Take This House And Shove It

So we started the process of preparing our house to put on the market. Four years ago. Ok, ok, admittedly, there were some pleasant surprises (Like new babies. Well, one. One baby.) and some not so pleasant surprises as well (Hello leak under the concrete slab!) that made it so much more drawn out than we wanted it to be. I'm sure we might have been able to pare down this length of time to like three years and eleven months, but we slacked for that one month two and a half years ago, so there's that.

So we are going through these steps of making this house so fantastic that we're going to ask ourselves, "Why are we selling again?" and basically it sucks. Not the house, the rehabbing of the house. The painting, the nailing, the cleaning, the painting, the fixing, the moving, the painting...... I swear to God above if I never see another paintbrush again I'll be happy. But we do it. And we manage to not kill each other in the process, double bonus!

Then the moment we've been waiting for: The house goes on the market.

And now another hell begins. It's called "Keep your house clean at all times because someone is going to want to see your house and your dirty socks on the floor might make them tell you to take this house and shove it". Or preparing for showings for short. Now, I'm not a messy, sloppy person. Unfortunately, I have three other people that live with me that kind of, well, are. Granted, some of them short people are two and can't eat a bowl of cereal without a catastrophe, let alone leave a clean floor behind. I'm thinking that this could be some sort of exotic torture. Just lock someone in a house and tell them to keep it clean and then drop in unexpectedly for inspections. Oh, and give them a puppy, a parakeet, and the biggest potted plant you can find.

Within three days, the house was under contract. No, I'm not even kidding. Four years of cleaning, fixing, stressing, bleeding money and then bam! It's all over in a New York minute. (I'm going to admit right here that I don't know exactly how long a New York minute is, but I really wanted to use the saying.) Wait, this means I can stop cleaning every square inch of my home at all times? Ok, I'm sold. (Ha! Pun intended.)

Once you find people who want to inhabit your house, and if you're lucky to have the new house also under contract, there are 83,000 pages of papers to sign and at least 473 checks to write. Nope, I'm not even exaggerating, (by much more than 95%) I promise. You get to pay persons who are way more qualified than you are to come and critique your house. Yeah, yeah, inspect it. Same difference. They're basically judging you and your inferior housing updates. No, I'm kidding, they don't give a crap! And you don't either if it means you can sell your house! But you do care about the inspection on your potential new house. Where you learn every single small project your husband will have for the next year. (Or two years if he tells you he's taking a mandatory one year project free hiatus.)

So you make it through all 89,765 pages of both contracts. You robbed the national bank to finance the septic flow tests and the inspections and the myriad other things involved. Now what?

Breathe. Have one last party. Shed a tear for leaving this wonderful neighborhood that you've lived in and loved for the last decade. But most importantly, step away from those paint samples.

Step away from the swatches and no one will get hurt!