Posts Tagged ‘Cleaning’

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Why Do We Do This To Ourselves?


2010
01.22

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Posted in Headaches of Selling Your Home, Showing | No Comments »

Day 26 – Not much new to report. Just waiting for the showing on Sunday. We have also rescheduled our Open House. It will no longer be Valentine’s Day. We are shooting for January 31st instead.

 

Why do our houses look their best when they are for sale? Sell anything else you’ve used for a while and that ’s just not the case. If I were to sell our ride-a-mower for example, it is not in the same or better condition than when we bought it, plus it’s covered with caked on grass. A car… same or better condition… don’t think so, sure you vacuum it out, but the leather is never the same. A dining room set, used scratches and gouges to prove it. But my house… o-ho-ho-ho ho, MY house, it’s looking better than I’ve ever seen it! Hell, it looks even better than when my Mother comes to visit. I’ve got orchids in my bathrooms for crying out loud! And there are actually hand towels in there! I am currently living in a place that is comparable to a 5-star hotel! The problem I have with that is… Why now? Why hasn’t it been like this the entire time I’ve been living here? Who am I trying to impress… oh right.

 

When we sold our last house we went to the extremes to sell it. We refinished the original wood floors, repaired and painted the wood ceiling in the sunroom. Cleaned every square inch of molding. We even went as far as to take all the glass knobs off of the interior doors, strip the paint off of them, polish the brass and reattach. This processs took a whole 2 weeks, and lots of counter space… just for door knobs! Once we moved out and the house was still for sale we went even further. In the master bedroom we put a fresh coat of white paint on the walls, repaired a window that had looked like crap for 12 years and installed new wall-to-wall carpeting. Just to entice a buyer. Did I ever get to enjoy that… NO!

 

Don’t worry… I get it! Yes, I understand why… Because our homes increase in value and we are selling them for more than we bought them for. Real Estate is an investment… Well, not this time sister! I’m not selling my home for more than I bought it for. I’m selling it for 10% less than I bought it for! And that’s not including the costs for all the updates! Yet, my home has been polished head-to-toe. New paint, random holes patched, updated heat pump, brand-new instant hot, a couple new windows, new exterior door to the pool (I knocked a hole in the exterior of the house for this one), and I totally re-did the pantry with a beautiful and expensive glass tile backsplash. Bitter? Yes, a bit… It’s in far better condition than when we bought it. It is… almost perfect.

 

The other day we had a new window pane installed in our multi-light window at the front of the house. The center pane was dreadfully foggy. You couldn’t see the trees in the front yard through it. I now have an unobstructed view, and it is beautiful! The guys did a great job on the sill too. Which I’m going to have to paint this weekend! I can now enjoy it. But for how long? Hopefully only for a few months more. But come on! Why didn’t we change it out when we moved in and enjoy it for the last few years? Why do we do this to ourselves?… It’s disturbing.

 

I’m sure whichever house we buy we will spend many blissful years polishing once again… Getting it just right. Let’s just hope once it’s finally done we don’t move out the next day and if we do… at least with profit in our pocket!

 

Amen!

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Potential Buyers Arriving at 10:00am


2010
01.18

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Posted in Headaches of Selling Your Home, Showing | 1 Comment »

Day 22 – Sunday showing went well, the people like the house but want to come back when it is not raining.

 

We had a showing yesterday at 10 am. It was a Sunday so my plan was to sleep-in til 8, clean til 9:45 then take my daughter and my dog to the park. I woke up to pouring rain. Guess the park’s out. What am I going to do while my real estate agent is showing my home to potential buyers on a rainy day with a 7yr. old and a dog?

