The Stage is Set, Sold!

March 11th the interior photography was taken of our home for a virtual walking tour on a real estate website. These first impression photos/videos are very important because most homes are viewed on the internet first, in person second. In the midst of everything else we have going on in preparation for moving, we’ve been busy shuffling furniture around in order to open up various rooms so potential buyers can see the space and picture their stuff. This is termed staging your home. I’ve been diligently pulling pictures off walls and stuff off shelves in order to depersonalize our home-sweet-home. Two bedrooms now have twin-sized faux beds instead of my office furniture in one and a gigantic queen sized bed in the other. It’s amazing what a few storage boxes, camp mattresses, and colorful bedding do to the look of a room. The dining table is set - dinner for four anyone? And the kitchen bar is set up for breakfast. How lovely!

With the stage finally set the virtual walk-thru went live Monday night, March 14, and on Tuesday we had 3 prospective buyers. One ended up dropping out due to their own contingencies and the other two buyers took on a bidding war. By Thursday, March 17, we had accepted an offer and it all became official on Friday. Sold! Yesterday the house inspection was done and tomorrow the septic and well inspections take place. Whew!

Since the beginning of the year, all of our energy seemed to build up to the staging of our home. Now that we are past that point and looking at a closing date of April 20, we are in a sort of limbo until we can finalize the inspection details. The main push is over. Once we agree on inspection issues we will begin to dismantle the staging and finalize the moving plan.

Staging is preparing for something. That something could be just about anything. For us it has been the sale of our home in order to travel more and be home-less. Once you set your sites on whatever it is you want to do, you can make it happen. You just need to open up the space around you in order to see it differently, and that's when you can allow for change to take place.

Sold photo courtesy of Sean MacEntee

Priorities

Our house will be listed for sale within the next week. With so many loose ends to take care of how do we prioritize when the day is full of priorities? How do we determine what is more important to do when everything is?

With our upcoming move to have no home and travel for awhile, we are in the throes of the last efforts to get rid of stuff we no longer need, and we are packing things we are keeping. With each item that leaves it is much easier to decide what goes and what is packed, and with each item that leaves we feel lighter and know we are headed in the right direction. We make almost daily trips to our 10 x 15-foot heated storage unit. Weekly we drop off car loads of stuff to our local charities, and send piles of garbage with our very helpful garbage guy and recycle guy. Our scanner and paper shredder are working overtime. If the weather is good, the priorities are outside in the yard; if it is raining, the priorities are inside. Setting daily priorities is the only way to stay sane and work together.

In the morning we discuss what we would like to accomplish for the day, we handle business matters and squeeze in a workout before we get on with packing, sorting, and hauling. As the day progresses we make adjustments to priorities as necessary. Come evening, we wrap up between 4 and 5 p.m. and before we go to bed we discuss how the next few days may play out. By morning, that can all change. We have fallen into a new daily routine crammed with priorities that would test anyone’s patience and ability to be flexible.

What’s important is knowing we can reprioritize and lay out the next few minutes or the rest of the day as necessary. By adjusting and going with the flow we get an amazing amount of priorities taken care of on any given day. And when all is said and done, we will have a lot less stuff, fewer priorities, and can pack patience and flexibility with us when we head out on the next chapter of our lives.

So how do we determine our priorities when everything is a priority? We talk about it and work as a team. After all, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together in the days ahead and being able to discuss things with patience and flexibility in mind will see us through-and a dash of humor wouldn’t hurt either!

Checklist photo courtesy of e3Learning