It's also not about that tv-show. Nope. In fact it's pretty personal.
Feel free to zone out.
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| Xam: Help - I'm looking for a house |
T and I have been living in our current house for a year-and-a-half now. At first we hated it: the house is miles away from the city centre, and not nearly as charming as our two little houses near the Amstel river were. (click here for a post about that living situations)
But we didn't really have a say in the matter: we simply had to move. We had agreed to temporary housing conditions.
Over time we started to grow into liking this (much larger) apartment, which unfortunately comes with the same kind of conditions: the building will be demolished one day. When that day comes we'll have to pack our bags (and sofa, and washing machine, and dining table) and leave.
We agreed to the conditions and kept our eyes open to try to find another place to live, which isn't that easy in a city like Amsterdam.
What makes it even harder is that both T and I work as independent designers, which means we don't have a regular pay-check to reassure potential landlords. That said: we haven't missed a single payment of rent ever.
Last year everything changed when we found out I was pregnant. Our first reaction was to start a frantic search for a new place. Unfortunately we pretty soon came to the conclusion that it was simply too difficult to find a new house at that time. We then decided to instead do our current temporary house up, so the baby would at least be born in a nice environment.
Newspapers were full of housing corporations that are postponing or even canceling renovation projects, so we figured we would be 'safe' for a while, and could spend some time saving up to buy (instead of rent) a house one day.
We redecorated the entire house. By the time Xam came to join us in November, our apartment looked design-magazine worthy, and -more importantly- was a welcoming home for our new baby boy.
In the beginning of December, while i was still very much recovering from Xam's birth (it had been an emergency c-section) and all of us were enjoying our new lives as a family, we got a message from our housing company: They would be around on Wednesday December 12th to check on the apartment (they would do so once in a while), and would have important information for us about the scheduled demolition.
We had been talking about the demolition plans with fellow inhabitants of our building, and had agreed they would probably be postponed, like so many other large-scaled projects in the city.
Anyway, i didn't feel troubled in anticipation of the 'important information'.
Boy, was i wrong.
Two girls of the company came in. They did their best not to look at the very obviously recently born baby in my arms, didn't congratulate me, but instead started their talk with "As you've probably heard..." and ended it with "...your house needs to be empty by March 26th."
I managed to keep a straight face while the girls were there.
No sooner were they out the door, or the gravity of the whole situation started to sink in:
How on earth are we going to find a new place to live before March?
And that's basically where we stand now: We're trying everything we can to find a new affordable house for our little family. Preferably somewhere we don't have to worry about being forced to move again anytime soon.
But a month has passed and we are nowhere nearer to finding a place to live.
The stress of it all is slowly starting to break me up.
I just thought you should know.
Maybe you can help?
