This year has been punctuated by far too many moves. After finally securing a rental house for under $300/week – and yes, at that price it is infested with termites – my thoughts tentatively drifted to the possibility of living in the same accommodation for more than three months (!). With this in mind, I set about making myself at home.
As if coming around from a terrible nightmare (i.e. the Perth rental market), my reverie focused on making the most of the situation – and I speculated that with any luck, I’d have my house off Fitzgerald Street for the entire summer.
It seems to be the way of share housing in your 20s: living arrangements form and dissolve just as quickly. The ‘helicopter kids’ phenomenon becomes the standard as leases run out, and finding a house before the inevitable move back to the parents becomes even more unlikely. Competing unsuccessfully against 20 or so identical ‘inner-city indie’ couples for that shite house on the major road (with only paint holding up the walls) can only add to the despondency of the situation. But I digress – that was August – and sitting comfortably in this sweatbox otherwise known as home, by late November I had settled in enough to began to plan for what promises to be an enjoyable festive season…
It’s amazing how easy it is to become accustomed to a lifestyle. Living within a five-minute ride from the city, anything past Vincent Street quickly became brushed off as ‘just too far,’ and my (slightly hypocritical) greenie tendencies of snubbing the car in favour of the bike have been allowed to flourish (now that it’s ultra-convenient).
But with extreme laziness (my refusal to drive to other people’s houses) comes great responsibility (I must therefore hold all the pre-drinks/barbeques/new-album-listening-parties). So in preparation for the mother of all pre-drinks: Daft Punk’s Never Ever Land tour, I set the household a more manageable task – the ‘My Housemate is Finally Purchasing a Home of Her Own’ party.
After all the ‘Rudd-slide’ on election night means more First Home Buyer policies are finally in the pipeline – mainly centring on the release of land, the provision of low-tax savings accounts, tax incentives for investors, and improvements to shared-equity legislation…
Having just returned from Exmouth with 6kg of tiger prawns in-tow, the purchase of a whole suckling pig from William Street seemed a little unnecessary for my outgoing housemate. So with the food sorted, and a firm BYO policy in place, the next step, inevitably, was the equipment. Not one to do things by halves, I borrowed a rather enormous projector off the boyfriend and set about rearranging my hi-fi system for 30 or so punters. In the middle of moving my rather bulky Sonys to somewhere more ‘acoustically appropriate’ outside, I got distracted by the thought of dedicated outdoor speakers.
Recognising I was probably jumping the gun a little on this one (given that I don’t own the house) a web search for outdoor sound still seemed like the perfect form of procrastination. I stumbled on the Sonace website and discovered that not only can you get speakers hidden in walls or ceilings, the outdoor range come designed to look like rocks.
I made a mental note for that far-away time when I have a spare couple of grand up my sleeve. I then got back to organising the Christmas lights and sorting out the ‘completely wrecked’ 50-year-old wooden benches from the ‘only slightly lop-sided’ 40-year-old ones. With the metal drum, a.k.a. ‘communal fireplace’ in position, my Sonys out of the way of the esky, and the asbestos freshly removed by our landlord, the backyard was pretty much set-up. The time had come to crash on my bed after a ‘hard’ two hours of preparation before the punters arrived.
Waking from my slumber, I wandered out to the kitchen and slipped into a conversation with my housemate. To my dismay, those unthinkable words were uttered: ‘I think it’s time to move’. So it seems, after an extended daydream of stable accommodation, it’s back on the rental roller coaster.
‘Bring on the First Home Saver Accounts’ I say.
