Bodged Houses | Parents discuss renting with kids

Making a home your own when you have a baby or toddler? This is the one where Emma and Elliot chat about their story, renting experience, and struggles with buying a house. Not a topic directly about parenting, but something that is affecting us right now (with positives and challenges) - and whether it's more unique to us, or very commonplace - either way, we thought it might be an interesting discussion starter... We did get a bit distracted chatting away about our struggles personally, and didn't end up covering much about the context of renting/buying with children! But I hope you enjoy learning more about us in the process. Are you renting, or have you ever rented, while raising little ones? Let us know your thoughts!
 
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Unwind on sleepless nights to a wholesome mix of parenting stories, quirky humour, and cosy crafting. We’re not here to provide answers but to share our experiences, explore how parenting has changed, and build an online community of parents for mutual support.

A fun, honest and unscripted conversation between Emma and Elliot on non-judgemental parenting and millennial-based topics, as we relax on an evening attempting an artistic or creative activity. 

We are a project in partnership with The Kairos Movement and supported by The Methodist Church, of which The Kairos Movement is a part.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:50 Parenting Achievements
• 6:15 Renting & House Buying
• 19:40 Why we do the show segment
• 23:00 Challenges, struggles, & our upbringings
• 40:25 Stories from Listeners

Transcript

 So, Emma, what are we talking about today? We're talking about the challenges of parenting when you don't own your house. 

This episode is called Bogded Houses. 

Hello, internet. Welcome back to The Crippin House. This is the podcast that's as welcome as a full night's sleep. You join us to chat about parenting with babies and toddlers, hear from our imaginary rabbit burrow below the, below the ground. Cozy little thing. I was going to say, do we have sofas in the rabbit burrow?

Uh, yep, made of dirt, nice and cozy, squishy, very autumnal. There's all the animals from Bambi lying around. All the animals from Bambi fitting in a rabbit tunnel.  It's big. It's like a, it's like a hobbit hole, but under, you have to go down a trap door or a ladder under the soil. Okay. Yep.  That's it. Anyway, if you're new here, um, we're husband and wife.

We do this little podcast together, hosting it. Um, I'm Elliot. I'm the tall one that's afraid of heights. And I'm Emma. I'm the short one who's not afraid of heights. Do you have any fears? Um, loud noises. I don't like fireworks. Claustrophobia? Claustrophobia? Lifts? Yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't like lifts. I'm trying to think if I have, I have a, I have a lot of fears of, uh, animals in general.

Oh yeah.  He's not a big fan of a lot of animals. Yeah, not a, not a big animal lover. He used to tell me he was scared of dying alone, but he doesn't have this fear anymore.  Right, well you know what's going on. We grab a topic and we dive into some conversation. Uh, you can pick and choose what episodes in any order.

Um, so welcome and let's get stuck in. 

Xbox Achievement Unlocked! Parenting level have we reached this week? I actually have a story this week. Very good, go ahead. For those who don't know, we're expecting our next baby rather soon. Our little girl Lily, she was sat in bed with me chatting away about the baby. Yeah. And we've, for a long time we've said, oh when the baby comes it's going to bring you a present.

Yeah, so we've discussed this on a previous episode when we were chatting about how we were preparing to go from one to two. And we mentioned that we have this plan that we're going to give Lily a gift from the baby. Yeah. What we didn't foresee Um, in the conversation last night, it's, Hey, Lily was like, Oh, well, I need to give the baby a present.

I'll give it some dummies wrapped up. And she has already wrapped up some dummies. It's nice. She's really keen, really excited for the new baby. Very excited. And then she's going, Well, what's the baby going to get mummy and daddy? And I said, Oh, the baby doesn't have to get mummy and daddy anything. But she'll go, Well, no, everybody has to get a present. 

Oh, no.  Because she wants, um, so we're getting her a tablet which she specified at the moment has to be blue with sparkles. Okay. So,  at least we're going to have to find a cover. I think there's a correlation here to a certain character in Frozen. There is, yes. That she's a big fan of. A bit obsessed with at the minute.

Aren't you glad? Or we could ask if it could get you an orange tablet, like bingo. And I always go, I don't think Mummy needs a tablet. Well, you need something.  Aww. She's so fair, isn't she? She's like, everyone needs a present from the baby. Now we're going to have to buy us all presents. That's what I said.

So I said to Elliot this morning, I was like, we're We're gonna all have to get a gift from the baby.  And we're all gonna have to give a gift to the baby as well, probably. Yes, probably. Yeah, I mean, Lily's already told me that we're gonna make a cake for when the baby arrives. Yes. Yes, she's very excited.

She's got a lot of things planned. Because it's her birthday. It's her birthday, which is true. It is the day she's born on. She's not wrong. Just as the baby forgets us. This good idea we had is that It's gone downhill a little bit now that we have to buy three presents, but anyway, it's fastly getting out of control.

