Selling Your Own Home is No Picnic....

It only took a few days and several doses of antibiotics to get us up and running again. I'm thankful for that and glad that the girls didn't have to miss any school. We'll need to save up our days, especially since they'll be missing 4 days when we go to D.C and Ohio next month. So, anyway, back to the point of my post. So, it has been almost an exact year since we put our house on the market. One really long year! Obviously the market is slow and we don't exactly live in a booming area, especially since we are selling a family home and few families with children ever seem to move in out here! We've taken things in stride and of course can't really blame our Realtor, being that our Realtor is ME! Well maybe Brian is ready to fire me, but sorry honey, he can't! At times it is discouraging, but we keep thinking that we must really be where we are supposed to be right now. We don't really have any reason to go elsewhere, and when we put the house up for sale, we never really had a game plan. We still don't know where we'd go IF the house ever did sell! I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it! For now, we deal with trying the keep the house neat, picked up, and in general looking the best that we can keep it, being that we have 3 children and we do LIVE here! We have had lots of people look, however when they look at our house, they also seem to be looking at a zillion other homes as well! It seems inevitable that on days when chaos reigns supreme, someone will want to see the house. I actually had to tell someone no, they couldn't come last Wednesday after I was up with sick Ally all night and had to get the girls out the door and get Ally to her Dr. appt. all before 9:30 a.m. Needless to say, the house was not "show" ready. I felt bad turning down a potential buyer, but it turns out the agent was just previewing homes for her clients who will come from out of town later this month! Phew...we might get another chance with that agent! Well I got another call on Thursday night from a different agent who wanted to bring some clients by to see the house sometime on Friday. He said he'd give me a call and let me know for sure what time. So, Friday morning, after getting the 2 older girls off to school, I start my mad cleaning exodus! I was feeling so good and seemed to have more energy than I've had in a really long time! I cleaned like a mad lady. I washed and scrubbed and dusted and replaced light bulbs and pulled weeds and cleaned the pool and washed windows that I've never washed before! And then I waited and waited and waited! I decided to put Ally down for her regular afternoon nap and then I started to get mad that I had done all of this work for nothing and thought the guy wouldn't even call back! I had the lights on in the house and my scentsy candle burner going and it was ready to be seen! As I left to go get the girls from school I decided to leave the lights on and the water fountain on the pool going, etc. just in case! So after picking up the girls I wanted to swing by my friend Julie's house to drop off some brownies and say goodbye one last time before her family moves to Yuma (that is another post - Why Does Everyone Have to Leave, Especially When We Can't?). I parked and ran up to the door and talked to her on her doorstep for less than 2 minutes. I got back in the car and guess what, the Realtor had just left a message saying he would be at the house in 10 minutes! I was happy he had called and that all my hard work wouldn't go to waste but I was also thinking that 10 minutes wasn't really sufficient notice! What was he thinking? I'm just glad he hadn't called at say, 11:30 while I was feeding Ally lunch and said I'll be there at 11:40! I guess in the end it worked out. I just had to cruise around Gold Canyon with the kids for a little while til I thought there had been sufficient time for us to come home! On the up side, we came home to a clean house and Brian was very surprised to see the house sparkling the way it did! Well today is Saturday and no one else has called to see it today and we have been working and projects and the kids have been playing, so the house isn't sparkling much anymore! Oh well, there is always next time and hopefully I'll get more than 10 minutes notice, especially if the house looks the way it did last Wednesday when we were all sick!


I just thought I'd include this pic. too! With all the talk about cleaning, I have to give some props to my little side kick, Ally! Whenever I get out the vacuum she has to run and get her little one out too! She wants to be in on the action, especially since she is still getting used to having her sisters gone to school all day! She is so much fun!