And all this could be yours.
I want to tell you that our house is looking great, that it is clean and sparkling and clutter free, with a fresh coat of paint and ready to be listed and shown. I want to tell you these things. But I would be lying.
My home looks awful. It looks like the home of a woman who has two toddlers, an obsessive love of blogging, and a very hairy dog. It looks like the home of someone who kept far too many aluminum formula cans as pencil cups, and maybe enjoys beer a little too much. The house, in fact, looks a lot like my desk:
I know. How do I get any work done? Or maybe it looks like I work all the time, in an Ernest Hemingway sort of way.
One of the first things advised if you plan to sell your house is to get rid of the clutter. If possible move a third of your stuff out of your house. That is back-breaking labor around here, when all of our walls look like this:
When we moved into the house, the books alone were three trips in a pick-up truck. Az the Worn and Weary looked at the boxes of books lining an otherwise empty house, and said, “I never want to move again.” I agreed. But now we have to pack them all up again and move them into storage. Prospective housebuyers are strange animals. They don’t want to see books. I am unclear on why exactly, but I suspect the Taliban. But then, I suspect them of a lot of things.
Prospective homebuyers have their own tastes. In preparing a house to show, you are supposed to make everything as generic as possible to appeal to as many people as possible. We will be repainting the living room (left pink by the previous owners) an innocuous grey color called “almond.” I am insisting on a little warmth for the entryway, a light apricot color whose name I forget, but it sounds edible, like every other color nowadays. Peachy cotton candy dreamsicle, or something.
But first we have to scrape. Scraping paint is like peeling a sunburn and improving your property value at the same time. I secretly and compulsively enjoy it. But each time I scrape peeling nasty paint off my entryway, I discover rich, stained wood underneath, or a bit of detail hidden by the decades of paint.
I feel the urge to strip the whole thing and find the gorgeous wood. Must. repress. this. urge. Stripping and refinishing wood is a huge job, with no real payoff if we move. And in a house this old, there is undoubtedly lead paint, which is dangerous for anybody, but especially the kids. So I must scrape off only the little bits necessary to repaint, and clean it up immediately. Bye-bye, beautiful wood. I will dream of you.
You may also see in the above photo a bit of our neighbors’ beat-up RV that is frequently parked outside our house. These are our worst neighbors, who definitely will not help sell the house, but there is nothing you can do about neighbors. Neighbors whose front porch is packed with a junk collection. Neighbors whose teenaged son plays his hip-hop music wall-shakingly loud when he works on his occasionally operating muscle car. But what can you do? Neighbors. We have more good ones than bad ones.
And our yard. Our sad, sad yard. It has never recovered from my blogging. I can post pictures of our flowers, but they will be close-ups, because I am just too ashamed of our yard. Here is a lovely gladiola blooming by the porch, a porch that awaits scraping and repainting.
As you can see, I have a lot of work to do. And I don’t know how I am ever going to get it done. Somehow, somehow. I will be enlisting aid. Az’s loving family will visit soon, and the men in his family do not consider a vacation complete without a project to do. Bless the southern farmboy work ethic. If I just leave the cans of paint and brushes out where they can see them, the job may get done without even being discussed. Fingers crossed.
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Teacher lady
I am so impressed by the gladiola, I don’t know if I would notice anything else! Selling a house is not. fun. We sold ours last June after 3 nail-biting months (although it felt like 3 years.) Good luck!
Jennifer
Isn’t it strange how you will fix your house up for prospective buyers you don’t even know, but in all the time that you lived there, you didn’t do half the work you’re doing for them?
Mrs Blythe
Lol selling a house is no fun, ours has been listed since December, but no joy! Ah well, all in the hands of God. Your gladiola is just beautiful, how do you get it to bloom so? I have very little luck with flowers. Blessings.
Joelle
Good luck on the house sale! I sympathize, believe me.
Karen
but you have good taste in beer!! good luck-
Lori
I would LOVE to buy a house where ther is lots of room for books! The neighbors, though…
Mama Duck
LOL most of my books are in boxes, how sad is that??
Beck
“and maybe enjoys beer a little too much…”
What? Your house looks like I like there?
I think your place looks like the house of an interesting, fun person.
Lucky Candice
Thanks for inviting us in - great house!
LC
HORIZON
LOL- l really enjoyed that read. Feel for you wanting to scrape back to the wood and not being able to.
Lovely busy lived in home- not a house- a home- that’s great.
Hope all goes well at uni. glad those days are over for me.
pass a beer then- we’ll sit on your porch and talk about what we’d like to do. lol
Pieces
I confess, the image etched in my mind after looking at the photos of your home is the bag of M&Ms on the desk. Which begs the question: is the bag empty? If I found my way to your house, somehow guided by the mammoth RV in front, would I be able to share some M&Ms?
Jennifer
Hey sounds like me (except the beer)–dog hair, a toddler, blogging interfering with my housekeeping, too many books (well, some might think that).
Veronica Mitchell
Pieces,
The M&M bag was not empty when I took the picture. It is empty now. But if you weren’t slightly too late, you could share them.
PEA
It’s only since my boys moved out on their own that I’ve been able to keep my house clean…so hang in there! lol I would hate having to sell my house…just the thought of all the stuff we’ve accumulated throughout the years would make it a massive project! lol
Jenny in Queensland
Thankyou for inviting me in ! I have been enjoying your site for a while and it is so nice to be able to have a “virtual” meeting LOL so to speak. This is such a good idea of BooMama’s.
PastorMac's Ann
Room for books? What more could one want in a house?
Shandra
We just went through this with our home. Good luck!
Heather
Love the house really!
Laura
The Glad is so pretty! yeah, moving is such a PITA, I said we would never do it again when we moved out of our 600 sq ft home into this one. Now that this one is filled, I am thinking the only way out is to donate everything and start anew. Not like I have anything worth moving now, we dontated over 200 books to the little library last time! Thanks for the tour
Stop by and visit mine too anytime!
Barb
Your desk looks like someone actually uses it. It’s great!
edj
Oh I HATE HATE HATE moving! I won’t even try to cheer you up by telling you about the Mauritanian Landladies From Hell and how they treat you when you move. But HOW I ENVY all your books! I suppose the problem with leaving them out is you might get a prospective buyer like yourself in who would spend all their time looking to see what you had instead of noticing problems with the house…wait, how is that a problem?
Good luck! Love the gladiola, btw, and in my opinion, if you can reach your keyboard and your coffee, your desk is clean enough. Hemingway wrote in cafes for a reason, right?
Mrs. C
Forget cleaning the house and just enjoy the kiddos! Thanks for sharing.