To me, home is wherever my loved ones are, along with the objects and furniture that are meaningful to me and my family – and, over the years, the memories that accumulate too. I’m quite the homebody, and I truly enjoy being surrounded by that cosy environment – a space that looks and feels like us.

I’ve moved house 17 times in my life. That’s quite a few moves and quite a variety of homes. I can still recall the address of every place I’ve lived, the layout of my childhood rooms, the feelings and favourite interior details from each one. The most recent move – and possibly one of the biggest changes in my life – happened last autumn, when my partner and I, after seven years together, finally moved in with all our children under one roof.

The move was exciting. It involved so many new things and brought a lot of change to all our lives. I had lived alone with my children for almost 14 years, which is most of the time I've been a mother. Our previous home was small but sweet and compact, and we’d lived there for over a decade. My partner and I had been talking about living together for years, but it wasn't exactly planned.

Moving in together was exciting. It brought so many new things and changes into our lives.

However, we realised that our children are old enough now that the time for living together is now, not five years from now, because our oldest children might no longer be living at home.

We had dreamed of a place with a far-reaching view and stunning sunsets. When we found a home that ticked those boxes, we went to see it – and decided then and there that it was time to move in together!

Amidst all the chaos of moving, it was incredibly exciting to see how two lives and two homes could be brought together into one hopefully lovely and happy new home. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve bought your home with a mortgage or are renting. A home is still a home. For us, this place has become a real home over the past six months – and a rather wonderful one at that. It suits our current phase of life perfectly.

Before moving in, we painted nearly all the walls. Our hallway is light blue, the kitchen walls are yellow, the living room is a dusty old rose, and the children’s rooms have hues of green and blue. It’s a bit of an outdated idea that rental homes are always dull and that you can’t put your stamp on them. Of course you can!

I remember when I was a child, after my parents’ divorce, my mum painted over the brown walls with white and freshened up the blue and red cupboard doors too.

With seven of us in the household, our home is quite spacious. We have two sofas in the living room so there’s a seat for everyone. I love DIY and doing little projects around the house – and you’ll find plenty of those here too.

We adults actually sleep in the living room, in a cosy little corner with a playful wooden flower shelf I made myself. I repainted it during the move to better match the colour scheme – it’s now pink and tomato red. We also have a large bay window in the living room, where I fitted a custom corner shelf made of laminated wood. It’s not attached to anything, it simply rests on the narrow ledges of the window frame. It’s a great example of how even the smallest ideas can add personality to your home.

I completely fell in love with a deep tomato-red paint shade and used it to give our old hallway shoe rack a striped makeover in red and light pink. Especially when you’ve got cheaper furniture or you find second-hand gems, it’s fairly easy to give them a makeover with paint and make them feel more “you.”

Our kitchen table is also a second-hand find. We originally bought it for our summer cottage, but after the move, we realised it suited our new city flat perfectly – so now it serves as the heart of the kitchen. It, too, has had a few coats of paint already.

Our kitchen has white cupboard doors and yellow walls. Everything else around it is wonderfully colourful and even a bit playful. I absolutely love the atmosphere in our kitchen.

A fun tip: paint your wall shelves the same colour as the wall. It sort of makes the shelves “disappear” into the wall, while also highlighting them in a beautiful way. We’ve done this with one shelf where we keep pretty chopping boards and cute little tins for sugar and matchboxes.

Right now, in this moment, everything feels just right. We’ve got a big family home where we can enjoy amazing sunsets, play Yahtzee together around the kitchen table, the teens can cook in the spacious kitchen and then retreat back to their rooms, and I can wave to my kids from the window as they head off to school.

Within these walls, there’s something that makes all of us feel truly at home. Next year things will surely look a little different. But right now, this is good. Home is wherever all of this is – and yes, a rental home is absolutely a real home.