Home Sweet Home: An ode to moving back in with Mum When I was 26, I counted the number of places I’d lived. Eight. Eight houses, eight sets of flatmates in eight completely different areas of London.
But my time galavanting about town, packing up my entire life into bin bags and suitcases once a year to move on to bigger and better (and more and more expensive) places, had to come to an end. Because I’d also worked out I’d spent about as much on rent as a deposit for my very own home. So I stopped, sobbed and vowed to never be exploited again.
I packed my things up, took them ‘home’ to my mum’s in the suburbs and went off on the adventure of a lifetime. Three months spent rent-free and roaming the world. But when I returned in January to the cold, miserable suburbs and the prospect of living with my family for the first time in almost a decade, the penny dropped. Hard. My parents are divorced, so didn’t have to think about dealing with dad, just mum (who is really truly brilliant, despite her inability to stop asking needless questions).
But my dear brother was more of a problem. He’d also had the bright idea to move home. Apparently he was starting some slick new business and needed a rent-free period to get it underway.
My mum had pre-empted a freakout about rooms and had done some rearranging: ‘We all have a room for an office and a room for a bedroom!’ She said, with a look of pure maternal glee on her face. Yep, her babies (33 and 28, respectively) were back. But my brother looked nonplussed, ‘Anyway, I have important work to be getting on with’ he said, puffed out his chest and stalked back to his ‘office.’
See, my brother and I could not be more different if we tried. He is very corporate and straight down the line. I’m an artist with no interest in getting rich quick but instead seeking a little freedom from the 9-5. My mum’s creative, so I thought she’d get me, but I’m not sure she does.
I tried to spark conversations with openers like ‘It’s shit to be home isn’t it bro?!’ but he only ever replied like “Can’t you see I’m busy?” - so I began to know my place. Just like when I noticed his habit of needing the phone every time I was using the internet (we live in the middle of nowhere, you absolutely don’t get both at the same time). Or the fact that if I leave my dirty dishes out, I am asked to clean up, but if he leaves his dirty dishes out, I am asked to clean up.
My mum even once proudly told me that she’s become his company secretary. 'I have two duties. I have to answer the phone,’ she said, ‘and I have to clean the ashtray.’
Mum obviously hates the tension, and keeps trying to do awkward family dinners and outings where we all sit together and speak different languages until we can’t stand it anymore and I go to my room and he goes to his and mum goes to bed and that’s life.
But deep down, I know my brother is embarrassed. He’s highly intelligent and one day he’ll succeed, yet here he is, a thirty-something, back home with mum and little sis. It must drive him mad. I’m friends with my mum. We do things together, we talk and share and cry and complain. But he is always too busy, trying to prove himself to himself in order to be a ‘man’. The irony is, I think I’ll move out of here first. Probably because I’m less desperate to.
Because of course, there are a few good things about being back home. My house comes equipped with a 'laundry fairy'. No one has ever actually seen her apart from my mum, but she’s great. We also have an excellent free taxi service (Mum’s Cars) to ferry us back and forth to the station. We also have a magic list on the fridge. If you add names of things to it, the items you write down appear in the house the next day. As well as being given a breather from London, I’ve got the freedom to travel, to pursue my creative passions and all because the rent here is dirt cheap: One hug a day. Everything would be great if it wasn't for the constant reminder, in the bedroom down the hall from me, that you should never, ever live with your siblings past the age of 18.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.