Staying Right Here

I was reading a friend’s blog this morning about the trials, twists and turns of buying a home. They’ve finally signed up to buy a home and now just have the waiting ahead of them before they get to move in.

This particular blogger friend is in the US but I know that here in Perth the statistics suggest that we tend to move house more often than most.

Personally I’m more than happy where we are. We’ve been in our current house for a couple of years and we lived in the one before that for sixteen years. That’s a lot longer than many people stay in one place. I can’t see us getting the moving bug for many years.

How about you? How many houses have you lived in over the last twenty or so years? Do you get itchy feet if you live in the same place for any length of time? When do you think your next move will be?

With all the hassle of selling, buying, packing and moving I’m more than happy to be pleased for friends that are shifting house, but I’m so relieved that it’s not me.



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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He previously worked in radio for about 25 years but these days he spends his time at Compassion Australia, working towards releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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4 Comments

  • In 1987 we moved into our very first (own) home. We lived there for 13 years till we moved to Ohio for ministry reasons. We rented two places there. In 2005 we moved here and have lived in our own house since 2006. We have been married 38 years and this is only the 2nd house we have owned. As i get older, i wonder about the wisdom of it. 🙂

    • I lived the first 16 years of my life in the same house. My parents had already lived there for about 8 years before I arrived so my three brothers and my sister, all older than me, did all their growing up there. (I think my eldest brother was less than year old when my parents moved in.)

      I moved around a bit in my single days but always in the suburbs of Perth. I was more than happy to settle down and stay somewhere a bit longer.

  • I think our next move will be… into a retirement home 🙂
    We have a beautiful apartment we call ours for real (still a weird thought for me) in a very nice area in the town I/we feel home in.

    What else could you wish for?

    Ok… friends younger than me now bought estate and will build a house. I´m a bit jealous.. but they make way more money than us, so all I can do is be happy for them and visit 🙂

  • I lived with my parents for 19 years (they built the house themselves before any of their children were born, but I was 5th so they had lived there for more than a decade before…) Then I started the gypsy lifestyle…
    Bicton for a year, back home for a year, a 5-week holiday to Brisbane turned into 9 years there: 6 months sleeping on other people’s couches and attics before I got married, then 5 years in one unit, 3 1/2 years in a house. Then moved to Melbourne: a few weeks our on couches until my wife got back from Egypt, then we floated for a month while the settlement on the house when through. We lived there for 3 years. Then we moved 25km closer to the city! Lived the wonderful lifestyle of Melbourne living (in a unit in Malvern) for 4 years (with no children)… Melbourne airport is an hour from Sydney, and hour from Hobart, and hour from Adelaide (and a hour from Melbourne!). Footy every week, Pizza in Lygon St, tram to work, or 15 minutes on the Tollway in peak hour from my place. Perfect lifestyle: but sadly, health forced a move upon us. My wife got sick, we had to move to within a breath of fresh ocean air? Where can you do that in Melbourne? Unless you’re a millionaire, only 70 km out! So we moved back to Perth. Back to couch living for three months, then moved into a 4×2 house near the ocean well north of where I holidayed when I was a kid! But we had to get some renovations done so it was back to someone’s couch again for a month. But then the 2 kids have slowed us down. We’ve been in this place for 9 years. It’s the longest we have ever lived anywhere as a married couple (city, let alone house)!
    We just had our kitchen renovated… stayed in a Resort for the week but still had to go to school/work so it wasn’t like a holiday. We also had 3 1/2 weeks in Hobart as our first holiday as a family.
    Guess I’m proof that Aussies move more than most…

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