Selling Our Home - Preparing To List

As we approached listing our home, we knew we had some work to do. You know how you can live in your home a certain way. And you keep it pretty great. like for day to day, its great. But when you start thinking about all those strangers poking through your home and you're no where near because you're camping somewhere random with your wolfhound for the day, it gets you thinking. Thinking like maybe you should finish that rock retaining wall you started a month ago. or maybe you should finally clean the office closet bursting at the seams with s  t  u  f  f.

and on that note, the sale of our home has certainly instigated several 'why do we do this to ourselves', head scratching moments for me. take the infamous junk drawer, for instance. you need something and you're pretty sure its in the junk drawer. so you go and you start looking. It's then that you realize it's actually all junk. junk  you've been struggling unnecessarily with opening and closing that dang drawer for years, never finding what you were initially looking for because wait for it. it was always just junk.

ashamed to say that last bit wasn't hypothetical. super sad and dejected emoji.

Anyway, the week before we decided to list we got. to. werk. We took a quick inventory of all the things that needed a little spruce up, split the tasks and ticked them off every chance we could get. Lots of patching, sanding and painting all those pesky decorative nail holes that were the result of my indecisive mind over the years. Those were totally my domain. Those and all the pesky junk drawers and closets nestled around our home. We also had a pretty decent accumulation of stuff we weren't using, couldn't give to family or friends and couldn't really donate either. Mostly scraps from some of our recent DIY projects and yard work. Those items had us visiting the dump. And by us I mean Ryan shoveled out the back of the truck like a mad man while I enjoyed the most positively scrumptious strawberries from costco of all places. In my defense, I offered to help. He laughed at me. So, what's a girl to do when her physical strength and prowess has just been mocked? eat strawberries. and so she did. 

All jokes about my ectomorphic and often-mocked-when-it-comes-to-feats-of-strength frame aside, the improvement in our home over the course of that one week was unbelievable! We amazed ourselves at what we could accomplish in a short amount of time. TOTAL grown up moment.

By the time we actually listed our home, we couldn't have been more pleased with how our home had polished up. In fact, many times, we asked ourselves the question I'm sure everyone selling their home has said at one time or another: 'Why weren't we living like this all along?'

Definitely food for thought in our next home. From the day we took possession on this home, we took great care of it. It was our baby! We felt so responsible for it and getting to start out with it so squeaky clean....well...we wanted to keep it that way. So we did. And I'm really proud of that. That said, we often left those 'little extra projects' (laundry room built-ins, retaining rock wall etc.) sit idle and unfinished for longer than we'd have liked. Life would get busy, we'd get distracted and end up living with an unfinished, great idea instead of just finishing it and enjoying it wholeheartedly. And I realize that's real life. But at the same time, how many episodes of Breaking Bad does one couple really need to watch? ;)

Next up...showings (read: lugging around and entertaining a 150 lb. irish wolfhound puppy 12 hours a day for (thank goodness only) 5 days!)