How many times have you moved in your life?

[The Brain]

One fewer than the number of places I've lived in.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Damn...43 times 

Have not moved for 18 years though and my next move will be to my grave, totally sick of moving 

[Eddie Teach]

Too many.

[The Larch]

It seems I should have left more room for nuance at the higher end of the poll. 

[HVC]

8, but 7 of those where before I turned 16

[Sheilbh]

3 times as a kid. 3 times in Bristol. 8 times in London (so every other year ) - and looking to move again.

[Josquius]

It depends how you define move.
I don't really count places I lived as a student as they weren't home. They were just places I was crashing whilst at uni that year with a few of my things there. Then there's one or two places even post uni I've had on a strictly temporary basis-do I really count the company provided flat where I lived for 3 months when I moved to Switzerland?

At the most liberal 14.
In terms of places that were stable enough to count as home maybe 5?
Places where I fully settled and started setting up like I was there to stay just 2- even in a flat  I rented for 4 years I stayed in a very temporary mindset.


Edit - that's different places I lived. Most of them had a spell back at my parents place in between. So more like 25 really.

[The Larch]

Personally I'd count changes in student accomodation as moves. You had to look for it, carry your stuff in and out, etc.

[Tamas]

4 times.

[The Larch]

Places where I fully settled and started setting up like I was there to stay just 2- even in a flat  I rented for 4 years I stayed in a very temporary mindset.

This reminds me of a story with two friends of mine that lead to an in-joke in our group for a while.

One of them got a job in Portugal, and after working there for a while they needed new workers, so he put a word for another friend from our group to work there, who was hired as well. These two friends started sharing an appartment, but had very different attitudes to life there. One of them had a "temporary mindset" as well, even after living there for several years, and would block any investments in the house (mainly buying a washing machine) because "after all, we're only here temporarily", while the other assumed they were there for a pretty long run. When asked the first friend would even claim to still be living in our hometown (even if he only spent there one weekend every couple of weeks or so), while the other friend  would say he was indeed living in Portugal. Thus, we deducted that they must had been sharing the world's largest appartment, able to cover two different countries. 

They ended up being flatmates for like 7 or 8 years in that place in Portugal. I never knew if they ended up buying a washing machine or not.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I think there's a mindset difference because I get what Jos is saying - especially about university - but I always stayed in my university town over the summer and I didn't view my parents' home as "mine" after I moved out. So "home" has always been where I am with my stuff for however long that is.

It might possibly also be because my mum and dad moved at around the same time as I went to university so whenever I've gone to them it's to a part of the country I've never lived in, to a house I've never lived in and I've always been in the guest room rather. So there's nothing about it that feels like going home to me.

[The Larch]

Yeah I think there's a mindset difference because I get what Jos is saying - especially about university - but I always stayed in my university town over the summer and I didn't view my parents' home as "mine" after I moved out. So "home" has always been where I am with my stuff for however long that is.

It might possibly also be because my mum and dad moved at around the same time as I went to university so whenever I've gone to them it's to a part of the country I've never lived in, to a house I've never lived in and I've always been in the guest room rather. So there's nothing about it that feels like going home to me.

Yes, I see where it comes from but I think it's rather disingenious. If you're living somewhere most of the time, even if it's just remporarily, that's your home for me, not your family home where you only come back every once in a while. When I was in university I would spend 4-5 days in the city where the uni was located, and would come back home almost every weekend, sometimes even on Thursdays or early Fridays, but I wouldn't say that I was still living at my family's place, I would say I was living where my university was located.

After my year abroad I also had to use the guest bedroom in my family's house as well, my younger brother had wanted to remove my bed from our shared childhood bedroom since I left the house for the first time, but my mother prevented him from doing it until then.  I still stayed in that guest bedroom for 6 months in my second stint living there, and considered that my home at that time.

[Josquius]

By the same thinking though, wouldn't staying in a hotel for 2 weeks also count?- likely not, that's mad. But then a month? 2? Where's the line?

And the friends in Portugal sounds very familiar to me. I definitely held off on getting new furniture unless judged absolutely necessary in my 4 year flat. Lived very minimalist.
There's 2 aspects at play there. Both the living somewhere temporarily ala university and also the expat/immigrant distinction- my GF tells me her grandad, though he lived in Switzerland for 50 years, still considered his village in Italy home and considered whether it was time to move back more permanently until he died.

[crazy canuck]

20 moves for me.

13 by the time I was in grade 12.  Including 2 house fires and dad moving to find jobs.

4 moves during undergrad and law school.

4 moves since then.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Seems like a pretty mobile bunch, I'm surprised we don't have at least a few never-movers. I know at least a couple of people from my "hometown" (which, oddly is really the town my parents / grandparents were from, we moved so much as a kid that it was kind of like a home base but never really my home) who are in their 50s that are living in the same house they grew up in.