Moving to Barbados: Find a Place to Live

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I failed to mention in my last blog post that selling the house was a spawned task from my original list- Task 2: Find a Place to Live. We felt we couldn't look at a new place until we started to sell the current place. In hind sight not sure why those things couldn't have run in parallel but I am sequence kind of gal so here we are. So with selling the house, we could fully initiate Find a Place to Live.

This would seem pretty straight forward right? Search up on AirBnB and done.

We started to find however, our requirements for a home were narrowing our options, one being we had a fluid house of 5 people so 4 bedrooms would need to be our minimum. Apparently there are not a lot of 4 bedroom homes on the island that are not a billion dollars.

We also would like a number of bathrooms to accommodate this said 5 people so a minimum of 4 bathrooms. (we have three girls in that mix so cast all the judgement you want on us sharing bathrooms- you will understand if you have girls)

And we had a dog. I have a whole blog post dedicated to this piece of hot mess that we traveled here with but for now, you should know this adds complexity to our house search.

Lastly, we wanted something for 2 years. The expat contract would be for 2 years and we didn't want to hop from short term place to short term place. 

So all requirements are logged: 4 br/3-4 bath, pet friendly, 2 year contract.

Our search came up with plenty of homes in the 3 bedroom mark but had like 1 bathroom or that were 4 bedrooms but were not pet friendly. Even more daunting was that few were available for 2 years. 

Or we would find something but then someone would rent it out from under us. 

We finally found a place that was 8 bedrooms. 9 bathrooms, pet friendly and could do a 2 year contract. Ok a little more than we needed but it wasn't a billion dollars and it hit the mark. 

But, nothing ever comes that easy, and there was one catch- they wouldn't be available until January. The expat contract stipulated that we needed to be in country before the end of the calendar year however so we envisioned we would be making our way out in November.  This left us either taking this place starting in January and finding something else short term or, we keep searching for something available sooner. 

We initially opted to keep searching but the same challenges kept arising and pickings were getting slim as the peak season was upon us and places were getting rented out quicker than we could find them.

So we went back to our initial plan of taking the place to start in January. 

So now a new task was spawned since we have technically completed the 'find a place to live', that was called 'find a short term place to live'. This search proved to be complicated in its own right of course. We didn't need as many rooms/bathrooms (at this point the girls were going to stay back until the spring and COVID settled down) but short term villas/homes are often rented for just a few weeks at a time and we were asking for 2.5 months. Additionally we needed to have something that was quarantined approved or we could get approved. This required that the home is managed by a management company and not an individual and had cameras or security for monitoring to ensure we didn't break the quarantine rules for COVID in Barbados. It felt like there was some scope creep here but it was unavoidable.

Lucky Break- Our luck has been incredible during this entire journey and we will see it time and time again that things just- well- work out or we get a little bit of luck thrown our way. This was the first of many and it did 'just work out'. We found a lovely place that came with a few perks we didn't even bargain for: walking distance from the beach, a large pool, daily housekeeping, big kitchen with all the amenities, and they would allow the hot mess of a dog.

So Task 2: Find a Place to live and Task 2a: Find a short term place to live were now completed.

I would like to say like my last posts that things just worked out and fell into place. I would like to also say that if I had let go a little it would have probably all happened in the way that it was meant to.

None of that is true in this case. I had spreadsheets going of all the houses we were reviewing and keeping track of also the areas that were best for families to live in. I pm'd this task like the traditional project manager that I know that I am and I truly believe that is how we wound up getting it done in time. 

I had a very good friend who advised me that this whole experience is my opportunity to practice truly being agile. Learn to swerve I think she said. It's okay to have a plan (and people know I love a plan!) but be willing to adjust the plan- and move forward- quickly. That's the key word- quickly- I have a tendency to lament on why my original plan wasn't working, revisit requirements in a long process, or throw my hands up and say 'it's impossible- we will never move to Barbados'.  Ok that last comment is extreme but you see where I am going here- not being agile. 

I feel that being agile, is akin to the zen philosophy of going with the flow. If I can just swerve, be agile, go with the flow of things, life will not be as stressful. Right? I will make a plan though, just in case.

Comments

  1. FuscheDecember 23, 2020 at 5:46 PM

    You certainly do love a good plan ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownDecember 23, 2020 at 10:18 PM

    1. Things happen for a reason
    2. Go with the current. Don't worry about the bend coming up... The current will steer you around it

    ReplyDelete

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