As long, as long as we don't have to buy three separate tablets,  it's okay.  Another parenting, quick parenting fail from me that happened, I can't remember if it was this week or last week, but it ties quite heavily into our episode today, chatting about renting because in our current house, we don't have a downstairs toilet.

Um, and so when Lily goes on the potty downstairs, um, I have to carry the, uh, the potty. Upstairs to the toilet to dispose of it and we even have quite a clever pot You just have take that a little bit. Yeah But I was I was getting too cocky. I was getting too I don't know whether I was distracted you're rushing around rushing around I think cuz I think you were having a nap or something Yes, something you weren't there and I was looking after Lily So I was trying to be quick and I was Lily had been to the toilet.

She'd done a wee and she I think she'd done a poo in the potty as well. And, uh, I was like, you stay there, Lily, and I'll just go get rid of this. So I was like, you know, trotting up the stairs, and I tripped up the stairs. And I was like, ugh. So not only, not only did I spill some of this on the carpet, but it splashed right in my face.

And I think you heard me from like, I was like, swore halfway up the stairs. And you were like, are you all right? I was like, are you okay? Like, I thought I'd hurt himself. And he was like, I've put, Pee in my face. I've just thrown Lily's wee in my face. Yeah. I was like, great, It did make me laugh.  Like the kind, uh, loving wife I am.

There you go, lesson learnt and, uh, my parenting fail. So when you're going up the stairs, be careful. Yeah, gotta be careful. Gotta be careful. This is why I want a downstairs toilet.  Oh dear. You say that though, I still think one of us would manage somehow to still fall over. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Guessing, maybe even if it was just another room away.

But there we are, there's some stories for you this week. Um, get in touch if they are relatable. We'd love to hear from you if you've had sim sim simu simular experiences.  Or, uh, yep, what not. Give us a ring and, uh, get in touch. Give us a ring? Sounded good.  No, don't do that. You don't have our phone numbers, so don't do it'll be a bit weird.

I won't pick up anyway if it's a random number. Anyway message us do something there's all the stuff in the description down below and Stay tuned till the end of the episode and we'll share some parenting stories or comments or things sent in by listeners 

Avoid looking at your bank balance and let's jump into some conversation today on our topic all around Parenting when you're renting or if you don't own your own house, or you know all that stuff. Shall we start with our kind of story of where we're up to. If you're a long time listener you'll know we've mentioned in previous episodes that we've been looking to buy a house.

Um, and we've been renting here in Harrogate for the last Four years? Five years? Something like that. Yeah, somewhere between four and five years. It was just before the pandemic we moved in. It was, yeah. Intended to be kind of temporary as we hoped we would Buy. Sooner.  I think a lot of our generation do struggle to get on the housing market.

Yeah, I think it's much more commonplace now than it used to be. It's a common difficulty. Even more difficult, now we've got kids. So we've been house hunting for four years,  basically. Yeah, I'd say a lot of it's been inactive at house hunting. And originally we were looking in the Harrogate area and it was too expensive, so.

And then more recently, we have had several houses that we've like put offers. In, on, over the last few years, and never made it very far. Oh. Our most recent one has made it furthest. Oh yeah, we got really close. And like, we got to the point where, you know, we were talking to Lily about it, and Yeah. I can't remember what we've mentioned on previous podcasts, but like We were getting a bit more certain that we would move.

We were really close to closing on the house, fortunately for personal reasons for the sellers. In the end they couldn't go through with it. They've pulled out, so  understandable  circumstances, but it means we're back to square one. Yeah.  I kept being positive, at least it wasn't us. There was nothing we did wrong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Frustrating, but yeah. And I just feel like it means at least we can go through the process again and it will be successful.  Oh dear, going on, it's a challenge. Um, fortunately, I don't know, like, Lily hasn't really brought it up again. I'm not quite sure. I think she thinks it's like a, um, like a, I was gonna say a relative idea.

I don't know if that makes sense. She just thinks at some point in the future, there'll be a new house. Um, and more of an abstract concept. Yes, which is fine because hopefully that is what will happen. Um, yeah. And obviously now it's been delayed a bit because  We want to wait till the baby's born till we start actively looking again.

Yeah, it's not, not a great time to be trying to house hunt when you've got a, a newborn. Yeah.  Um, but anyway, all this to say is, you know, we're currently in rented accommodation and we felt like it was a good topic to talk about because there's things that are challenges, there's things that are positives and negatives, and I don't know whether it's particularly unique or really commonplace, but either way.

It might be a good kind of discussion starter for the podcast and for, you know, for you guys to get involved with. Shall we kick off with some positives? Yep. What do you, what would you say, Emma? What's the best thing about parenting when you're in rented a car? Or, you know, more broadly, when you don't own your own house?

I think one of the positives is, is there's a really big problem in the house. Yeah. And I know sometimes it takes some chasing up. It's not you paying for the fixing of the cost. So like, after we, when we moved in here, I think I was pregnant with Lily at the time. Yeah. We had a huge leak that came through the ceiling.

