House For Sale, Kids Negotiable (part 2)
08.30.2010 This is the second entry of a not-sure-yet-how-many- four-part series on the most pervasive and disruptive event we went through this summer: putting our house up for sale.
I have a dormant case of paralysis by analysis which can be exacerbated by Stressful Events. The best remedy I know for this is to set a goal and work towards it, all the while hoping and praying that the light at the end of the tunnel is not, in fact, a train. So I contacted our Realtor and we settled on open house date over Memorial Day Weekend. That was four weeks from then, which isn’t a lot of time to get everything ready when both adults work full-time outside the home and we have twin toddlers underfoot.
After spending the better part of a couple hours wallowing in the self pity of all the work that needed to be done, I created a loosely defined timeline with areas of the house that needed attention. For me, breaking down an overwhelming task into manageable bites is well, more manageable, even when it means I’m working on the house for three hours after having had a full day at the office, a couple evening witching hours with the kids, and a quick dinner. Usually while standing. The plan looked like this:
| Interior | Exterior | |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Kids Rooms, Play Area, First Floor Corridors | Start pulling weeds |
| Week 2 | Living Room, Kitchen, Coat (Toy) Closet, Storage (Arts & Crafts) Closet | Forget that, hire a landscaper |
| Week 3 | Master Bedroom, Bathrooms | Landscaping continued, Get bids for house painting |
| Week 4 | Paperwork, Garage | Finish Landscaping, Complete Home paint job |
There, now, doesn’t that feel better?
We all know the drill to getting your home ready, but here’s a refresher course and a general idea of what we did when we went through each room above.
Dissociate yourself from the home. I’m an expert at this, just ask my therapist. So this part was easy. If you’re having a little trouble with this, put your tasks into a table or a checklist. Emotion can be removed from the sweetest Hallmark cards if you just put the words into a spreadsheet. I’m telling you.
De-Personalize. This is hard for those who can’t dissociate themselves from the home and the things in it. Take, for example, the removal of our commitment ceremony photos. Equals Jennifer’s hurt feelings. I had to engage our Realtor to confirm my claims that taking down family photos was not a reflection on our relationship. The fact remains, a potential buyer needs to see themselves able to live in the home, not left wanting to ask how big that redfish was and where did you catch it. You may love your porcelain chicken collection or your NFL bobble-head collection, but chances are no one else does. Obviously, as parents, we can’t de-personalize the fact that we have children, so that takes some creativity, but I’ll get to how we worked around that in the Staging section.
Decluttering. Again, easier if you can get a handle on step one. Now I’ll go ahead and admit that I’m a purger by nature. I just don’t get the folks who hang on to the exersaucer because they’re not ready to let it go, but whatever. Here’s the thinking hat one should wear when decluttering: everything you keep will have to be packed, moved, and stored at your next residence. For a gentler approach, I highly recommend the article "Stop Keeping Stuff For The Wrong Reason", an article written by Gayle Goddard, a local organizing guru who once came to talk at our mother’s of multiples meeting. While you’re at it, read her article "How To Avoid Common Organizing Mistakes".
I don’t know if you have a Freecycle community where you live, but this forum is genuinely awesome. What I wasn’t able to sell on Craigslist or the neighborhood kids group classifieds or at Half Price Books, and the things that didn’t make sense to donate, I got rid of on Freecycle, a place where nothing can be bought, sold, or bartered, only given away or accepted for free. Even my listings for “non-working electric space heater” and “half burned candles” were picked up. Within hours.
You may not be guilty of this, but I have a habit of collecting piles of paper that need to be shred. And then I don’t shred them. And then there’s so much that needs shredding that I don’t think the shredder can handle it and I certainly don’t want to feed three sheets at a time for six days straight. So then nothing gets shred. Lucky for Houston residents, there are several Southern Shred locations that will securely shred your personal documents for about $1.00 per pound. We no longer have paystub taking up space in the filing cabinet – the paystubs from NINE YEARS AGO.
This was also a fine time to remove all the clothes from ten years ago that I kept wishing I’d fit into again one day, including suits and heels donated to Dress For Success, an organization that promotes the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire. Lots of the kids clothes and shoes went to Casa De Esperanza, a safe place for children in crisis due to abuse, neglect or the effects of HIV. went to the clothes that no longer fit the kids, and the boxes for the stereo system we no longer own. Unexpired and un-used pantry items went to the Houston Food Bank.
Make Minor (or major) repairs. We had long ago had a first round of home improvement projects. This time, during regularly scheduled maintenance, we had to replace a coil to one of the air conditioning units (ouch!), we fixed an occasionally drippy sink, and filled a couple nail holes in the walls. All in all, we didn’t have many repairs to do.
Curb Appeal. One too many winter freezes killed pretty much all our plants, and here now May, we hadn’t done much to fix the area. The backyard was a jungle of weeds, some even two and three feet tall (I wish I was exaggerating), threatening to overtake the Climb And Slide (which we sold for exactly the same price that we bought it, how awesome is that).
Far too busy with far too little time, we hired a landscaper to come and give our front (and back yard) a makeover. And by a makeover, I mean be willing to patiently listen to me and my questions about plants and flip through gardening and design books. AT HIS HOUSE. As we poured over my drawings of how I envisioned the elevation.
Around the same time that this was going on, one of our neighbors was having her home repainted and wow, it looked so good. Our house didn’t look shabby before, but with bright new paint next door, our house was dull by comparison. So I asked the guy for a bid, he gave us a good deal, and literally, the steps got their final coat of paint the day before the open house.
Staging The Home. This is where it gets hard, especially with kids. I’ll be breaking down our experience in a subsequent post so stay tuned!
********
The entire series…
Part 1: Our Neighborhood. And the decision to sell our home.Part 2: Preparing the house for listing.
Part 3: Staging Our Home for showings.
Part 4: How we (barely) survived showings…and where we ended up.
Reader Comments (1)
The decluttering for me is very hard. I have craft supplies that I have moved way to many times without ever actually using any of them, yet it is almost painful to get rid of them. I'm working on it. Baby steps and the therapist helps. That said while I'm moving less of it this time around, I'm still moving some of it.
I love all the stuff about donating and the places you found to get rid of stuff.