Unpacking: August

A month of moving out, living in limbo, getting ahead with work, finding a new routine and watching our first home finally come together.

August has basically been one long moving day. I knew it was going to be busy, but I don’t think I fully appreciated just how much goes into moving out of one home when you’re not actually moving straight into the next one. We’re now officially in our temporary apartment, most of our life is sitting in storage, and I think we’re both still recovering from the last few weeks.

Ever since we moved to Dubai over 10 years ago, and I’ve actually lost count of exactly how long it’s been now, we’ve rented. Our landlord sold the apartment we were living in, which meant we had to vacate by a certain date, and I think that finally gave us the push to do something we’d been talking about for years. We bought our first home in Dubai!

Obviously we couldn’t just buy somewhere and move in. That would’ve been far too easy. We decided to renovate the entire apartment from scratch, and when I say renovate, I mean everything came out. Flooring, kitchen, bathrooms, ceilings, doors, lighting, absolutely everything. There’s basically nothing in the apartment that isn’t going to be new by the time we move in.

The only problem was that our old apartment had to be vacated in the third week of August, and the new place won’t be ready until around the end of September. So we had just over a month where we technically had nowhere to live. Bobby found a serviced apartment for the 6 weeks in between, but that made the move so much more complicated because we weren’t just packing everything up and taking it to the new home.

We had to work out what we needed for 6 weeks, almost like packing for a very long holiday, except obviously it’s not a holiday because we’re still working. Everything else had to go into storage, so there was a lot of sorting, packing, deciding what came with us and trying to think ahead about what we’d realistically need.

On top of all of that, I knew I wouldn’t have my studio here, so I had to film around 10 weeks of YouTube content before we moved. I knew August was going to be a lot and I also knew I had to figure out how to get through it.

The packing was just as annoying as I thought it would be, but the filming was probably the part that really finished me off. I was filming 2 or 3 YouTube videos daily because I needed enough content to cover the whole time we’d be out of the studio and then a bit extra in case things got delayed. Then, right in the middle of all that filming, I got sick.

I couldn’t really stop filming because we had a moving date and I knew I wouldn’t have another chance to film everything, so I carried on. If you watch my YouTube videos regularly, you’ll probably be able to spot exactly when this happened because there’ll be a period where I clearly look and sound sick!

By the time we actually moved, Bobby and I were absolutely shattered. Work had been full on, the move was full on, the renovation was obviously still happening, and fitness definitely suffered, which I’ll get into.

Then there was Nico. I was probably more worried about him than I was about us because he’s moved once before and he knows what boxes and packing means. It normally takes him about a week to properly settle somewhere new, but this time I felt bad because we’re asking him to settle here, then in a around a month we’re going to pack everything up and move him again.

The first few nights were hard because he cried, and I hate hearing him cry…it was breaking my heart! I knew I had to let him settle rather than constantly going to him because that would probably make it worse, but it was horrible. Thankfully, about a week later, he’s absolutely fine and seems to have accepted that this is home for now. I think once he realized all three of us were staying here, he relaxed. We also took him to the old apartment when it was all empty and he kind of looked at us like “erm…where is everything?”. I think it actually helped him though.

I’m genuinely so glad I did all that batch filming because now I’ve got a proper break from filming YouTube, and I really needed it. I’m still filming Reels for Instagram, although I batch filmed quite a few of those before leaving too. If you follow me there, you’ll probably notice the setup looks different in some videos because I’m just working with what I have here. There’s no studio lighting setup or proper filming space, so I’m making it work.

It’s actually been really nice having a break from filming all the time. I know I’ll be excited to get back to it, especially because we’ve designed my new studio completely from scratch, but right now I’m enjoying having a bit of space from it. It’s giving me time to refresh myself.

I’m also really glad we decided to design the new home ourselves. We haven’t used an interior designer at all. I’ve designed how I want everything to look and feel, and Bobby has basically taken charge of anything that needs to actually function. He’s at the apartment every single day with the builders, checking measurements, details, fittings and things I wouldn’t even think to look at. He jokes to me about how I tell him what I want and show him my designs and then he has to figure out how to make it happen!

I actually love seeing him doing this because I’ve never really seen this side of him before. When his father was alive he helped him build their family home so he has extensive experience that I never got to be part of as I unfortunately I never got to meet his Dad. We work together, so I’m used to us being together pretty much all day. Now he gets up and goes to the apartment every morning, and it feels like he’s going off to work while I’m at home doing my thing. It’s such a weird change for us, but I can also see how much he’s enjoying having this project to get stuck into.

When it comes to the design, I really wanted our home to feel like us. We spend so much time at home anyway, so I don’t want it to be one of those spaces that looks amazing but doesn’t actually make you want to be there. I want it to feel warm, calm and comfortable. I wanted arches, a proper coffee station, certain textures and little details that make me happy, and then Bobby works out how we actually make all of those ideas happen.

