I’m OUT! and gone.

I thought I could finish packing and cleaning in three or four hours on Friday, so I could head south before noon – but the piles of crap were like mushrooms after a rain and more grubby corners kept revealing themselves.

Even with all my ex’s cleaning assistance, I didn’t finish till 3 – and could have gone on longer if the eager new owners hadn’t pulled up in the UHaul and told me not to bother with washing the floors, etc.

Those last few minutes locking up the house for the final time were hard. I cried.

A wiser person might have stayed in town one more night to recuperate from the strain and get a fresh start in the morning, but I’m not that person.

I drove out the driveway and kept on going… up 78^th and onto I-5. I was headed for the holidays!with my kids in California.

Never mind that rush hour was beginning and I fed right into a traffic jam all the way through Portland, making for a getaway with all the drama of a morning commute. I didn’t care – I just needed to get out of town.

By the time the traffic thinned my spirits had lifted and I imagined myself making it at least to Medford before quitting for the night, up and over the Siskiyous in the morning and on into SF by supper.

Right.

A little south of Salem it began to drizzle. Traffic slowed to a crawl. Then my car lost its connection with the road – and I began to skate. It turns out that the week of 20 degree weather made the ground so cold that when the rain hit it, a sheet of black ice formed instantly. Thank god the road was dead straight because staying on the road was challenging enough at 15 mph.

I decided to bag it in Eugene with dear old friends if I could just make the turnoff. Miraculously the off-ramp and Eugene streets were clear and Christine and Bill plied me with champagne and cracked crab to celebrate my exit and safe landing.  The gods were definitely smiling on me.

When the streets thawed (after a tasty lunch – thanks guys!) I got back on the road and made it over the  Siskiyous before the next spate of bad weather rolled in.  Still, it was seven hours on the road today and my butt is sore.

What amazes me is how serene and blithe I feel. I know I did the right thing by selling, and even though the next step has not yet revealed itself to me it’s ok.

As Christine pointed out last night, this is the first time I’ve not been responsible for someone or something else. No kids, no pets (for the moment anyway), no house, no yard, no spouse, no official job…  just space and options.

Costs of selling a home mount up

Yesterday I did the deed. Or more accurately, I paid Chicago Title a queen’s ransom to do the deed. For them to guarantee that there were no liens against my property I paid more than $1,500.  I also paid the realtors (mine and the buyers’) a commission of $21,000 and (state and local excise) taxes of $7,500.

In other words, it is very expensive to sell a house. Nobody mentions this when you’re in the lustful phase of buying a house. When you sell all those fees you avoided up front as a buyer come back to bite you. Too late you realize they should be figured into any profitability equation.

The pain in my purse would have been less if home prices hadn’t plummeted in the past couple of years.  To console me, my realtor brought a bag of handmade chocolate-coated toffee to the signing.

Ah well, what’s done is done.  I loved the house, I loved transforming it into a thing of beauty and functionality, I loved living there. The money I lost is just the money I lost.

Right now the house is empty but for the stuff I plan to carry in the car during a two-month stint of staying at other people’s house. So today is about packing the last remnants and final cleaning.

Here the kitchen looks as pristine as the day I finished the remodel.

Thank god for ex-husbands who are still friends

My ex has been feeling more anxious about my move than I am, so to calm himself he offered to help oversee yesterday’s Big Move. Stuffing my Stuff into Storage. Squeezing Drusilla’s foot into Cinderella’s tiny glass slipper.

My storage place offers a 16’ truck for such occasions ($20), and my plan was to pick it up at noon so the two strong lads I hired at $25 an hour would be ready to boogie after their morning final exams.

The truck was so huge (to me) and the s-curve of my driveway so challenging that I was grateful Martin could handle it instead. I’d have taken out the mailbox, the rock wall, and at least one fender.

I figured I needed a 10’x20’ space but only a 7×10 and a 10×10 were open, so I took them, negotiating the price down from $173 to $98 for the first six months. (It pays to haggle in the storage bidness…).

Mart decided to put the boxes in the smaller one and the furniture in the bigger one.

The first run was a truckful of boxes. Me taping and labeling straggler boxes as fast as they hauled them off. Carefully noting on top and sides the most significant box contents.  They stuffed that unit to the rafters.

Then came the furniture. I had gotten rid of most of the big stuff, or so I thought. But I forgot about all the chairs and tables. 8 dining chairs, 2 office chairs, 2 living room chairs. A dining table, several side tables, etc. none of which fold well. Mart wove the pieces together into an intricate web of legs – again to the rafters.

