Friday, January 29, 2010

Getting Started (Baby Steps)


I finally got started on some moving stuff yesterday! A friend loaned me a really great little book called "Dress Your House for Success" by Martha Webb.


It's about staging your house to sell it. It really put me in the right mindset to get started (and hopefully I'll be a better client for our realtor, my sister-in-law Julia). I think I was a little like a deer in the headlights - I could see the move coming but didn't know what to do, I was frozen. In the back of my mind I knew if I didn't do something then it was going to hit me, but I just didn't know where to start!! But she breaks the process down in to bite size pieces. In the book Martha first discusses how emotional it can be to detach yourself from your house and to see it as a product or commodity and that was really helpful for me. That is such a hard thing for me to do. I think of it as our home. It's not just 4 walls and a roof, it's the place where my family LIVES, where we relax, where we sleep, where we laugh, where we hang out with our friends. It's toasty inside when it's snowing, it's a cool oasis when the summer sun is beating down. We live on Woodhaven Drive and I've always thought that was such a good name because our house is just that: a haven in the woods. We've lived in this house longer than any of our other homes and it is definitely hard to find the balance between packing up our not only our things, but also our memories, our lives (it makes me cry just writing about it and this is just the STUFF, just wait until I have to say goodbye actual PEOPLE!). So anyway, yesterday was a good step.

The first step is to "unclutter". This is gonna take me a while. I did 1/2 of the kitchen yesterday. I'm gonna try to finish it today and maybe I'll take some pictures while I'm at it (the junk drawer alone will probably take all afternoon!). The thing that I'm really enjoying about it is that it will make the packing and moving part alot easier. All our stuff will already have been sorted through and all the drawers and stuff will already be clean. I took everything out of the drawers and cupboards I went through yesterday, vacuumed them, wiped them down and replaced the drawer liners. Then I sorted through whatever was in them and got rid of stuff I didn't want or need anymore, packed the stuff I can live without until June and then put the rest back in - they look SO great! I also scrubbed the outside of the drawers and the inside and outside of the cupboard doors. I tried to pull out the oven to clean behind and underneath it but it was too heavy for me to move alone. I'll have Dave help me do it today, but I was hoping to do it without him here because I don't want him to see how gross it's gonna be back there. I've never pulled it out to clean before! I only clean as far under there as the vacuum attachment will reach! Yuck! (I won't take pictures of that one!)

Our living room is not really that big and we have a regular TV in there that sits on top of a wooden trunk. In order to make the room look more spacious I had the idea to replace the existing TV with a flat screen that we could hang on the wall (thus getting rid of the wooden trunk and creating more floor space). We had actually said we were not gonna take the TV with us and just get a flat screen when we arrive anyway. So when I called Dave at the fire station yesterday to tell him my idea of getting the flat screen now, instead of in Hawaii he pretended it was a horrible idea and there was NO WAY he would let me do it. But of course, what husband would actually say no to a flat screen? So I think we're gonna do a little shopping today as well.

So anyway, there's a little update on the progress I've made. If I take any pictures I'll edit this post and add them on tonight. See ya later!

erin


1 comment:

  1. It IS hard, isn't it?
    I have to admit, I'm a house stalker...when we sold our house I had mixed emotions but we have memories there...had our first two babies there, etc. and it was our first house being married...so occasionally when I'm in that part of town I drive by and see the window treatments I made that they still have up and sigh...I miss it in so many ways. :)

    Hugs...it's a big process.

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