Moving To A New Home? These Quirky Stories By Our Readers Are Amazing

A home of your own is one of life’s great achievements and we invest all our love and focus on it. Here are some lovely stories of moving to a new home.

The care and time taken in choosing, building and furnishing one is an exciting period as you start imagining your future and the beautiful moments you would spend in that home.

Until the previous generation in India, people spent all their hard earned money on that one house and each aspect of it became so precious. My parents’ generation included many like them who moved out of the village, made their lives in the city and took pride in the one house they built; they were part of the laying of each brick and stone.

Of, course the exciting as well as strenuous bit is the moving in to a new home. The new home holds new opportunities to explore and create, while the old home holds memories. It’s a bittersweet experience that each person braves!

In a fun exercise with CapriCoast, the team at Women’s Web asked readers to share with us their most interesting true stories of moving home. CapriCoast is a platform that has many brands and design firms- it is a one stop solution for home interiors and helps you design your new home by finding what best fits your budget as well as design sensibilities.After all, moving into a new home is a really exciting but also somewhat crazy process, and we knew there are so many great stories waiting to be told.

Here are some of the best ones we received!

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The cottage that withstood the storm

Sangeeta Sharma remembers the time she moves into her new abode as a night of terror, and yet one that created warm memories.

It was on a grey June afternoon in 1987, that we had shifted to our new home in the Northeastern city of Guwahati. Dark clouds had gathered overhead, reflecting our gloomy mood, on sighting our home, a small three roomed cottage that our dad had built, while we resided in a grand bungalow in a tiger reserve.

There was no electricity that night as a terrible thunderstorm broke over us, rain water lashing at our windows. The wind howled outside ominously, tugging at the tin roof of the house, threatening to blow it away. Ma had lit kerosene lamps and candles, and in that flickering light, she cooked khichdi for us. There was no time to unpack and look for crockery. She found a steel plate and spread out the piping hot concoction over it.

As all four of us, my parents, sister and I, ate from that single plate, we were enveloped in a blanket of familial warmth and security. By morning the storm had died down. Our little cottage had withstood the ravages of that storm and created a beautiful memory for us to cherish and savour through the years.

The mysterious lamp

Aashisha Chakraborty reminisces on the most interesting incident at their new house which turned out to be a part of their lives.

“That’s Aladdin’s lamp!” my brother exclaimed.

“Just. Put. That. Away.” Was all I said.

It looked not a bit like Aladdin’s lamp. It didn’t look like any lamp by any standards. It was simply an antediluvian jar that the workers had fished out of one of the rooms. I decided to remind father to give the old stuff back.

The furnishing and the finishing took the better part of the month. By the time the walls had been painted and the floors given a glorious touch, the lights fitted and the bolts tightened, the monsoon was upon us.

One day when it was raining cats and dogs, I rushed out to the verandah to collect the clothes. It was then I saw it. The so-called lamp.

“Why didn’t you give all the old stuff back to the previous owners?” I asked mother.

“But we did.”

“What about this?” I showed her the urn.

“It isn’t theirs, they said.”

“Then whose?”

“Older owners, workers, no one, how do I know dear? If you don’t like it, just throw it away.”

It has been three years in our new abode but strangely, I haven’t been able to part with that lamp yet.

An unpleasant member of the house who slowly became part of the family

Sharada Ganesh recalls how their new house had a ‘drishti bottu’ which caught everybody’s attention.

Just entering the compound and taking one look at the house made us fall in love with it. The cool breeze, the greenery, the bird songs and the earthy brick house. When we moved into the house, after about a month, we were greeted by a huge iron cupboard that towered in front of us, right in our living room.

We were puzzled to know where it came from as we were sure we had not seen it earlier. In the beginning, we did suspect some paranormal activity. But, later on inquiry, we found that it was planted there by our owners.

Now, we had to live in a beautiful earthy, brick house, with this huge ugly thing staring at us, every day. When guests came to visit us, they would point out to it and ask us about it; sympathize with us and we would laugh about it. We promised ourselves we would move it upstairs, however, it was so heavy that we couldn’t do much. Slowly, we started ignoring it. Friends started becoming silent; the jokes got stale. We realized it was here to stay. We just accepted it as a ‘drishti bottu’ to our home.

Marching where the job takes needs a salute to the army wives too who follow suit.

Anjali Sharma, the army wife recalls the process of changing houses on a regular basis!

Home is where the Heart(h) is.

Women have this inherent capability to mold in any situation and take up any challenge, even if it involves multitasking of doing a job and setting up their house at the same time.

I am an Army child and now an Army wife, and who better knows, what it feels like to move every 2 to 3 years to a new place and make your new house your abode for a duration unknown. We always have the number of ‘Movers and Packers’ handy nowadays, while earlier it was the helper bhaiyas coming from the unit itself for packing the stuff.

