Well, I can finally quit cleaning our house.
It no longer has to be spit spot, as Mary Poppins would say, for
a prospective buyer on a moment’s notice.
Well, I can finally quit cleaning our house.
It no longer has to be spit spot, as Mary Poppins would say, for a prospective buyer on a moment’s notice.
Not that it had to be spit-spotted for very long. After all, it got snatched up after being on the market for only two days.
I guess I should back up a bit and explain myself.
The whole idea to move struck soon after we brought Miss Emma home from the hospital. You see, something happens to your house when a baby takes up residence in it. It shrinks.
Yes, it’s true. Ever since Miss Emma moved in, the walls have been closing in.
I never thought it would happen. When my husband, Chris, and I moved to Gilroy five years ago, our 3-bedroom, 2-bath home felt cavernous. That’s what happens when you move from a one-bedroom apartment. We had more space than we knew what to do with.
Of course, all that changed when Emma joined our brood.
Not that a 7-month-old takes up much space. However, all of her gear does. The saucers, swings, jolly jumpers and 5 million toys have a way of turning into sprawl.
It starts out innocently enough. People buy you beautiful, educational, albeit bulky, toys for your adored infant. But before you know it, stuff is spilling out of every closet, cupboard, nook and cranny.
Throw another kid into the mix and you’ve got yourself chaos.
We knew that the day would come soon when we would have to look hard to find Emma crawling around amid the piles of board books, stuffed animals and rattles.
So, we started searching for our next home. We set out the following weekend and scoured Gilroy for just the place. A place where we could watch our children grow up and we could grow old.
We weren’t exactly sure what we were looking for, but we would know it when we set eyes on it. It would have a big backyard, plenty of space for little ones to roam free and enough room indoors where we would never feel crowded.
In a matter of days we found it. It didn’t take long for us to realize that it had all the ingredients needed to be our future home, except us of course. We made an offer and it was accepted. Soon after we put our own house on the market.
But first we had to get it ready. Now I don’t mean to complain, but I think there’s something unnatural about prepping your home for sale.
First of all, you’re cleaning and dusting it and making it perfect, just so you could move out? It doesn’t make sense that a house looks its best in the final moments its occupants reside in it.
And do people really think that this is what the house will look like after their stuff is moved in and they’ve lived in it for a while? You can bet your Hoover it isn’t.
But I can appreciate the idea of displaying a clean slate. It’s dreamy to walk around a space and think about the possibilities, to imagine putting your own mark on it.
The next few weeks will be a whirlwind of boxes, newspaper, home inspectors and a million other things. And of course there will be more cleaning to get everything in spit-spot shape.
But soon the dust will clear and we will be settled in our new home.And that’s when the real fun will begin.
