Week 52: Whitechapel

I moved into my new flat! I feel like a whole new person – youthful and rejuvenated. What did I do before I was perpetually stressed about this purchase?

A lot of our stuff is still in boxes, and probably will be for a while. I re-assembled all of our furniture and the bedroom and kitchen are pretty much done. Here are some pre-move photos of the place, I love it.

There’s a big Sainsburys nearby, we’ve wandered over a few times and it’s amazing having a big supermarket again after years of relying on the tiny ones close to Waterloo. There are also a bunch of markets in the area with an incredible array of fruit and veg. It’s all very exciting.

Fantastic Removals was great and definitely worth the extra cost over hiring a man and van type thing. It was the most stress-free move I’ve ever done, and we just managed it in one van load.

It was weird celebrating the move without a little champagne (we’re not drinking for October), then Alison brought us a Nozeco and popping a cork felt like enough 🍾

It’s so hard to know what changes to make to the flat immediately vs later. I’m going to make a spreadsheet so we can prioritise between furniture-buying and DIY.

I have been tinkering with some home automation stuff. Luke put me onto Shelly and I’ve been trialling some open source hubs on a Raspberry Pi. Getting everything set up without any big tech cloud services is gonna be fun.

Hyperoptic is amazing. Going from a patchy ~15MB to a consistent ~500MB over WiFi just makes everything easier. For a start, I don’t have to tether my phone every time I open my laptop. I tried switching to my own router, for a brief moment I was getting ~700MB but then I somehow managed to screw it up. I probably need a Rowan B to visit 👀

Anyway, I’m very happy and relaxed, which is worryingly unfamiliar.