Friday, April 06, 2018

life, the interesting bits


In some ways, I feel as though I have been in a tunnel and finally have emerged out the other side into the light where I am now blinking my eyes and finding my bearings, unlike Flossy who seems to be quite carefree about being dressed in vintage Hawaiian shirts during the long Canadian winter.





While I've been in hibernation mode, much of the activity has come from the busiest body in the house who sets up beauty salons during Morning Time and builds Paw Patrol's Adventure Bay structures out of anything she can find. In the upcoming pictures of the basement, another one of her homemade designs using clementine and plastic wrap boxes was left on display by accident since its awkward shape defies most of my storage bins. There is nothing she does not turn her hand to and the sheer volume of projects produced every seven days is staggering. 
Unfortunately, March brought sickness for myself and the girls and while we struggled to kick our coughs, colds and tummy aches, the travel plans, expected birthday fun and spring break ideas were sadly canceled.


And then one day in mid-March, I picked up the phone and made the call that we had long been discussing, a call to a local real estate agent. She set a date within 48 hours to come visit our home and the game was on. We agreed to the early April listing date and the storage rental space became a reality.
The last two weeks have seen us doing all sorts of things to get the house ready for pictures and showings. Things that required Pinterest and internet searches to give advice and help. Other things that just came into being and still more other things that were solicited from experienced friends. Every room and area in our home had its own Must Get Done list which then generated scribbled versions of shopping needs and 'what about this' ideas. 
Never short of helpers, unless of course you actually need something cleaned.



I happened upon a UK home-selling show on Netflix which then became mandatory watching as the days ticked off the calendar. I became very conscious of every corner of our home's presentation and wondered why I waited so long to do some of these obvious and easy make-overs.
The amount of items that we have removed from our house and put into the rented storage space is incredible and none of it is rubbish.




So now we live in greatly minimized space and are developing new habits for what we use on a daily basis and where it is stored when not in use. I thought that keeping the house this minimized and tidy for showings might be difficult, but so far it seems to be like packing for traveling. 
Packing for leaving your home and traveling is exhausting, but packing up to come back home is much easier since you do not need to decide anything, you just repack what you brought. The harder work of cleaning, renovating and organizing for strangers is over, the easier part of maintenance has begun. 
The following photos were taken at different times in the last week or so and may not be what the final staging looks like. I also took my own photos after our agent and her photographer came and forgot to put the lights back on for some of my photographs. Tired of thinking about home decorating, I loaded the kids in the car right after the photographs were done to go to the mall and rushed through the empty house with my camera. But the listing photos turned out very nice and most importantly, provided accurate representations of what the house truly looks like without distorting the rooms and spaces with horrible wide-angle shots which many real estate photographers do.


































In the 24 hours since I started this post, we have had our first(and only showing so far) and our first conditional offer which we have accepted. A week from now, if the conditions are met, the house will be officially sold. Our next plans are still being worked out so I have nothing to share on that right now.
After an Easter break, we resumed our lessons this week, giving us only three days, so now we have about 10 more scheduled weeks of work to do before I was planning to be done for the school year. Moving will fall somewhere into that time which means that my schedule will unravel a bit or a lot. How it all goes down is what makes life interesting.

8 comments:

  1. Are you moving out if the area you’re in, Heather? I’ve often thought that a good plan would be to move every 5 years so I’d get around to culling & working on areas that get neglected but the last time we moved I just shoved everything in boxes with the idea that I’d do the sorting at the next place. The problem was we moved to a much larger home so I didn’t have to worry about culling ☹️

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    1. We plan to stay in the area, Carol. We just need more space. :)

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  2. Heather, it looks beautiful. The kitchen is so crisp and lovely and I love the counter. You did an amazing job with three kids in tow and a school to run. Good lady!

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    1. You've been down this path several times before me. ♥

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  3. I remember what it was like getting a house ready to show. My Realtor told me with one of our houses to store everything that made the house look like it was us that lived there! I've downsized the amount of clothes I own after realizing how few I needed when we were in a temporary place. Yes, I even gave away books.

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    1. I thought our agent might be picky, but in the end, it was Shane and I who were more picky about what to get out of the house than her. And I have given away books too! But mostly they're all just packed in storage.

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  4. Congratulations on all you have done so far! One year ago we were packing up our own house, so I totally get where you are at right now!

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