Seven Keys on a Ring: Selling the House We Bought as Newlyweds

A reader writes:

There were seven keys on the ring I handed to the estate agent on the last day. Front door. Back door. The grille on the back door. The padlock on the side gate. The little key for the electric meter box that nobody ever used. The key to the shed, which never actually locked. And one key that neither of us, in fourteen years, ever worked out the purpose of. I stood on the step for a moment trying to decide whether to tell her that one was a mystery, and then I just gave her the whole ring and walked to the car.

Kevin and I bought that house when I was twenty-six and pregnant with our first. It was a three-bedroom semi on a close where everyone had the same front door in different colours. Ours was blue because I insisted. We painted the nursery yellow because we did not want to know if it was a boy or a girl. It was a girl. Then a boy, four years later. We had birthday parties in that back garden, and one Christmas we had twenty-two people for dinner and borrowed chairs from three neighbours.

I am not going to write about why we divorced. It was not one thing and it was not all his fault, and our children read this site sometimes. I will just say that by the end we were very polite strangers, and that when we finally admitted it, we were both more sad than angry. I know how lucky that makes us, compared with some.

What I want to write about is the house, because nobody tells you how much of a divorce is actually about property, and how strange it is to take apart a home you built together while still being kind to each other.

At first I wanted to keep it. I thought it would be best for the children not to move, and I think part of me felt that if I kept the house, I had not completely failed. My solicitor was gentle but honest. On my income alone, I could not buy Kevin out and still pay the mortgage and bills. I did the sums over and over, hoping they would change. They didn’t. So we agreed to sell.

The division was the part I dreaded most, and it turned out to be easier than I expected, because we both had proper advice and neither of us wanted to drag it out. The hardest arguments were not about money. They were about things. The rocking chair my grandmother gave us. The photographs. Who got the good pots. At one point we were standing in the garage arguing about a strimmer, and my daughter came in and asked what we were doing, and we both burst out laughing because it was so absurd. He took the strimmer.

Telling the children we were selling was worse than telling them about the divorce. My son, who was nine, asked if he could take his bedroom door with him, because it had his height marks on it. I did not know what to say. In the end Kevin photographed every mark and measured them and painted them onto a long piece of wood, which now hangs in my son’s new room, and another copy is at his dad’s. It is one of the kindest things I have ever seen him do.

Having strangers walk through the house for viewings was hard. You tidy everything and hide the family photos because the agent says buyers want to imagine themselves living there, and then you hear someone say, “We’d knock this wall down,” about the wall where you taped your daughter’s first drawings. I learned to go out for a walk during viewings.

The sale took four months. On the last evening, after the removal van had gone, I walked through every room on my own. I had read somewhere about people praying through their house when they move in, and I thought, why not when you move out? So I did. In the nursery I said thank you for my daughter. In the kitchen I said sorry for some of the things that were said there. In our old bedroom I said the hardest prayer, which was just, “Please bless Kevin.” I meant it, mostly. I cried in the hallway and then I went and sat in the car.

Now the children and I live in a two-bedroom flat about fifteen minutes away. My daughter has the second room and my son sleeps on a raised bed in the corner of my room behind a curtain, which he says is “like a cabin”. It is smaller than anything I have lived in since I was a student. The kitchen has one working ring on the hob. But the flat is mine, the rent is manageable, and for the first time in years I am not walking into a house braced for tension.

There is a verse from Isaiah I have held on to: “Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing” (Isaiah 43:18-19). I used to think that meant you should forget the past. I don’t think so now. I remember the blue door and the twenty-two people at Christmas. I just don’t live there any more.

If you are going through the same thing, I would say: get proper legal advice early, even if things are friendly. Think about what the children will want to keep, and ask them. Let yourself grieve the house as well as the marriage; they are two different losses. And if you can, say goodbye to each room properly. It helped me more than I expected.

— Claire, Leicester

Editor’s note

Claire’s letter shows that even an amicable separation involves real grief over a home, and that care for children can shape how a sale is handled. Her practical lessons are sound: take independent legal advice early, look honestly at what you can afford on one income, and involve children in deciding what to keep. Her prayer walk through the empty house is a gentle idea for anyone leaving a home in sad circumstances. Anyone whose separation involves fear or harm should seek specialist help and put their safety first.

Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.

This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.

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