There are pros and cons to living in a home that is staged for an open house and for showing. The pros include it being very very easy to pick up everything that's out and getting it out of ones way, there are actually very few things out. The cons are pretty much all the things on the other edge to that particular blade.
We are selling the house here, the one we've lived in since Jet was three, and which is the one he remembers the most. Our realtor is the same one who introduced us to Colorado when Xilinx hired her, and Colleen Vandendriessche of PRO in Boulder is very high energy and has a very clear idea of how things should go. For a while, she was thinking we'd do better renting the old house instead of selling it, and if our financial situation was like nearly anyone else's, she'd be right, but we aren't. And she was very gracious about asking her tax guy and accepting his answer that it might not be the right thing for us.
It's good. It's better to not have to hang onto the old stuff.
The quote for my title is from xxxHolic, and is one of the things that Yuuko says that stuck with me. And it's very evident at this point in my life. And we're getting rid of a lot of old stuff. All those nooks and corners where things have just rested while I waited on deciding about them have been uprooted and upheaved, sorted and sent either off to the places where they could find an owner who would love them more (Mile High Comics is amazing for old fan stuff), to charity shops, or to the dump. Only the things that still delight me have been kept (okay, we went through all the books and I didn't always get rid of the ones I was waffling over reading... as one has only so much time).
Don't worry, Carl, ALL your books were set aside very carefully before any of this happened.
Some things got pared down drastically. I think I got rid of nearly 75% of my clothing and shoes, things that didn't really fit, or didn't really go with anything, or were from high school... not too much of that, thank goodness, but still. I had several J. Peterman items that just don't fit anymore.
Besides that, we've also fixed or cleaned a lot of things that we've just lived with for fifteen years. A steam cleaner company came in and steam cleaned not only all the carpets, but the tiles from the garage through the kitchen. I'd never seen them or their grout so white. Jet wondered if the kitchen floor was covered in flour when he first stepped into the room. Then he realized what had happened.
Nearly all the furniture in the house has moved to match the eye of the stager. Both Jet's and my desks had to be rearranged (and I got mine heightened while we were at it anyway). ALL my bookshelves are now gone into storage (such agony when I want to look something up), my office coffee table is now in the living room with decorations that look otherworldly, and everything is set into the bay window instead of a good foot back to avoid the sunlight (nooooo... the liiiight!). My entire knitting stash no longer lives under the end table between the couches of the living room and actually resides now in six extra boxes in the storage area in the basement. I had no idea I had that much yarn and fiber hiding under there. Oops.
The spinning wheel is now a prop up in Jet's loft, there to look... crafty? Or something.
Given how little of my life ever had to do with solely how things appear, it's kind of a strange transformation from my utilitarian world to one that is all about first appearances. That first fifteen seconds in the door. So most of what I use every day now lives in bins that I can get out when I need them, and can just slide back when I don't.
I do spend quite a bit more time out of the house, too, now. Pokemon Go has been a really good thing in some ways, as it's a good reason to get out, walk and even hike a good deal, and maybe catch a few things, coordinate via Discord for a raid and meet up with folks, or just wander about a park and see what's there. It's a game that delights the geek in me, as there are so many lovely details with the little monsters themselves, and so many of them to get to know. I've also been taking the bus around town more often now, because Jet went on it for his Community College classes, and it's been fun riding with him and figuring out the stop system. The same bus runs right by the new neighborhood as well, so it's going to be useful in the long term.
We've spent most of the time since Puerto Rico doing all the things that needed doing, and are still working on it pretty much every day. Moving things to the storage area, cleaning up stuff that has to be cleaned up, fixing the things that need to be fixed so that it looks good, and changing out some of the older things that have been useful to us for all that time, but now look outdated. We now have a new refrigerator, new dishwasher, new double ovens, and lots of new light fixtures through out the house.
It's interesting because this is the exact same realtor that we used to sell the Erie house, where we basically cleaned up a little every time before the house was shown. We sold it to the man who came in when the light fixture over the dining room table caught on fire. He put the fire while he was viewing the home, and then proceeded to give us an offer! It was so much less effort. This time we have fake plants, decorator clocks, glass balls and arrangements all over the house. My art is hanging in places it hasn't hung for quite some time. It's quite the change.