I also don’t think you have to be an interior designer to design your own home…I completely respect the knowledge, training and experience interior designers have. The same way a stylist isn’t the only person who can style an outfit, and an artist isn’t the only person who can create something beautiful. I think being creative helps massively. If you work in a creative industry, you already think visually and you naturally pay attention to things like color, balance, proportion and how everything works together. I’ve never really looked at our home and thought, “I can’t do this because I’m not an interior designer.” If anything, I’ve felt more than capable of doing it myself because I know what I like, I know how I want the space to feel, and I trust my creative eye.

Even with all the stress, I’m really trying to enjoy this part because I know we’ll look back on it one day. We’ve never done anything like this before, and I feel very grateful that we get to create our first home together from scratch.

We’ve been so busy that I nearly forgot that we took a quick 2 night staycay a week before moving! I know! What were we thinking?! But it was so needed. We went as it was our anniversary and it actually helped to recharge before all the stress of moving. We went to Atlantis Royal again…our favorite place!

One of the nicest parts of leaving the old apartment was what we did with our furniture. Because we want to go into the new home with pretty much everything new, we had a lot of big things we weren’t taking with us, including our sofa, bed, cabinets and TV. Rather than selling everything, we decided to give all of it to some of the workers who’ve been renovating our new home.

A lot of them share accommodation and don’t necessarily have good quality furniture, so when they came to collect everything, seeing how happy they were made us feel so good about it. Nothing went to waste, and things that we’d enjoyed and used for years are now going into someone else’s home where they’ll hopefully get just as much use out of them. I hope it brings them so much joy!

Fitness definitely took a hit over the last month. Work was so busy and I was trying so hard to get ahead that I just couldn’t be as consistent with the gym. I made sure I did at least one full body session every week, but my diet wasn’t exactly great either.

Luckily, my PT Jasmine had me eating in a surplus because we’d been focusing on building strength, so the timing worked out pretty good. I had more flexibility with food anyway, which made the whole moving situation easier.

Now that we’re settled in our temp space, I’ve gone back to eating clean and I’m doing my workouts from home. There is actually a huge gym about 30 seconds away, but it’s always packed and that is basically my worst nightmare when it comes to gyms. I’ve always told Jasmine that I need to get my session done within an hour. If working out becomes a two hour situation because I’m waiting around for equipment, I know it won’t fit into my workday and it’s just going to annoy me.

So I told her I’d rather train from home while we’re here, and I’m currently doing around four to five workouts a week.

I’ve also started jump rope! I’ve wanted to try it for so long, then randomly decided I was going to do it and bought myself a beaded rope after doing a bit of research. At the moment I’m just doing around 10 minutes a day so I can get the basics right, and I’m actually really enjoying it. I have no idea where this is going to go, but it’s fun learning something completely new.

That’s another thing I’m appreciating about this weird 6 week period in our temp space. Because I’m not filming YouTube constantly, I’ve got a bit more space to do things I kept saying I didn’t have time for. I’m just hoping we manage to stay ahead enough that when we finally move into our new home, I don’t immediately go straight back into catch up mode.

This is completely random, but I’m hoping I’m not the only person who thinks like this. I genuinely don’t understand how people get so invested in hating celebrities or people they’ve only ever seen through the media.

I’m a firm believer in keeping an open mind with anything you read or watch. I’m not saying everything in media is a lie. But we’re still being shown a version of something, and a lot of the time there’s a narrative attached to it.

I really notice it with reality TV. People will absolutely hate someone on a show, and I’m sitting there thinking, but you don’t actually know this person…only what you see on this show, which is ultimately entertainment. Even reality TV isn’t fully reality. They know cameras are there and they know big dramatic moments get more attention. They know what creates headlines and ratings, and for a lot of them, being on TV is part of their business.

There are obviously people I see on TV who I naturally like more than others too, but even then, I know I don’t actually know them. I’m seeing a tiny edited part of their life and personality, so I’m not going to convince myself I know exactly who they are.

Meghan is a good example of this. People will literally say, “I hate Meghan,” with so much feeling behind it, and I just can’t get my head around that. You can dislike things she’s said or done, or maybe you haven’t really warmed to her, you can have an opinion on how she comes across, but actually hating someone you’ve never met feels so extreme to me. None of us really know her. We know the version we’ve seen through interviews, headlines, documentaries, TV clips and other people’s opinions. I just don’t understand how that turns into genuine hatred for a person you’ve never even had a conversation with.

I just find it strange when someone has so much genuine anger towards a person they’ve never met. The amount of energy that goes into it is what gets me. I always think these people must be the perfect TV consumers because they’re fully invested in whatever story they’ve been sold.

