Leaving the only place I've called home
We're in the last stretch
Hi! This is Leyla from A Day Well Spent, a newsletter about purposeful living.
What subscribers received recently:
Stories to restore your faith in humanity — life-affirming goodness!
Seeking out the seismic life shift — and is this a 10 year cycle?
You can subscribe with your email to ensure you never miss my posts:
If you’re new around here: my husband and I are uprooting our entire lives and moving from London to Portugal, to answer a calling to live off the land.
Earlier this week, the order we placed for the double-walled cardboard removals boxes, cardboard furniture edge protectors, a three foot wide roll of corrugated cardboard and packing tape arrived.
We’ve now booked in the removals company; they’ll be collecting our worldly possessions in just under three weeks, putting them on a lorry and sending them off to Portugal.
There’s a tonne of stuff we still need to drop off to the local charity shops. I’ve been putting off listing my big, beautiful houseplants for sale, plants that have brought me so much joy for so many years. Because of Brexit, they’re not permitted to come to Portugal.
I’ve deleted our account with the fab Suttons Community Farm that have supplied us with locally grown organic veg for years, and started looking up veg box schemes that will deliver to our new rental in Portugal.
We’re researching countertop water filters. We still need to buy a blow-up mattress so we have something to sleep on while we wait for our furniture to arrive.
There’s still so much we need to get done
I’ve been collecting the daily raspberries from the garden and wondering who will be picking these next summer. And how long it might be before I’m picking my own raspberries again. Probably years.
There have been many times between December 2024 (when we finally received planning approval for the house we will be building, after a 2.5 year wait) and now, when I’ve said to myself – so, this is really happening then.
This week has been another one of those.
I’ve lived in London my whole life. I was born and raised in southeast London suburbia, bordering Kent. I went to University in central London and we have lived in the southwest of the city for the past 15 joyful years.
London life is the only life I’ve ever known.
Even though I’ve been lucky enough to call one of the world’s most vibrant cities my home, I've said for a long time: London is wasted on me.
London is wasted on me
My brother, for example, is out every weekend (and often weekday evenings too) socialising, exploring new parts of the city, going to cool and interesting events, volunteering, attending improv class – generally making the most of what’s on his doorstep.
All I want to do is sit in my little garden, bake bread and ferment food. I remember one year, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to do or see something cultural in town at least once a month — I lasted for about three.
I’m a chronic homebody. I’m not really one to go out for a wander just for the sake of it (my amazing local National Trust park — where I do all my foraging — excluded).
I’d rather potter about the house, make it all clean and tidy, have something blipping away on the stove, do a great home workout and then watch the garden birds splash about in the container pond.
I’m also not a natural spender and I do not like shopping – my toxic trait is looking at something for sale and thinking, this is not worth that amount and I’m pretty sure I could just make it myself.
If a new local café opens up, I’m not especially interested – I’d rather enjoy a coffee at home while watching the bees. I like to occasionally go to restaurants, but I resent paying for something I think I could probably rustle up in my own kitchen (that toxic trait, again).
My husband needs to leave the house every day, even if that just means popping to the shops. Whereas I have been known to not traverse the front door threshold for over a week and delighted in this fact.
So yeah, London is wasted on me.