I moved house three times in 2024 and it was hell

Moving and travelling stirs up the same mixed emotions as the start of a new year

Happy New Year! The first of day of 2025 probably has many of us feeling delicate and foggy-headed as we nurse hangovers and grapple with thoughts about the year ahead. Are we happy now? Could we be happier? How do we get there? As a memoirist, a Scorpio and someone who has moved house three times this year, 2024 has been full of reflection. I don’t follow Astrology ardently, but I do appreciate it as a tool for introspection.

They say the tough ekoskelton of the scorpion is able to weather many of life’s physical changes and that rather than being scared of change, Scorpios embrace it. At the risk of sounding rather woo-woo, this is me! I am quite good with change. Probably because I had a lot of monumental life shocks in my twenties: losing my father in 2015, uncovering my Nigerian heritage in 2017 after knowing nothing about my identity and solo travelling and writing about it all as a way to process it. For a long time, change, turmoil and movement were unavoidable themes in my life.

I’ve also noticed that moving home stirs up the same mixed emotions as the start of a new year, filled with promises and resolutions it can be an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and reimagine a different version of life for yourself. If you were to look at my year from above, you would see that this year has been full of change, but if you were to compare it to the turbulence of my early twenties, it looks rather calm in comparison. For me, 2024 has been a steady-moving cruise ship covering vast ground. Plenty of stop-offs along the way, each destination plugged into the sat-nav, with all passengers given advance notice of the journey and a map in-hand.

I lost a grandparent, my Dad’s father, which was tragic but not totally unexpected. I said goodbye to a living situation in Lisbon that to many, looked pretty sweet, but which was no longer serving me. I saw my family house sold and I purchased my own home while learning the true meaning of the term “money pit”. I danced with friends until sunrise at festivals in London and Lisbon, journeyed to Brazil, Aruba, and Zanzibar for work, and steadily chipped away at my next book. I hosted two sell-out writing retreats for women of colour (our next one is in April 2025 with Bernadine Evaristo FYI!), and stayed sane in the face of one of most depressing, morbid news cycles of the last few years. All in all, it’s been exciting and stressful, but I feel more grounded in my purpose than ever.

As anyone who has moved house or country knows, switching up the bricks and mortar around you is unsettling and doing it three times took its toll. It’s funny how much significance we attach to our connection with four walls—whether we own or rent them, how we choose to decorate them, and the memories they hold within.

This year we sold my family home. An end-of-terrace garden house in a small cul-de-sac, in the hinterland where London becomes Surrey and where I spent 30 years of my life, on-and-off. I’ve dreamt of that home recently, specifically my childhood bedroom, a sign I’ve been feeling nostalgic. It feels strange to think I’ll never sleep in my room again, a small room that faces out onto the driveway, with floral wallpaper on the chimney breast and thin, beautiful stain glass windows that let all the heat bleed out. I snuck boys into that room. It’s where I downloaded Limewire and played The Sims. I dreamt and cried and revised in that room. (I don’t think I had sex in it, though). When helping my Mum clear the house out in summer, I found old post-it notes for my History GCSE still stuck to my bed post and I found another, written in 2020, that said “get a book deal.”

I claimed that room from my parents as a teenager when they moved up to our a loft conversion we had built. But when my Dad’s cancer seeped into his bones and he could no longer walk up the next flight of stairs, he returned to that room to live out his final days in solitude and comfort while I moved into the box room next-door, listening to the muffled sounds of him coughing or crying at night through our shared wall. In my latest dream, I was back in my bedroom, alone, watching the suburban London skyline turn from muted pink to tangerine on a summer’s evening through the stain glass windows. I can still see the pile of books, DVDs and Sims 2 games spilling out from my bookshelf in the corner, a striped make-up bag balanced on a wooden vanity in front of me. A poster from The Clash (my Dad’s favourite band) adorning the wall, and the dark smudges of hair dye on my cream carpet.

Moving was hellish but it forced me to reflect on where I’ve felt at home, and where I’ve chosen to build a home, as an adult. Yes there’s the the relentless packing and unpacking of your life into bags and suitcases, the mania of pacing around your room and repeating, “it’s not too bad, actually,” while you ignore the severity of the fact that you still have 12 boxes left to do by morning, and no masking tape. There’s the inevitable misplacing of documents and valuables for months afterward and the sleepless nights leading up to D-Day. But it’s also an opportunity to reimagine. To sort through the clutter, both physical and emotional, and decide what’s worth taking with you and what’s best left behind.

Saying goodbye is awful. Not just to your home and the memories of it, but to the people, the ones you might not think about every day, but whose absence you feel in the small encounters. The cafe owner who knows your order before you say it, the neighbour who nods at you from across the street. Once you’ve left and you’ve grieved your move, there is a sense of calm and relief like a storm has passed and the sky has cleared.

Moving house can excite us in the same way making resolutions can, but only if we leave a little room for mistakes: misplaced items and wrong turns. If we put too much pressure on making everything smooth sailing it will only backfire. That’s why this year, I’m going fairly low-pressure with my aims and resolutions. Plug a few things into the sat nav, for sure—but leave enough space for surprises, unplanned stops and scenic routes. I’ve learned the hard way that when we attempt to control the timing of our life and carve out three, four or five-year-plans, God, or whoever is watching goes: “haha, yeah that’s funny” and presses the little button that says alter fate, like Sim being nudged off-course for comedic effect.

There’s an odd freedom in starting over, in seeing your belongings and your life choices laid bare and deciding what stays and what goes. It’s a chance to redefine who you are in a new space. But just like resolutions, the reality can fall short. Boxes remain unpacked for weeks, clutter slowly reappears, and the initial burst of optimism is replaced by the same annoying habits you tried to leave behind. Unless we go through radical life changes in a short space of time, the truth is, we’re pretty much the same person year on year. The magic isn’t in waking up on January 1st and promising a complete personal rebrand; it’s in what we learn about ourselves through the journey of trying to begin again.

Are you making resolutions, or have you got any big life changes, like a move, coming up? I’d love to hear your thoughts and feelings about 2025!