Yeah, yeah, massive leak. Um, and I think, goodness. If we'd, at that stage, we'd just moved into a new house and that would have been a huge cost. Yeah. And that's why people get insurance, but I still don't, I know a lot of children And just the stress of having to organise that, you know, the, the sense of you can just kind of contact your landlord or estate agent.

And if they're good, I know a lot of people have a bush bomb, they, they will fix it. And they were very good because it was a emergency. They were good at getting it done. It's almost, you get to test out an area without being currently sold, sold, sold on it.  So it's like kind of a good tester without committing.

Especially with our jobs. We have flexibility to move kind of anywhere we need to. And so we are, you know, we do look at kind of just going into, we were in Cumbria before and quite a rural part. And we kind of just. Picked Harrogate out of a hat and we're like, well that seems nice, why don't we go there?

That does change how we're kind of looking at everything and renting provides you a way to kind of Yeah. Try things out. Okay, how about this then? So that's kind of about, you know, that would apply to anyone who's renting or doesn't own their own home. But in terms of parenting, there's also a sense of, I don't feel too bad.

I mean this is, there's a double edged sword to this, but like with, when you've got toddlers and babies, ultimately. You do kind of make a mess and there's, you know, things, there's wear and tear that come with having kids in a house. That's just natural. And like, to some extent, I don't know, I don't know how I would feel if we owned the stuff.

I don't feel too bad because we don't own the stuff. Yeah, I know what you mean. The, you know, our carpet has deteriorated. Yeah. And I don't feel too bad because we didn't pay for it. Yeah, yeah, truth, yeah. I think, I know there's still a pressure to look after the house, but I think that's the same. Pressure we'd have in our own home.

Does that make any sense? Mmm. Like I'm really fascinated to know when we do get our own house, you know, when we have bought a house.  Stuff, you know, paid for new carpets or whatever, or, you know, we've painted the walls, how, whether, how much that will change, you know, for me personally, my psychology of like, whether I get more or less upset when Lily, you know, makes a mark on the wall or drops something on the carpet, like, I, I  don't know.

We've been pretty lucky, really. Lily is very clumsy, but she's never drawn on the walls or anything. Yeah. So I was thinking with another child, maybe it'd be a lot more stressful renting. Yeah, true. 

We have spent five years paying rent that's just disappeared. Yeah, true. That's not gone anywhere, and also when we do move, we will likely need to then fork out for a load of furniture that we don't own. When my sisters, like, are getting new stuff, they're like, would you like me to keep this for when you're eventually about a house?

And I'm like, yes, yes, please. So my dad has like a  Garage, I think he's got some white goods in there now ready to go. Right, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Just, just so we don't have to like buy brand new ones when we eventually do move. Let's talk about that then, you know, like white goods. So this is one of the downsides for me, like, Ugh, I think both of us, we would desperately like a dryer.

Oh we'd love a dryer. But like, we've got nowhere to put it. Nowhere to put it. And it's not, Like, I don't know. I don't know how we can do it. Like, you know, alterations are tricky because we don't own the house. We can't make space. Like, we've already said we would love a downstairs toilet. Like, I think there are creative ways we probably could find to do it if we owned this house.

But we don't. So we can't, you know, go around making massive alterations to install some of that stuff. And I think we're both quite arty, so it's annoying you can't like  change much. Yeah, definitely. Like, and we've been discussing this a lot recently because our house prospects have fallen through, that we were getting so excited in our heads at the idea of a house that we could make our own.

Yeah. And, um, I don't think, I don't think either of us had maybe kind of properly registered how much that was affecting our mental health here, that Yes, that we hadn't like made an effort to make it You know, that we would love to do those things and we hadn't done them and that every day that kind of made us a little bit sad Yes Um, and actually looking back, we probably could have done those things Yeah So for example, I know, I mean, I don't know whether we, you know, maybe we need the permission of our landlord, but I know you can do things like paint walls and things if we then put them back to their original condition before we leave.

I know that is a possibility. Same with, you know, pictures and hooks and nails and walls. But we've avoided all that because we always saw this as a temporary place to live. Yeah. Um, and then it suddenly dawned on us like, well maybe we should have just done all that. Maybe we should have done it, because it would have made us happier in the now.

And it's true, we, our attitude has changed now slightly. So like, we were holding off buying some new stuff, being like, well wait till we move. Yeah. Um, especially because I've been in a nesting phase. Poor Elliot's not trying to stop me. Yeah. I need like an output. A project. Yeah, something to, something to like, make me feel like I'm getting ready for the baby.

But this is the flip side of this thing with, you know, We've begun to put a little bit more effort in, but then it's like, how much do you put in? Because this is a rented place, it's not ours, it's not going to be our forever home, or even our home for a long time. So, you know, it feels, it feels almost wasted to put money, resources, time into sprucing up somewhere.

That we're gonna move out of, like, we hope. Yeah. You know, in the short term. And it's just then frustrating, because it's like, where, how much, you know, what,  I don't know, yeah, do you, do you, do you live for now, or do you plan for the future, and where do you put your money, and Yeah.  Just saying. This is a very depressing episode.

