wheeled suitcases. This one was hard as we had to plan for at least three months living on a canal boat (with limited storage) through the English summer months and through the Autumn too. This meant layers- largely of thinner clothing ...

Having the house under offer and a confirmed move out date took a lot of the pressure off but there was still a lot to do! We booked my haircuts, annual physical appointments, eye tests and dentist appointments, and asked for copies of all our records so we could take them with us.  We finished up tax collection information and sent them off to the tax  accountants so they could be completed for the April 16th tax deadline (for UK friends- the tax year is a calendar year).  We had been talking to our financial advisors about transitioning our US investments for some time. We had deliberately chosen an international company with offices both in the US and UK to make the eventual transition easier five years ago. However, it turned out that the process to convert the accounts wasn't really used that often and therefore a mess . You can only have accounts in the US while you have a UK address (even though we are also US citizens) in certain companies. That meant moving the a...

We met three realtors on March 1st and 2nd. All of them came to the house and had three different strategies. The first one impressed us most as she came with a plan and timeline going forward. She felt sure we could go on the market quickly without having to do much else to the inside of our house (whew). The other two were a little older in their strategies, and to be honest a little condescending about what needed to be done before photos etc. The house photos were taken just a week later.  We had a realtor open house on Wednesday, March 13th and the regular open house for everyone else the following weekend. What was also nice was that Christine, our realtor, had an apartment in Marblehead that we could use for the weekend. Dottie went to stay with our neighbors so it wasn't so confusing for her. House sale pictures Basement Dick's office Living room Kitchen Dining room The house looked lovely, and we were very pleased to have eight (8!!) offers over asking price the follow...

 We decided to move back to the UK in the middle of 2023 and then it seemed so far away! Six months later, Dick has a new job (which he loves), and I don't have one at all, The latter being part of the moving plan. Technically, I finished working at the nursing home in October but I have worked two separate weeks in the mean time to help train my replacement and still maintain ties there. Since then I have kept myself very busy completing small projects in the house- all strange things that you only really notice when you are thinking about selling and what other people may notice! Paint flaking in a corner, and patching and painting a closet among other things. I've also started what I can only say now is phase 1 of the sorting and clearing out process. I say phase 1 as I've quickly realized that you need more than one go through 'stuff'.  Aside from that, I wanted to start recording the processes we are going through to move our lives back to the UK. I am using Tr...