Thanks everyone for your feedback. @Amy I just love the idea of staying and making your house better rather than moving. It is something I like the idea of particularly as when I was growing up my parents would complain about the house they lived in but never change anything, e.g. only fix things sometimes, then after approx 7 years it would all get too much and they would move to somewhere that didn't need fixing, just to start the cycle again. I have been in my current house for almost 7 years and in that time we've made lots of changes to make it a more pleasant place to live and we continue to do this all the time.
One downside of being in the same place for years is that there is a tendancy for stuff to accumulate (there's nothing like a move to sort through the stuff). Instead we really do try to be careful about what we bring in, and when we do bring in stuff we try to be new thing in, old thing out. This works most of the time but even I admit it doesn't happen always - it's just really hard to let go of things some times!
I also confess that this weekend I gave in and went shopping for a whole lot of stuff - some of which we needed and I've put off buying until now, and some to replace stuff, and some just because it was nice. This really will be an ongoing battle ;-)
