I’m so excited! We have finally found a place to call home – after being essentially homeless for months in Seattle after we rented our house but were still waiting for Mr Puffles’ paperwork to come through! It is a real challenge coming to a new city and not know which areas are good or not. I had gone online to a few online forums to see what people were saying about different areas and there was a definite opinions for the North side of Dublin and the South side. Because Mr Puffles’ job is located in the South side of the city, we knew that we wanted to live on that side as well to keep him commute as short and easy as possible.

When you move as a singleton or even when you are married, it’s so much less complicated because you can really almost live anywhere. But here, we had to think about 1) schools for the kids, 2) proximity to a good grocery store and the school since we wouldn’t have a car, and 3) proximity for Mr Puffles to get to work. He was recommend a couple of areas on the South side and we started our search there.

It was a frustrating process! The rental market in Dublin was such that if you went to see a house, another 20 people might also come through. With so many people looking, many owners obviously saw our four children and went with childless professional couples instead. However, we were very lucky and managed to find a small terrace house that ticked my boxes: 1) close to public transport for Jason, 2) walking distance to school, 3) walking distance to shops and grocery stores. Lucky for us, the owners were looking for a family and we squeezed our giant family into a small 3 bedroom, 3 bath home. For a more in-depth review of our renting ordeal, read more here.

So, here we are! We had rented in the city center for four weeks and there is a bit of an overlap for us to move our things into the new place. We don’t have a lot of stuff, but it is enough that it will take us a few days to carry what we do have on the train and then Mr Puffles will take the remainder of the luggage via taxi. The house comes furnished with beds, couches, tables, silverware, plates, etc. Everything we really need. Tomorrow, we will make the trek to Ikea to buy linens for the beds and other miscellaneous things.