We found a new place to live

The newspapers have been saying it, and we've been seeing it - the Sydney rental market is a nightmare. No-one can afford to buy, so they keep renting. Less places means more competition, means more can be charged. Great.

Plus at this time of the year you've got all the students looking.

We inspected about 15 places in two weeks. Even at the dullest, daggiest, darkest, smallest places there were more than 20 other groups of people there. Most of the places looked nothing like they were described. The really good-looking places were somehow filled before they were even open for inspection. It was looking dire. We were so pessimistic we put an application in for a place with an outside dunny.

For a laugh, we applied for the two best places we saw. Both had queues of people down the garden path and out onto the street. To our utter surprise we were offered both and could take our pick!

So we've got a one-storey terrace house on a quiet street in Alexandria. It's not far from the enormous Sydney Park. It's not that close to public transport that we could see, and it's quite alot further from the city than our Paddington place, but it is by far the best place we inspected.

It has a courtyard, fresh floorboards and paint. We'll both be able to work from home.

Meanwhile this place is in that awful packing transition phase - half-packed boxes everywhere demanding attention, piles of recycling and stuff to throw away or sell at a garage sale.

But it's actually been liberating - we've been culling like crazy. We're returning to a little old life without flatmates, so we can get rid of the 24 non-matching sets of cutlery, the cheap linen, the airport novels. It's going to be a new, light, fresh kind of place. Oh god, how married and settled does that sound???