Moving Home

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GUEST OBSERVATION
To make a success of moving home, to the country for example, it helps to be open to the ways a place will change you. 
Many people move in the summer months, but not everyone realises that moving starts a process of identity transformation that never really stops.
I first noticed something about place changing a person when I moved to Canada. While Canada and Australia share many similarities, there were still significant differences. The clothes worn were one, and occasionally a phrase would seem unfamiliar. I was teased for saying “queue” instead of “line up”, and “no worries” instead of “no problem”.
When I moved back to Australia, to tropical Cairns, I found myself in a world that moved on “tropical time”. It could hardly have been more different from the fast-paced world of North America. I had to adapt
Identities are created and evolve in <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199874002/obo-9780199874002-0030.xml" target="_blank">places</a>. Places can be physical, geographical areas and can also be places inhabited virtually, including online games, forums and blogs, or in discourse, such as books and magazines. These places continually shape our identities, changing as we live our lives day by day.
When we move to a new house, especially if it’s a big move such as from city to country or from one country to another, the process of moving inevitably changes us. For a start, we are now a newcomer and the “locals” will speak of us that way. That shapes how we are perceived and perhaps even whether and how we are accepted socially. The norms and morés of the new community may influence us in other ways, even prescribing how we are “supposed” to act in the new area.
‘City girls’ and ‘country girls’
In my <a href="https://eprints.usq.edu.au/34713/" target="_blank">recent research</a> into how media affect lifestyle migrants in rural Queensland, I looked at how place changes people. Many of the women I spoke to described themselves as a “city girl” or a “country girl”. These women framed their identity in relation to their location.
The women who called themselves a “city girl” often chose activities that took them to places where they felt they could relate more – such as the shops, galleries and other amenities of the city. Their identification with the city resulted in weaker bonds locally and sometimes meant that they chose to return to the city. Certainly, they were less satisfied with country life.
On the other hand, women who identified as a “country girl” engaged in activities accessible in their rural locations, including crafts, cooking, gardening and outdoor activities. Their free time reinforced their emplaced nature and strengthened their ties to their place and the people in it. They adapted to being in the country and were happy with where they lived.
How do you adapt to your new life?
Knowing what to do in certain places is a form of capital, as <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756384/obo-9780199756384-0083.xml" target="_blank">Pierre Bourdieu</a> outlines. Capital describes the knowledge needed to play the game in a particular place.
There are different types of capital, including cultural, economic and educational. Knowing how to act when working at a major company, for example, is different from knowing how to get on when unemployed. These are different fields, which require different capitals. One requires corporate smarts, the other stipulates smarts in various other areas.
Even if our fields don’t change as dramatically as described above, we still use differing capitals when at work, at home, with friends and as a parent. The way we learn how to act, or adapt, is achieved through the expansion of what’s called habitus.
Ordering coffee is part of many people’s daily ritual, but don’t expect a cafe on every corner outside the city. 
Habitus is the stuff we do without thinking – the beliefs, norms and ways of doing things that are a part of us. If we were in a witness protection program, these are the things that would trip us up and lead the bad guys to us. It’s simple stuff, like ordering coffee a certain way, or bigger things like thinking about the world through a particular framework or liking blue or living in the city.
To expand our habitus, we need to see new ways of doing things and imagine these for ourselves. This could happen by watching TV shows, reading books, travelling to other parts of the world or seeing someone else do something differently. It’s hard to change habitus, because we need to be open to new ideas that permeate our reality and we need to like them enough to decide to adopt them and let them become a part of us.
When we move, we are changing the field we occupy. To adapt to this, we watch how other people play the game and, to fit in, we most likely adopt these ideas within our habitus and change a bit. At the same time, we might influence the people around us, changing them a little bit too. It works dynamically.
So, yes, moving countries or to the country from the city is an identity-altering project, and the more the fields are different, the more we have to adapt.<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109225/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;">
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/rachael-wallis-568028" target="_blank">Rachael Wallis</a>, Lecturer and Research Fellow, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-southern-queensland-1069" target="_blank">University of Southern Queensland</a>
This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-moving-house-changes-you-109225" target="_blank">original article</a>.
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j.ballantyne1990-6AQqhLzZaK

How moving house changes you: Rachael Wallis

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Australian home buyers spend an average of $1,618 on the cost of physically moving home, equating to $863 million a year, says a recent ING research.
The average total cost of moving was based on 1.6 million households moving in the last three years. 
Relocation costs includes the cost of packaging, removalists, cleaning and reconnecting utilities.
Half (50%) of Australian home buyers do not budget for costs associated with moving, while 48% said they spend over their estimated budget, according to ING’s Cost of Moving Home report.
The research was conducted by Galaxy Research on behalf of ING in September 2017 with a sample of 602 Australians aged 18-64 years, distributed across Australia. 
“When saving to move home it’s important to put aside some money for the actual move itself. Our research shows many Aussie home buyers are left empty handed by the unexpected costs of moving from one home to another,” said Tim Newman, ING’s head of product. 
The costs extend to other areas as well. Nearly 3.24 million working days in total are lost every year from homebuyers taking time off work to pack, move and unpack, the report said.
More than half (59%) of Australian home buyers said they took time off work to move, with the average amount of leave taken per person being 3.5 days. 
Many (53%) of the respondents were frustrated with the extra costs associated with moving home. 
Top of the list was ‘the extra trips you have to make to get things’ (33%). Following this, ‘when things are broken or scratched’ (24%), ‘extra removalist fees’ (13%) and ‘insurance costs’ (8%). 
Newman suggested that the cost of moving homes could be reduced by almost $1,000 if home owners chose the DIY approach. 
“While the average cost of moving is $1,618, if you are willing and able to move without a removalist, the cost is significantly less: an average of $624 according to our report.” 
Home buyers can also recoup money spent on the cost of moving by looking at other ways to save when it comes to the costs associated with their property. 
According to research on switching by ING, Australians who switched their home loan provider within the last two years made an average annual saving of $1,073 per household per year. 
“Home owners might want to look at switching their home loan to get a better deal, particularly when they move, considering the savings that can be made,” said Newman. 
“When this saving ($1,073) is offset against the average cost of moving home ($1,618), home buyers can effectively recoup quite a significant proportion of the cash spent on moving fees.” 
Newman’s top three tips for saving costs on moving homes are: 
<ol>
<li>DIY – Save on the cost of moving home by doing it yourself. The average cost of moving independently is $624, compared to the cost of having a removalist do everything – that’s pack, move and unpack – which comes in at an average cost of $3,655. 
</li>
<li>Consider switching your home loan to recoup expenses – Aussies who switched their mortgage in the last two years have, on average, saved more than $1,000. If you have a home loan, it is worth considering your options.  
</li>
<li>Have a garage sale – Moving presents the perfect opportunity to spring clean your belongings. Organise a garage sale to sell any unwanted items before you move, reducing the amount of items to be packed, as well as offering the chance to recoup some cash ahead of those unexpected moving costs.</li>
</ol>
The research was conducted by Galaxy Research on behalf of ING in September 2017 with an online permission-based panel.  
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Moving Home

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