Twitter sensation @mynamessarah3 talks about the all-too-familiar joys of moving

My name is Sarah and my husband is a senior Lance Corporal in the British Army.

My Darren is posted again so that means moving to yet another town and trying to squeeze our furniture like a giant game of Tetris into yet another magnolia box. Moving every two or three years in the army is normal to a forces family and MFO boxes become like currency. Once you get your posting order you go and visit your local MFO dealer and start packing.

If you’re moving far enough away you’ll get the coveted disturbance allowance payment which is the holy grail. Once that bad boy hits your bank account you’re like Rockafella booking removal firms, packers, cleaners, takeaways and B&Bs.

Every time you move you get the opportunity to thin out the kids’ toys and accumulated crap. On arriving at the new pad little Oscar is looking for his giant teddy Tedward, which stinks of rancid milk and is covered in crusty bogies and dribble.

“Mummy! Where is Tedward?” “Oh no! He must have got lost.” “Will we ever find him Mummy?” Meanwhile fungus the bogey ted is sat in a charity shop window looking at passersby with his one good eye. Accompanying Tedward is every noisy, annoying toy that your kids got for Christmas and that hideous bedding your mother-in-law bought you.

Cleaning your quarter to the standard expected so you don’t get billed is always a nightmare isn’t it? Nine times out of ten the housing officer will find something. They’ll be your best mate and lull you into a false sense of security when you move in. Don’t be fooled by this sheep in wolves’ clothing because they will become your nemesis when you march out.

You can have the smallest speck of soot under your cooker grill that can only be seen with the Hubble telescope or you can leave it caked in bacon fat and you’ll get billed the same amount. You may as well leave the stress scale at zero. It’s just not worth burning your own retinas out with oven cleaner.

Most quarters are held together with three foot thick paint and toothpaste. The carpets have been shaved closer than a stripper’s bikini line and the gardens have so many short-lifespan pets buried in them that if Time Team were to dig any of them up they’d be convinced there’d been an invasion of small rodents!

If you strike gold and get an overseas posting then you’re winning at life. The only downside of living abroad is the kids’ grandparents are in a different country which makes dropping them off for a weekend a bit tricky – not impossible, just tricky.

Also, you have to send off all of your worldly goods around three weeks before you move. So you all try to live in one room, after you’ve cleaned the others, with a few borrowed camping chairs, sleeping bags, a small TV from another era and reliance on the local laundrette or a neighbour’s washing machine to wash the two pairs of knickers and one bra you’ve left yourself.

“It’ll be like camping”, you tell the kids, which, by the way, does not wash if you’re unfortunate enough to be moving with teenagers.

Getting posted is hard. There are no hacks. Godspeed.

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