I'm sorry. Right, let's get on to more things that are bad.  We don't have great A great experience with our letting agency in terms of the upkeep of our place. Yeah. Um. I think this is commonplace though, you really have to bug them to get stuff done. Yeah. And so, um. We do live in a house where everything is kind of bodged.

Yeah. Like. Yeah. It's, I wouldn't go as far as to say it's falling apart. And it's like, compared to some horror stories I've heard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's pretty decent. There's nothing like, dangerous. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Because I know like, you see other people's stories and you're like, Oh, okay, yeah, they're not that bad.

But for us, it's just frustrating because you do have to chase them up all the time. Um, it's never like, oh, can you do this? And then it's done. It's like, can you do this? Oh, I sent a message before. And everything's been done, like, so on the cheap. Like, there were new carpets when we moved in, but they've been installed so, like, poorly.

Like, they come up everywhere.  And like, just, you know, we've got a porch on the back of our house, which is like a wooden lean to that's basically falling down. Like, the door fell off. It did. They have replaced the door now. So we asked them to do something about this. Um, and they, you know, our neighbours have said it's been like this for years.

And basically, you know, For ages it's needed it to be knocked down and a new thing because it's just not it's just yeah So what did do they came they've put a new wooden door on it, and they've painted it  Glass made all the difference. Yeah, I mean the door now The wood has swollen with the winter weather and it won't close and it now won't because the whole thing's Lobsided because it's falling apart.

Yeah, and they've just stuck a brand new door in it and the door doesn't close. Yeah Everything's done  whereas, you know, if it was your own house, you know, well, I'm gonna do it properly Yeah, and I'm like we probably wouldn't spend a fortune, but we wouldn't use the cheapest tree thing. We'd be like, well, we're gonna have to live with this.

So let's do, you know. Yeah. Yeah. A better option. Yeah.  And it just means that we keep getting more and more problems because like, they never address underlying causes. It's like we had a bit of damp and mould in. Our living room and we know from our neighbours that there's a there's a underlying cause issue of this of all the properties along our street.

Um, and you've got to basically move where this breeze block is or something? Yeah, we're not, I'm not very techie about this but some, yeah, breeze block that's been installed too low and like that corner, front corner of the properties they all get kind of damp coming through. Um, and they did come and they, They sorted out the damp, they re plastered the wall, um, but they've not fixed the underlying cause of the problem.

But I'm just hoping we'll have moved before that'll be a problem again. Yeah, yeah. A lot of our things were like, well hopefully we'll move before that crops up again. It's not our problem! 

Yeah.  Yeah, there's a lot of stuff like that where we're like, well, as long as it doesn't happen in the next two years,  hopefully we'll have moved, it'll be fine. And a big complaint of mine that fits into this category is our, our horrible wooden countertop in the kitchen. Oh yeah, it's horrendous. Like, I, I would love to have a,  Just any, it doesn't have to be granite or marble, but any countertop that isn't made of wood.

Yeah, if anyone's thinking of getting countertop made of wood, don't do it. It requires a lot of upkeep to make sure it remains watertight. Yeah. Um, and we've got wood, like, all around the splash zone of our sink  and it's not been kept watertight. No, it's just, it's just rotting away slowly. So yeah, it's basically completely rotten. 

Um,  yeah. Well, there's only so much we can do really to  It depresses me every time I look at it. Oh.  It's when I keep being like, we'll just get something, let's just cover it.  Yeah, it's what we do with a lot of the problems in our house.  We'll just cover them up. Let's cover it. I don't know how to think about it. 

Hold your horses past Elliot and Emma. This is future Elliot and Emma. Here to insert our little segment in the middle. We're very proud of this little podcast project that we run. And we'd love to have your support and, um, you know, we're very thankful to you listening, but if you want to engage with us, please do in all the places on social media, on YouTube, Instagram, in our Facebook group. Chat on our discord. You can find all the links down below. Um, we'd love this to be a conversation, not just us shouting into the void. Our aim is to build a little community so we can support one another. And, uh, we can't really do that without some engagement from you. So please do. And if nothing else, do share.

The podcast with your friends and other people. If you have a partner that doesn't listen, go bug them now and say, listen to this podcast. It's really good. As always, we do like to pop in here that, you know, we are Christians and we're doing this in partnership with the Kairos movement, which is a thing within the Methodist church.

And, you know, just to be upfront about that. We're part of those things to explore faith and spirituality, so even if you don't define yourself as Christian, or, you know, that puts you off, then, uh, maybe within the stuff that we're doing, there's something that might be of interest to you, or if not, just come and chat with us about parenting, we try to keep all the religion pretty light, um, I don't, you know, we're not particularly religious ourselves, we, we might be Christians, but we have our own, you know, Struggles and challenges and questions and doubts and everything with church, the institution, with God, with all sorts of things.