Oops! we forgot the oak commode in the guest bathroom.  And what about these lamps? Do the garden tools in the garage go?

It was all done well after dark.  Oh, and it was 18 degrees out. At least it was dry!

Then after the very last few boxes were placed I discovered that the lads hadn’t even noticed my labeling… most of the boxes were placed LABEL SIDE IN.

No way am I going to be going to the storage place hoping to pull out just this one box or that chair. It’s gonna be all or nothing when I need something. Like when I move into my next place, wherever/whenever that’s going to be.

Friends: indispensable during a move

Even my cat, Bama, wants to help.

Over the past week I’ve also had major packing and cleaning help from Chris, Patty, Skip and Sue. Down and dirty help, especially from Chris. She and I have cooked a half dozen charity dinners in my kitchen, so she knows her way around my house, and we work really well together.

I can’t imagine tackling a job of this size alone. Friends are indispensible. A friend:

• sees your stuff objectively and isn’t emotionally attached to it,
• talks you through challenging decisions,
• helps you stay on task,
• keeps you from getting discouraged,
• makes the work much less painful

And I believe they take perverse pleasure in being able to deal cavalierly with Stuff that’s not their own. A thousand hugs to all of you.

How am I doing?

People who know how much I love this house ask me how I’m holding up under the impending sale and move (of my stuff) into a storage unit.

Surprisingly, astonishingly even, FINE. I’ve been too busy to get emotional – or something like that. It’s been a process that I’ve thought about for a few years and began actively working on this summer. At this point the edge has softened and it’s just WORK.

The endlessness of the work and the logistical organizing of what needs to be done when is the most stressful. I am not good in the logistics department, so I’ve been fortunate to have friends and family members talk me down and through some mental tangles.

Once you start getting rid of stuff, and once you realize how little other people value your stuff when you try to sell it, it begins to lose value in your own eyes. It becomes, well, STUFF.

After my mini-sabbatical in California after the house closes on 12/11 I’ll be back in town, staying with dear friends, taking my time to figure out what’s next.

What’s clear is that my friends and family are my greatest treasures. All else is just STUFF.

Sold! In ten days!!

Sign should now read "Sale Pending".

I am stunned and tremendously relieved. Yes, it’s a wonderful feel-good home. Yes, I feng shui’d the heck out of it. Yes, I think we priced it right. Still, in this funky down market, to get two basically full-price offers almost immediately is miraculous.

The average time on the market in my town was 158 days in August. I told my realtor that if the house didn’t sell by Halloween (75 days from listing) I would take it off the market because living in a house that’s on the market is like living in a museum. That’s about 60 days over my good behavior limit as Miss Super-Anal-Tidybutt.

When you live in a house that’s on the market  you can’t touch anything because at any moment the realtor could call with a client. You must make your bed the moment you climb out of it, clear the sink of dirty dishes the instant you finish eating, mow the lawn obsessively. You can’t cook odiferous foods. I loaned out my dog because she tracks in dirt and turns her corner of the carpet gray overnight.

One of the two offers wanted to move in in just five weeks. EEEK. (Also Repubicans – which doesn’t really fit the vibe of the house).

The other offer came from the Democratic State Rep in whose district I live – and for whom I hosted a fund-raising coffee here last fall because he’s a great guy. He has two little girls, 5 & 8, who think that there may be fairies in the yard.  My kind of family.

They wanted a closing date of December 15, which suits me fine, because I’ve got to unload a LOT of STUFF.

But that’s a topic for the next chapter in this down-sizing epic.

Feng Shui works! What I’ve learned getting my home ready to sell…

It may be a down market, but many people have come through my house in the first few days.  Two couples are already preparing offers.

The house, like a standard poodle at Westminster,  shows well. A lot of it has to do with feng shui– I’ve feng shui’d the heck out of the place and visitors feel it immediately. [Feng shui is one of my two professional gigs, so I try to practice what I preach on myself, even though it’s not easy to be detached about your OWN STUFF.]

Even if you don’t plan to sell your house for years, I commend this process to you on your current home. Why do all this work for the NEXT owners just before you sell, when you could do it for yourself TODAY? You can have years of serene living in your own personal paradise.

Eight feng shui tips to make your home a personal paradise.