I’m going to save most of the home purchases for the next Unpacking because there is a lot, and once we actually start moving everything in, I’ll have much more to say about it.

For myself, I bought a pair of khaki cargo pants from Stradivarius that I love. I also picked up a few basics from Zara because I didn’t pack enough for our 6 weeks in temp space! Just random things like a sweatshirt because it’s colder in this place than our last.

I bought Nico a little treat puzzle game too because I wanted something new to keep his brain occupied while everything around him was changing. He’s actually been really good with it, and anything that keeps him busy and happy while we’re in this weird in between stage is worth it.

I genuinely never thought I’d say this, but I’m kind of loving having hardly any clothes!

Because I couldn’t bring my whole wardrobe here, I had to seriously narrow it down to around 10 outfits that I could rotate for 6 weeks. I needed casual clothes, something for dinner, something in case an event came up and obviously gym wear, but that was basically it.

My wardrobe has never looked this empty. There are actual gaps between the hangers, and I can see everything I own here without moving 30 things out of the way first. And annoyingly, all those Substack newsletters I’ve read about having a smaller wardrobe is so game changing….might actually have had a point.

I never really believed it when people said fewer clothes made getting dressed easier because the idea of having fewer options made me feel a bit nervous. I like my options. But now that I’ve been forced into it, I completely understand. Getting dressed is so much easier because there’s less to look at and less to overthink.

I’m obviously cheating slightly because I haven’t actually got rid of my wardrobe. It’s sitting safely in storage waiting for me. And our new home has a walk in closet, so there’s every chance I’ll fill it and forget this whole lesson immediately. But I really hope I don’t. When we move in, I want to go through everything properly and be much stricter about what deserves to go into the new closet because I finally understand how nice it feels to have some space.

My cart is basically a house at this point. There are lamps, decor, kitchen bits, storage, furniture and about a million things I keep adding and removing because I don’t want to rush the finishing details.

Because this is our first home, we decided we want pretty much everything going into it to be new. That includes the big things like the fridge and dishwasher, but also things like pots, pans and all the everyday stuff you don’t really think about until you realize you need to buy an entire home from scratch.

We brought a lot of our older things with us into our temp space because obviously we still need to cook and live normally for the next few weeks, but when we leave here, we’ll donate all of those too. I love the idea that we’re moving into the new home with a completely fresh start while still making sure the things we no longer need actually go to someone who can use them.

REFY sent me a huge selection of their makeup, and I finally had the chance to properly try nearly everything they do. I am genuinely such a fan now and completely understand the hype.

Before this, I’d only really tried their Blur and Hydrate Primer and Skin Base, which I already really liked, but now I’ve tried so much more and there are some products I’m obsessed with. The Blur Liner is one of them, and there are quite a few others that have surprised me too.

I’m going to show you more of them on Instagram soon, and I also want to do a full newsletter on exactly what I’d recommend from REFY because now I’ve actually tried enough of the range to have a proper opinion.

Also the new Louis Vuitton lip liners are amazing! So creamy, amazing quality…so they should be! And work as full lipsticks, liners and look amazing with just a lip balm.

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Our TV situation in our temp space is not great. There’s clearly something wrong with the screen because one side is more faded than the other and kind of makes anyone on the left side look dead, and it’s making us not want to start watching anything that we’re really excited about while we’re here.

Evening TV is such a big part of how Bobby and I switch off. We don’t have the TV on during the day, but around 7pm we’ll usually put something on for a couple of hours and that’s basically our chill time. So I’m actually saving anything I really want to watch for the new home because I know I’ll enjoy it so much more there.

For now, we’ve started SEAL Team (saving the new Lioness season for the new place!). I know we’re super late because it’s not exactly a new series, but we’d never watched it before and so far it’s pretty good. There are seven seasons, so realistically we’ll probably still be watching it when we finally move into the new place anyway.

August has probably been one of the most tiring months we’ve had in a long time, but also one of the most exciting because everything we’ve been working towards finally feels real. We’ve moved out of the apartment that was our home for years, most of our life is currently sitting in storage, we’re living somewhere temporary, and our first home is slowly coming together every day.

I’m definitely ready for a bit more routine again. I want my own kitchen, my studio, my clothes, just my normal setup and that feeling of knowing where everything is. But I also don’t want to rush these next few weeks because this is part of the whole experience too and it’s a journey! It’s messy and tiring, but we’re building something that’s ours, and I know once we’re finally sitting in the finished apartment, all of this will have been worth it.

For now, I’m trying to enjoy having fewer clothes, not filming 3 YouTube videos a day, learning how to jump rope, watching Bobby disappear off to the new apartment every morning, and reminding myself that living out of boxes is only temporary and part of the journey. Hopefully next month’s Unpacking will involve a lot more actual unpacking.

Until next month…

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