We have had a “for sale” sign in our yard since the end of July. Ben and I were talking about putting our house up for sale on our car ride home from visiting my grandparents in Minnesota, and after we got home, he pulled out the dingy sign from when WE bought the house, and stuck it into the yard.
Six months later, we have had about half a dozen inquiries, none of them serious, and I had almost forgot that it was for sale. But, all of a sudden, we got a call on Tuesday from a buyer who wanted to come and look at the house…the next day. Yikes.
I didn’t know quite what to do, but I did know that our house was anything but presentable. I The kids and I dove in Tuesday afternoon with the mistaken belief that if I just “put everything away” the house would be okay. After an hour of pulling stickers off the walls, shoving piles of books back on shelves, and hanging up laundry, I realized that I was in for a rough 24 hours.
The kids contributed…in their own special ways. Madi spent a good 30 minutes dumping out and re-organizing her toy bins, carefully deciding where each Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake should go. Parker unearthed a cool hat, went downstairs and danced his little heart out. Fiona wandered after me and took out everything that I put away…there was literally a little trail of toys and books behind of me.
My mental list looked like the bottom half of my to-do list for the last couple of months…
- Iron & re-hang dining room curtains
- Put away extra Christmas wrapping paper
- Sort through school art projects from the beginning of the year
- Put away flip flops and sandals from the summer
- Re-organize toys so that the toy box lid can shut
You get the idea. A flicker of disgust crossed my mind that if I just would do these things when I first thought about them, I wouldn’t be in this pickle. It was quickly replaced with the reality that there are only 24 hours in the day…not 30…and that I needed to get over it…there were bathrooms to clean…
Wednesday afternoon rolled around, and I was confident that I could get it all done with time to spare…until Fiona decided to not take a nap…and I realized that we were completely out of diapers so we had to run up to the store…and Madi had to be picked up from school…so at about 5:15 p.m. I still needed to clean both bathrooms, vacuum, and clean up the kitchen before I took the kids out to dinner while Ben stayed to show the house at 6:30 p.m.
Somehow, miraculously, thanks to Ben coming home early and taking the kids to the basement, and some creative stuffing of back corners of closets, I finished by 6. I was sweaty, hair a mess, no socks, Fiona was screaming, but we were done…and gone…and on our way to Culvers for corn dogs and custard.
It would be great if I could say they came, took one look at our house, and wanted to buy it…but they didn’t. They decided to buy a much cheaper house about three streets over from us…we came in at #2. It would be great if I could say we are going to be able to keep our house in the pristine condition that it was in at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, but two days later, entropy has already taken over and we have started the slow slide back into chaos.
At least until the next person wants to look at the house…