The new house is doing well.
The concrete was poured last week (with a five yen piece in it for luck), the plumbing and wiring have been run through it, the drainage has been created underneath and tested. The inspections for all of that should be tomorrow and then they'll backfill and start putting the house on top of the foundation.
Yes, those are mountains back there. We should have a pretty good view with how high up the foundation is.
So I have to remember that it is there, and that that is really the end goal. All this stuff to sell this house is just in order to get there. It's all small stuff, really. Just lots and lots and lots of small stuff.
The open house should be next Saturday! So wish us luck!
We are selling the house here, the one we've lived in since Jet was three, and which is the one he remembers the most. Our realtor is the same one who introduced us to Colorado when Xilinx hired her, and Colleen Vandendriessche of PRO in Boulder is very high energy and has a very clear idea of how things should go. For a while, she was thinking we'd do better renting the old house instead of selling it, and if our financial situation was like nearly anyone else's, she'd be right, but we aren't. And she was very gracious about asking her tax guy and accepting his answer that it might not be the right thing for us.
It's good. It's better to not have to hang onto the old stuff.
The quote for my title is from xxxHolic, and is one of the things that Yuuko says that stuck with me. And it's very evident at this point in my life. And we're getting rid of a lot of old stuff. All those nooks and corners where things have just rested while I waited on deciding about them have been uprooted and upheaved, sorted and sent either off to the places where they could find an owner who would love them more (Mile High Comics is amazing for old fan stuff), to charity shops, or to the dump. Only the things that still delight me have been kept (okay, we went through all the books and I didn't always get rid of the ones I was waffling over reading... as one has only so much time).
Don't worry, Carl, ALL your books were set aside very carefully before any of this happened.
Some things got pared down drastically. I think I got rid of nearly 75% of my clothing and shoes, things that didn't really fit, or didn't really go with anything, or were from high school... not too much of that, thank goodness, but still. I had several J. Peterman items that just don't fit anymore.
Besides that, we've also fixed or cleaned a lot of things that we've just lived with for fifteen years. A steam cleaner company came in and steam cleaned not only all the carpets, but the tiles from the garage through the kitchen. I'd never seen them or their grout so white. Jet wondered if the kitchen floor was covered in flour when he first stepped into the room. Then he realized what had happened.
The spinning wheel is now a prop up in Jet's loft, there to look... crafty? Or something.
Given how little of my life ever had to do with solely how things appear, it's kind of a strange transformation from my utilitarian world to one that is all about first appearances. That first fifteen seconds in the door. So most of what I use every day now lives in bins that I can get out when I need them, and can just slide back when I don't.
We've spent most of the time since Puerto Rico doing all the things that needed doing, and are still working on it pretty much every day. Moving things to the storage area, cleaning up stuff that has to be cleaned up, fixing the things that need to be fixed so that it looks good, and changing out some of the older things that have been useful to us for all that time, but now look outdated. We now have a new refrigerator, new dishwasher, new double ovens, and lots of new light fixtures through out the house.
It's interesting because this is the exact same realtor that we used to sell the Erie house, where we basically cleaned up a little every time before the house was shown. We sold it to the man who came in when the light fixture over the dining room table caught on fire. He put the fire while he was viewing the home, and then proceeded to give us an offer! It was so much less effort. This time we have fake plants, decorator clocks, glass balls and arrangements all over the house. My art is hanging in places it hasn't hung for quite some time. It's quite the change.
The concrete was poured last week (with a five yen piece in it for luck), the plumbing and wiring have been run through it, the drainage has been created underneath and tested. The inspections for all of that should be tomorrow and then they'll backfill and start putting the house on top of the foundation.
Yes, those are mountains back there. We should have a pretty good view with how high up the foundation is.
So I have to remember that it is there, and that that is really the end goal. All this stuff to sell this house is just in order to get there. It's all small stuff, really. Just lots and lots and lots of small stuff.
The open house should be next Saturday! So wish us luck!
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