How do you view God, Emma? In what way? I don't know. Like, I often think people assume I'm talking about a big man in the sky. Oh yeah, I don't imagine, I imagine like a, I don't even know if I imagine a being. Yeah. I imagine more of like a floaty thing. Like a spirit?  If I was to imagine them, I'd imagine them almost like a Some kind of glittery cloud or something that goes from one place to another.

Oh, that's nice.  I always come back to like nature and ecosystems in the same way like a tree is connected to a plant,  you know, they're not the same thing, they look different, but we're all kind of connected through nature and in the same way I see like that we're all kind of connected through God and that we might not see a God.

It's the connection that matters, we are connected to each other and that our ultimate being is about being connected and loving and is how I conceptualize God.  Just as a, an entity that goes through everything. Yeah, just not an entity, not a being, just it's what, it's the connections between us all, like a big flowing network through an ecosystem.

Yeah,  you know what makes me think of? Yeah? Mushrooms. Yeah, exactly. Just like that. Yeah. Yeah, we are all mushrooms  if you'd like to learn more about that chat more with us about that or Interested in the kind of spirituality side of things as well as parenting whether you're a parent or not Then we do more of that through the Kairos movement and you can find out more about what I'm too up to in my work Or different ways to engage with some of that if it's interesting if you're open minded find all that stuff out on our web page Which is www.

kairosmovement. org. uk forward slash Don't wake the baby!  Right, time to get back to past Emma and Elliot. Past Emma and Elliot. Back over to you guys. On with the conversation. 

I would say I've gone rather a totched, a totched, attached  to our little house now. Yeah, yeah. I think I will be sad when we do move. Well, we've been here a while. And our garden is beautiful. Um, I must say for having a rented thing, we have a lovely garden.  It has, uh, kind of scuppered us a bit. Because I mean, when we're looking at houses When we're looking at properties, we're like, Oh, but the garden's not as good.

And I have to forget, like, but we'd own this. Yeah, yeah. And that would be better. Yeah. Um, but because our garden now, it's really long. Like it's a nice It's big. garden. I mean, it's not very  toddler friendly in the sense that it's very wild. Yes. Um. Like, very uneven, there's lots of dangerous things in it.

Once again, we would probably put a load more effort into rectifying all that if we owned it, but like, there's not a massive incentive to like, completely revamp the garden when we don't own it.  But I'm saying the garden is nice for most rented. I would just want to say we are quite privileged. It's quite a nice house and a nice garden.

If you don't own your house, but you know you're going to be there for so long. You know the time scale you're going to be there.  And this could apply to all sorts of places, professions, where you go somewhere for a set time. You know, when we were at university, you know, we, we knew we would be there for a year or we knew that we'd be there for a maximum three years.

We had a kind of time scale on, you know, what it looked like. For us, we're constantly in that weird limbo of wanting and trying to move forward. And not knowing how long we will be here for. Yeah. So we've encountered this problem now, where it's like, Well, Lily's gonna be coming up to school age next September.

And what do we do about things like that? Cause we don't know where we're gonna be. Yeah. We don't know how far in the future to plan for being here. And we know from like our experience of getting very far in the process of almost buying a house, it does take a while. Yeah. Like it can take a few months for everything to go through.

And that affects all sorts of things. Like the last episode we did was all about making friends. As parents and, you know, connecting with, with other mums and dads we meet in our locality and that's a challenge when we're not sure how long we're going to be here for. It makes you sometimes a bit less invested in the local community because we're not sure where we're going to end up.

Yeah, it's true.  So yeah, just, you know, throwing that out there as loads of other Kind of challenges that pop up through this scenario that we found ourselves in, you know, I've had to come to terms with accepting just life for what it is, you know, like that things don't always turn out the way you want it to, because I had this grand vision, I think, beforehand that we would, you know, we would buy a house, then we would have kids, and we would be settled, you know, I had an order in my head in which I thought we would do things And we have not done that.

And I've had to just kind of  accept that.  I think that's fair and I think this is hard when we've come from a generation where  And this is maybe because we both came from middle class families, but like, so my family always owned their own home. Mmm. Um, which then you just assume that's what you'll do. 

So this has brought us quite naturally into a segment that, uh, is coming back. What time is it, Emma? I don't know. It's the 90s!  I paused and then remembered. I like that it throws you every time.  It's true, we don't, we don't bring this segment in every episode. No, this is what I was thrown. And then I thought, wait a minute, I remember this.

It doesn't apply to every topic, but this one it does apply to. Um, where we take a look back at what things were like when we were growing up. Predominantly in the 90s and early 2000s.  And what's changed and what's different and what's different about the context of um, our upbringing and our children's upbringing now.

True, yeah. So go on then, uh, tell us a bit more about your  Situation we all know you grew up on a farm farm and my dad basically inherited his home Yeah, we always had a house that was ours that we lived in So that it is different Uh, and I think probably similar for a lot of farmers that they've not been through the process of buying a house Because it is a generational family.

