Selling Houses is for the Birds

I have to say that this home-selling thing is for the birds.

Maybe I'm just going overboard on the house being perfectly clean every time we have a showing. I just can't bear to think of people walking through the house and scrutinizing it - and having it be messy.

It has really taken a serious toll on our school hours. We've had 3-4 showings a week for the past couple of weeks. Each time, I spend a couple of hours getting the house cleaned and ready - and it's usually at a time that we should be doing schoolwork. (ie. late morning or early afternoon showings).

Part of me wants to have all of our stuff picked up and we can just sit in an empty house until it sells. Then I wouldn't have so much "stuff" to pick up and clean and keep organized. We could focus totally on school and reading and hanging out. That sounds good to me!

We spent over an hour at Sears today, looking at new appliances. You don't know how much it makes me want to cry to be picking out gorgeous stainless steel appliances that I will only use for a month or two. The majority of the houses in our price range have them and we've decided that our very outdated cream colored ones have to go. They function, but that's about it. :)

We are also replacing the bedroom carpets (which at one point in time were white - not anymore).

Thank God for a huge tax return this year or we surely wouldn't be able to afford it!

I'm hoping that with these little upgrades, we'll get the house sold before we have to move. I REALLY don't want to be stuck paying a mortgage payment on a house that we aren't living in.

We still have 3 months, so I'm optimistic that we'll find a buyer. I just want to get it sold before we get down to the last minute though. Time is flying fast and it will be May before we know it!

Maybe I just need to get the house completely ready every night and then take off and do school somewhere else during the day - so that we don't mess the house up.

It's so hard to keep it really "ready-to-be-shown" clean when there are 6 of us sitting in it all day long. Too bad that it's the middle of winter and our options for places to go are very small. Actually, the only place I can think of going to do schoolwork is the library. Really. It's not like we can hang out at the lake or anything. :)

Well, we have another showing tomorrow, so maybe this will be "the one"! :)