Yes, we are like hippies or gypsies, always on the move and the real Herculean task begins at the time of packing or unpacking the household stuff.

We plan to settle in our permanent houses only when our husbands retire from their services. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t enjoy staying in our temporary nests. Our house can be a single room in a mess, or a room with a balcony that acts as a kitchen in the form of a temporary accommodation; by the time we get our permanent houses, it’s time to move to the next destination.

But this doesn’t takes away the charm of staying in that house, and making it your home, even for a few months. All army houses have a fixed place for every item, whether it is the space for the fridge, or the microwave, a small lawn in front of the ground floor houses and a small balcony for the first floor. The cooler stand in the hot areas and fire place in cooler climes too have their fixed position.

The living room of my house is a typical army house from the crystal stuff in one corner, to brass items on the other side. The corners are typical as they display mementos collected over the years at various places of postings. The hessian cloth is of great use, as it serves the purpose of packing the stuff, as well as acts as a fence for the boundary of the house.

The wooden and tin boxes, painted in black are multipurpose, as they are used for packing, but presently they act as furniture in my house, in the a form of a sofa.

The house allotted, soon becomes my home when I unpack my stuff, which depicts ‘unity in diversity ‘ in the true sense as I have moved from north to south, and from east to west, but all houses are just the same with curtains from Kashmir, cane furniture from Arunachal, cushions from Rajasthan and welding furniture from Wellington.

Whether a matchbox size house or a bungalow of British times, it is the love and warmth of the occupants, which makes a house a home.

The gifts that made us smile

Meenal Sonal remembers how they were enveloped with a breeze of cool air on the day they moved into their new home.

Relocating to a new place is very challenging, as every aspect needs to be perfect. We took extra care while designing the interiors to fit everything properly leaving a comfortable moving space. A day ahead of the house warming we looked into making the necessary arrangements for our new apartment. As the function was planned in mid-June, the weather was bit sultry and so we purchased two Coolers to make our guests comfortable.

Just when we were about to patch-up the floral decorations our doorbell rang. I was surprised to see my aunt’s driver holding a card with a cooler beside him as a gift for our house warming. We quickly arranged it in our balcony. Then there was another doorbell; it was a cooler again, this time a gift from our friends. We made space for it too. But within no time we ended up with more gifts as coolers from our cousins and eldest uncle, taking the total to six.

Finally, family members and friends gathered for our house warming. They stood awestruck to see the coolers lined up and we all burst out laughing.

Though we had the same gifts, we were happy to see everyone smiling.

What you never anticipate when you move home!

Priti Raj has a funny story about the unpredictability that comes along when you move home.

Moving homes means a lot more than just logistics. It takes quite an effort to recreate our lives in the new space while keeping the essence intact. As I often like to say, a house is a living being, it keeps growing and evolving along with its inhabitants. When we recently moved from a cozy apartment that was our home for the last five years it felt bittersweet.

We knew we would miss our old address – not just because it was the most happening part of the town but because we had maintained our home with a lot of love and care.

I am notorious among friends and family for being obsessive about keeping my home spic and span. I specialise in a brand of housekeeping I like to call ‘my kind of clean’.

The husband has now learnt to classify things accordingly when describing any place of interest to me.

When we were checking out our prospective future home, we noticed that the apartment was lovely but some rework was required. The freshly painted living room wall needed rework and needed new lamps and curtains for the house.

At this point in my story, it’s time for me to introduce the lead character, my 8 month old son.

We needed a bigger place with more amenities once we became parents – this should explain our move from a place we loved so much.

So after a couple of months of unsuccessful attempts at finding the right furnishings, we decided to put that on the back burner and at least get done with the pending paint job in our living room.

The husband planned a day off from work and we got the work done. Or so we thought.

Two days later, during tea time, our unpredictable little one decides to go for a stunt.

He jumps from a height and my husband catches him just in time. However, not before a cup full of tea is smashed and we end up with a huge splash on the wall – the wall adjacent to the one recently painted. We are back to square one!

Enjoyed these stories of moving to a new house and making it a home? Considering a new home of your own? You can get a free estimate from different vendors at CapriCoast-in just a few clicks! to help create the interiors of your dream home in a smooth fashion that suits your design sensibilities.

Old to new always reminds us of the saying ‘Change is inevitable.’ The making of a home is by its people and it is only with efforts by each one of them that the walls get closer to us. It’s the effort of each individual by adding their memories and time into this new abode that gives it a sense of character.

The sense of achievement and the feeling of pride to make the new house a home gives the owner reason to smile. All new homes carry a story waiting to be continued with new people and new experiences.

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare and dream a little would be the mantra to keep chanting when you move to new one!
(And prepare a little more.)

Image source: GraphicStock

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