The first house dad bought was when he retired. Yeah Yeah, because then obviously he had to move out So it's really interesting for your dad and I suppose for you as well that you know that that was a family home that they lived in Yeah, generationally. You know, you grew up in the same home your entire childhood.

Yeah, yeah. And for your dad, I know there were, he did move, like, there were other houses, weren't there? He didn't, did he grow up in that house? He grew up in that house. Oh, okay. Um, but they built another house on the other side, a bit of the farm. Yeah, again, quite a common practice. Yeah, yeah. I wasn't sure which house he'd grown up in.

No, no, he grew up in that one. Yeah, so he spent his whole life in that house. Yeah, yeah.  I think, you know, sometimes I don't always recognize the, what that must be then to have sold the farm at that point. That, that a house he's got. Grown up in, that he's worked his entire life. As a child I got confused because obviously Nana's house was the other house.

Yes. So when she told me stories, I just imagined them all in her house. Yeah, so I think that's what was confusing me just now. Yeah, yeah. But obviously then like, when she was saying about how she used to be in  our farmhouse and what she used to do in my head, I was like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, no, of course.

That makes sense. You'd have been in a bigger house. You wouldn't have been in this small house. But I would say we weren't wealthy. So it's not dissimilar from what these stations do here.  Like everything was kind of bodged. Nothing was like done to like, I mean mom, mom tried her best. She got decorators in and stuff.

But because we didn't have everything had to go back into the farm. We didn't have a lot of money to go Oh, we'll fix it.  You know, when we get a professional in, it'd be like, well, what can dad do  to make this work? So it's a good point and probably one for the the positive column, isn't it? About if you don't have the money to, you know, like, what do you do if there's something goes wrong and you don't have, and there's a temptation also to save as much money.

So you kind of just do bodge stuff or do stuff yourself. You don't get professionals in. And so in that sense, Renting, maybe, you know, having a landlord or an agent that sorts all that out for you. Yeah. You might end up in a nicer house. Because I can remember when we used to visit, if it rained a certain way, we'd always have a leak. 

Yeah, yeah, we've, we chatted a little bit about this in our episode about North and South and our different upbringings. Yeah.  I was always very impressed that your dad had managed to do all these things. Oh yeah, he was very good really, like self taught, tried anything. I don't know how legal it all was, but like doing all the electric, electrics and,  you know, uh, all sorts of stuff in the house and building barns and Well even in the sheds, like he'd done most of the electric stuff.

Yeah, yeah, very impressive. Yeah, building all the pens, and That's right, he's very excited for when we move because he loves the project. Well, both our dads are, like, really keen to do stuff, aren't they? They are. Yeah, yeah. And again, it's a little bit of a shame because I think they, they both would have been loved to be so involved in helping us move, in helping us make a house our own, and you know, just naturally because it has taken longer, it means our parents are older, and you know, it means they probably won't be as involved as they might have been five, ten years ago.

But yeah, so anyway, for me, it's a different context, um, because you may know if you're a long time listener, you know, my dad was a Baptist minister, so I grew up as a child of, uh, someone who worked for the church, and, uh, if you're not familiar, like a, what's it, a vicar? Yes. Gets a vicarage. Um, you know, we get given a house as part of that, and so we had a manse that we grew up in.

And that's, I don't know, I don't know what you think of, like, the stereotype with that, but not like. You know, when I think of a vicarage I think of like Miss Marple times, you know But it wasn't like a grand grand old house next to a big church But like they're not Anglicans more typically just a bog standard house that just happens to be owned by the church I will say that most vicarages I've known have been very nice.

They're still, yeah. That was probably ten, twelve years ago when I last was in one, but they were still pretty, um,  pretty nice. But it does mean, along with quite a few of our friends and colleagues and listeners who are involved in the church, and, you know, we have a lot of minister friends, um, and who are in houses that they don't own.

So it's a bit different from renting, but you know, I grew up in a house that my parents didn't own. didn't own.  Um, or at least, yeah, you know, partly. Initially we were in our own house and then later in our own house, but for the most part in the middle, Yes. we were in a house owned by the church. Thinking about it from Lily's perspective now, she has no concept of the fact that we don't own this house.

No, no. And I don't think, you know, I don't think we should worry too much. Oh yeah, about the effect, yeah. And I don't, you know, maybe it's just my parents didn't  put as massive a stamp on it. on the house as we would like to, but, you know, you could still do stuff in that context. I don't know what it's like in other churches and things, but for us, you know, we could make changes to the house as long as the church kind of agreed to it.

Yeah, I think, um, and a lot of people get almost a budget towards their month for what they can do when they first move in. We don't really have another experience to compare it to. Yes. Do you know what I mean? I can't imagine having one house that was our entire, you know, I don't have a home that I think of that's like, that was my entire childhood because we lived in three different houses.