 

Cleaning went much faster than I had thought. Having done it so much lately, it was basically a touch-up. It was 9:15 and I was done. I had time to take a shower. But did I want my bathroom to be all steamy and wet for the potential buyers? I smelled, so yes. As I was turning the shower off, I reached for my towel. I didn’t want to step out onto the dry floor and have to mop that up too. I started to dry off and I then realized I was standing in an inch of water. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I said aloud. Since when does my shower not drain? I’ve lived here how long and I’ve never had this problem. And today of all days, no one’s going to buy the house with a shower full of water. I bent down and begged the water to drain. “Please, please, please.” I whimpered. I began stomping on the drain with my foot, like that would help. “Oh, come on… not now.” I bellowed. Slowly and eventually, it drained. Delighted, I stood up accidentally hitting the shower valve with my shoulder, turning the shower back on full blast soaking myself and my towel. For a split second I lost all mental capacity and for the life of me could not remember how to turn it off. Somehow I managed. I stood there drenched, realizing that I was going to have to walk across the bathroom, dripping along the way to get a new towel. Yep, cleaning that floor again.

 

At least I now know what my daughter and I can do for an hour… Hit the store for some Draino.

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Preparing Your House For Sale


2010
01.16

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Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Day 20 – It looks like the “out of towners” aren’t coming. But we have a new showing Sunday morning.

 

I consider myself a clean person. Make my bed everyday, do the dishes when they are in the sink, the laundry 2-3 times per week and I can’t stand it when my kids eat something sticky and the left over sludge is on the counter for more than 5 minutes. But I am not compulsive. I should say I WAS not compulsive. But now, having your house on the market with potential buyers coming within an hour’s notice makes you COMPULSIVE!

 

When we were getting our home ready to go on the market, I took a look around, walked from room to room, took a tour of the yard. I could not believe it! We were residing like white-trash squirrels! There was shit everywhere!

 

The laundry, although clean, was stacked in our rooms waiting to be folded. I could not walk through my daughter’s room without crushing something she loved. My son’s hockey equipment was sprawled all over what you would normally consider a living room. And I couldn’t remember the last time I saw the top of my dining room table.

 

But the yard… oh my, the yard… pool equipment, floaties, a broken kiddy pool,  over-grown vegetable garden with a destroyed fence, dog toys, balls, bats, hockey sticks, dolls, random pieces of lumber, firewood, weeds, leaves, shoes, overstuffed gutters, bikes, shovels, piles of potting soil and unused mulch, empty bird feeders on the ground, down branches, and oh-my-God, we never got rid of that old fridge that broke 2 years ago? Who are we?

 

The state of the house itself… not so bad. A few dabs of paint here, a missing switch plate there. We just need to pick up our crap and “declutter” (a real estate term defined as: You Have Too Much Shit and Shit Doesn’t Sell Houses)

 

When we sold the “Cute Little House” we rented a POD which sat in our driveway til we moved. We spent over $500 on that damn POD and there are still boxes from it I have yet to open and unpack. Not again! I love that our current house is so big. It has so much storage. (I will miss that) There are cupboards in this house I have never opened. So, no need for an ugly POD to add to our over-populated junky lawn, no sir, I have storage!

 

The only problem now, that my house is organized and clean, is keeping it that way. I am constantly cleaning and picking up after my family. The dishes don’t sit in the sink, the floor is always swept, the recycling actually goes somewhere, and the laundry is folded and put away after it’s washed. Every pillow has it’s place. I have become COMPULSIVE!… and exhausted. Trying to keep a house spic-and-span with kids is the ultimate challenge… It is so hard to get the concept of tidiness across to a 7 yr. old. She just doesn’t get it. The older one,  not so bad, but I still feel like I’m following him around the house and picking up the socks he has dropped or the books he left out (OK, video games, but a Mom can dream). Please guys, help your Mom keep the house clean! When they come home from school after I’ve picked up all day I’d say, “OK kids, we have people coming to see the house on Saturday, so please… no messes.” — They are starting to mock me.

 

As I’m typing this my daughter just ran through the house with muddy shoes. AARRGGHH!

 

It is the last minute cleaning before a potential buyer comes that I despise. And cleaning the bathrooms is the worst! The toilets, the “oops I missed” floors, the kids names written in soap scum on the shower doors, spilled bottles of shampoo, toilet paper strewn throughout the room, chunks of soap in the tub, scrubbing toothpaste off the bathroom counters, and they were only in there for 10 minutes! Can’t those kids get the toothpaste on the brush? Who the hell taught them cleanliness?.. Oh wait… that would be me…