Effect Essay

  Three years ago we moved from our home of five years into a much larger house closer to my husbands business. We all welcomed this move although we knew that it would have both negative and positive effects on our lives. There was the money issue to think about, as always. And the fact that my daughter would be much further away from her friends was a pretty big deal to her. My husband and I were happy about the effect it would have on our commute to work every day; we can walk to work now and be there in 3 minutes.
  We knew that moving in to a larger house would mean more money out of our pockets to heat it during the winter months, but we had no idea of the over all cost. We made the big move in October, which is not the ideal time to try to figure out all of the quirks that a house can have. The place is equipped with radiant floor heating a large wood stove. We made the plan to utilize both of these because the floor is cement and we knew that it would stay cold. We bought 6 cord of wood, which cost us about $1,800 and would have been more than sufficient if the floor was working correctly, and filled the oil barrel. (I don't even want to think about what that cost) Neither of us have ever lived in a home with radiant floor heating, but we are smart enough to know that it shouldn't take more than a week to start feeling the effects. Come to find out, the pipes in the floor were plugged solid and the water was not circulating. We were told that we couldn't turn the boiler off or the pipes in the ground would freeze. Wow, was that a long, cold, and expensive first winter in this house.
  I think moving had the biggest emotional effect on my daughter.  She was 13 at the time and her friends were her world. We had lived pretty much in the center of town and none of her friends were more than five minutes away. The new house is in a different town, out in the country, and she knew nobody close by. The first few weeks were hard on her, being stuck home as she called it, but soon she discovered that even though she was further away she could still have her weekend sleepovers.
  The biggest positive effect of moving was the fact that the new house is directly beside his business. He feels much more secure living next door because he can make nightly inspections to check for thieves or possible fires in the summer months. If one of the truck drivers needs to leave early in the morning he can just walk over and unlock the gate to let them out, then come back home for his morning coffee. We do save money being this close to work because neither one of us has to commute, we can just walk there and walk home.
  We have all adjusted well to the effects of moving into a larger house. We finally got the heating issue fixed, but it still costs us considerably more money to heat this place than the last. My daughter has since started high school and made friends closer to us, and Jason still enjoys his morning walks to work unless there's a blizzard happening, then he'll take his truck. Moving can be stressful on everyone involved, but we worked it through and made the new house our home.