Yeah. I think a lot of us have this sense of, like, if we think of our childhoods, there isn't just one house,  whereas for you, you have one house that was your home. Yeah, I actually think mine's very rare though, because other than other farmers kids, I guess. It'll be an interesting challenge, you know, we'll have to talk about it on another podcast when eventually God willing, we do manage to buy  a house and move, uh, to talk about, you know, how we navigate that with Lilly, with children, with two children.

Yeah. And how we communicate that to them, how they settle with it. I mean, we are kind of grateful, I think, to some extent, that we're, we're not ending up doing it in, you know, real quick. You know, it's a lot of change. We were worried at one point that we would have a new baby and immediately be moving.

And then Lily obviously would be changing nurseries, and I was like, that is so much change for a little person to go through. There'd be so much change for her all at once. So, um, so we have been quite relieved in some ways that it fell through. She's only going to have maybe one change at once, hopefully.

It's staggered a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because moving is a big deal and I remember it being a big upheaval for me when we moved. Well, I remember, um, my sister Becky, once again in France, they lived in a tiny little flat they were renting before they bought their house. I think, I can't remember how old Nassie was and he was heartbroken.

Yeah. And Becky was going, we're going from this tiny flat  to like a beautiful home. Yeah. But of course to him the flat was his house. Mm.  So he was really upset, um, and it took for him a while to get used to the idea that this was now his home. I mean, to you, when you were growing up, again, maybe it's different because presumably you shared a room with at least one of your sisters.

Um, whereas I had my own room, but like, did you, because you owned your house, did you like personalize your rooms at all? Um, Um, we weren't allowed to, well, this is because of my parents, we didn't paint the walls, but we did a thing where, like, every so often, mum would, like, put a little bit of money aside and you could decorate your room, so you could change, like, the theme, like, the curtains and the bedding and maybe some ornaments,  which I'm quite keen to do, because that was quite fun.

Me and my parents, we didn't really do that, and I don't know that that was particularly  That wasn't because we were, we didn't own our house. And I don't think that was because of money. Um, it was just. Because it's how we were. Yeah, well you might not have cared, really. Yeah, I don't know, it's just not, never something that, you know, it was never suggested to me, and it never occurred to me that I would decorate my room, I may, I don't know.

Is it a girl or boy thing? I've no idea. I was an only child, so I have nothing really to compare it against. Yeah, so go off. Um, I would say,  If people who know my parents at all, they're the sort of people that you give them like, a theme or an idea and they run with like, you've got to be careful.  If you say you like anything, they'll really like go to town on that.

So I remember as a kid being like, what's your favourite colour? And at the time I said red. So I did end up with a bedroom where Everything was red, like, we didn't paint the walls, but, like, my bed was red, my desk was red, my wardrobes were red, everything was red, my duvet covers were red, cause mum was like, well you like red, and now we know everything you own is red, and like, even by the time I went to university, Everything I was sent with to university was red. 

Looking back it seems so strange. You commit then, you colour. I feel like by the time I was a teenager I was like, I would really like a different, I'd like to change this. I would like a different theme, but like it was too late by that point. Too late, you don't want to go on. That was it.  But like you as a quadruplet, you like, I'm, you've talked before about you had different colours with the four of you that were your colour.

Did you have a thing like that where?  Your items had to be that colour or not? No, um, it was purely we had clothing that when we were little it was clothing mainly so we knew people knew who was who  Um, so they were like, oh well Emma would always be in purple or green And then like Becky will always be in blue laurel being yellow and Kirsty being red and that's how how come Your three sisters had one colour and you ended up with two colours.

So  Originally, I was purple  But we had a child minder Called Sheila.  And I was her favourite, apparently, and her favourite colour was green.  So she slowly started getting me, I think, a lot of green things.  And that then became, like, my other color. Okay. Is purple or green your favourite colour? I do like purple.

Yeah? But now I'm starting to wonder whether it was because I was brainwashed.  Because it's fascinating, because I, other than the fact that, you know, I work for the Methodist Church whose colour is red. Um, I really, I'm not a big fan of the colour red. Well I do, I do quite like purple. Um, I also quite like green, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But I would say, I don't know if I have like, we will say, what's your favourite colour? We both like blues really.  I've leaned these days more heavily into like earthy colours. Yes. So I'm quite a big fan of like  Autumnal  in your yeah, like browns and grays and like nice muted kind of Mustards and oranges and you've looked at our podcast  Oh, yeah, basically the podcast colours because I designed it.

I picked all my favorite colors  It's true I've got quite into okra. Yeah, I There we go. Um, to kind of, um, cap off this conversation, shall we touch a little bit on, um, what, you know, when we get a house, what, what are the kind of amendments and things you'd like to do? What are the big things, you know, let's give the listener an idea of, you know, obviously there's things like painting walls, but what are the things that we can't do now because we rent?

A, I want a playroom. Okay, um, which I know this is a privilege so we might not end up with one, but I've we could find a little alcove yeah, or Something and I really like the idea where you can paint part of the wall with like, um that black chalk paint And then they can draw in chalk on that bit of the wall Yeah, you've told me this before and i've seen other things where you can get like Mirrors in the shape of little dinosaurs that you can put on the wall for them to look at.

Yeah. Yeah  I'm quite ambitious Because I was thinking that'd be such a fun playroom to be in. I do, I do worry about encouraging kids to draw on the wall. Yes, I did worry about that. But I thought if they know it's like chalk and that's the only bit of wall they draw. Because let's face it, by the time we move, Lily will be old enough to know better.

It's true. I mean, this is Sony the little one. This is the, this is the thing, isn't it? Like, in our heads, we've been imagining for quite a few years that we're looking for a house that would be suitable for little children. Yes, yeah. Um. And we have We all in them will be little. Yeah, uh, we, we also do, we are, we're a bit wacky.

I like, if we were really let loose, we would both, like, paint the outside of our house Oh, we would, yeah. Really wacky colours. Yeah.  We're really both like the up house. Yeah, from the Pixar film Up. Um, and I know like, it won't be, that's like a very American style house that you can do that with. And ours is likely to be like red brick.

Yeah, I don't know what you can do with that, but we will find a way.  You would love to put like a really brightly coloured door? Yes. On the house? Yeah. I've already, I've said to Elliot, I really want a yellow door and he's, he said he doesn't want a yellow door. I'm, I'm really into having like themed rooms.

Yeah, these are our hopes and dreams. Yeah.  Then we'll move eventually and we'll be like, we're exhausted, we can't possibly think of doing anything.  Yeah, that's it, isn't it? I mean, that's the thing. I mean, we It'd be interesting to know from people who do own their houses, I mean, maybe the problem is, once you have kids, you just don't have time to do anything.

Well, I say, my sister Kirstie's constantly doing her house up. Yeah, yeah. So I've already said to her when we move I'm going to basically hire her to just  do stuff for us. 

So Elliot, do we have any comments from our listeners?  We've had a few people message in some stuff relating to this topic today. A few people who are in similar situations where they don't own their own house and, uh, yeah, just feeling frustrated and hate not being able to make their house their own, like things like painting walls and whatnot.

Very similar to kind of everything we've mentioned really, but yeah, some of my colleagues and friends who are ministers who are in church houses and again that kind of Not sure how long they'll be there for and don't know how you know How much time resources emotional kind of stuff to pump into the house whether you know, they might leave in a couple of years Um, and just all that.

Yeah, we've touched on all of that in the episode, but yeah, it seems like people do have very similar experiences. And again, saying like when you have little kids, it's like a challenge to find the time to do all this stuff. So there's things people would like to do and they might one day get around to it, but we're not sure if we ever will. 

That's very relatable. I remember, um, growing up my, um, my older sister Charlotte, because we've got quite a big age gap between, um, Me and my quadruplet sisters and my two older sisters. Um, and I remember  They always said things that were like half painted, like the bathroom was half done for an awful long time.

And then like, another room was like, it'd been painted up to a point and then not finished because obviously they had three kids, like it was a lot of work and, so I always remember that growing up, that it was like an almost completed  project a lot of the time. Another comment we've had in was, um, someone saying they were really happy that on our Instagram stories I'd posted about I'd had a day out with them.

If you'd listen to our last episode, a recent episode, um, the funny stories, one with outtakes we mentioned in the parenting achievement segment about how Lily had rapidly turned on me and was not, not my greatest fan at the moment. And that does seem to be turning around. It does quite quickly, actually.

She needs to be getting a bit better.  So thank you to everyone who's, uh, who's tuned in. commented on on that story on social media  and uh was saying it was a kind of heartbreaking hearing  lily was uh was not my biggest fan and yeah i don't know i yeah it is what it is i kind of i rolled it yeah it is a bit it you know it was a bit of a challenge at the time but  It's just like, it's just like all parenting, isn't it?

You just  kind of, I don't know, get on with life. Nothing lasts forever. Yeah. Right, well thank you for joining us in today's episode, down under the ground in our little burrow with the bunnies. Oh yes, forgot we were underground. You're not a big fan of this one? No. This imaginary place? Well, I don't want to be sat in dirt.

Oh. But you're a big fan of, uh, you know, like the hobbit hole one. It's very clean hobbit holes. Oh, okay. Well, it's a clean little bunny's, uh,  Um, I was gonna say hovel, but that's not, that's not gonna convince you. I'm not, no.  It's a very, it's a very clean and tidy and cozy little burrow. Made by a little cute rabbit that goes But you said I had to sit on the sofa that was made of mud. 

Oh, um, well, it's got a lovely blanket over it. It's very, it's very soft and snuggly. It doesn't sound warm. The, uh, the, the burrow, the burrow is the internet and the, the little cosy sofa is the podcast and we are the little rabbits and we sit there with our little friends, our little nature friends and we go squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak.

Do rabbits squeak?  It's getting a bit crazy. It must be the end of the episode. Thank you  Good night. Goodbye. Good morning and sleep well, God bless