1. The placement of the home on the land is balanced between wind and water. (The two characters for feng shui mean “wind” and “water”.) This is something you can’t do much about if you weren’t the original builder (well, you can give the illusion of good placement, but that’s not the subject of this post).  Ideally, in feng shui tradition, your home should be “cradled in the belly of the dragon” – as if you were nestled like a baby in the curve of your mother’s arms.

You want to be on a gentle slope above a lake or stream – not so high you’re in the wind, and not so low you’re in the water.  That’s where my house sits – partway down a hill with gardens in front, gardens in back, and a wonderful view of the lake below.

2. The entry is clear, magnetically attractive, and welcoming.  A curved brick path leads you to the front porch, where two antique ceramic elephants act as greeters on either side of the reddish door.  I replaced the very funky front door unit (which I should have done in the original remodel – would have been a lot cheaper…) Just inside the door is a pretty bench where you can sit to take off your boots, and it’s angled to lead you further into the house.

3. Color enlivens every room. (No white or beige walls).  The floor plan is open enough that you can see several different rooms at once, each a different color, but all of which work well together. The living room and entry hall are a warm soothing taupe, the kitchen a periwinkle blue with white and black tile backsplash and charcoal counters and floor (the dark floor brings in the water element to balance the fire of kitchen activities). The guest bath is pumpkin orange, the laundry room chartreuse, and the dining room winey-red. White woodwork ties it all together as do many of the multi-colored art pieces. Even the garage is decked out with color (paint left over from the rest of the house) to make the home-owner feel happy and serene when pulling in at the end of a long day.

4. Every window looks out on something lovely. Our homes must relate to the world outside, so I tried to make sure what you see outside the window is attractive. In my case that means well-kept plants, a tidy lawn, a trimmed hedge, something in bloom, a trellis, even a piece of outdoor art. In the case of a couple of windows with unredeemable views, I keep them covered with translucent shades.

5. I got rid of all clutter. Clear countertops, bookshelves half-empty and reorganized, no tsottchkes (sp.? – those dusty little collections of frogs, roosters, Hummel figures, teacups, etc that plague American homes).  Immediately the house and I felt much more peaceful and focused.

6. I moved the furniture, moved the chi. Almost every piece of furniture in the house was moved, from a simple angle change to a complete re-location in the house. Let me tell you, this really wakes up the chi and even people who’ve never been in the house before feel it.  The biggest shift was my office (Home of Stale Chi): I got rid of two desks, a couple of file cabinets, and a bookcase, then I moved the whole shebang into another (smaller) room, setting it up with a little desk that had been elsewhere. WOW. I actually like it.

7. Everything got cleaned within an inch of its life. I brought in outside help for this – my daughter and a hungry young political worker – and the three of us scrubbed for days. (I’ve been my own house cleaner since I bought the house… need I say more? I’ve been worth every cent I got paid.)  You don’t realize how grubby a cabinet shelf was until it’s been washed…

8. I let go of the house as mine.  This could have been the hardest part, since I LOVE LOVE LOVE the home I’ve created here. But I’m ready for the next adventure, whatever that will be, and needed to sever the cords that tie the house to me and vice versa.  Before the open house on Sunday I walked around each room, soaking in its beauty or functionality, and thanked it for all it had contributed to my great happiness and comfort living here. And then I released it for the happy buyers who would follow me in loving the place.

Yes, I shed some tears. I made a silk purse out of a house that was once a sow’s ear, and may never again live in such a wonderful home. But I’m comforted knowing that it will grace the lives of its next owners.  May it be so.

Open House Deadline = week of insanity

Hearing my pitiful whimpers as OH-Day (Open House Day) rapidly approached, on Friday the Rescue Angels (my dear kids Heather and Ethan) flew in from the Bay Area – Ethan just for the weekend, and Heather for the whole week.

This is why we have children. Yup.

Heather brought my 5 & 8 year-old grandsons as well, who added to the amusement but weren’t exactly worker bees. At home they have no TV, no VCR. So whenever they got too bored with watching us slave away we shoved a Star Wars movie into the slot.

Mesmerized

Elliott's not so sure about this...

First we did the gross stuff. Gross as in big. Hauling boxes of photo albums, books, notebooks, excess cookware, etc to the storeroom, bagging excess bed linens and clothing for Goodwill, and moving out the bookshelves and cupboards thus emptied.

That left the dirt.
It revealed the cobwebs.
And it left lots of piles of random shit… in what box will that go so I won’t lose it forever???

Heather never stopped. When she wasn’t folding linens or scrubbing out the frig, she was keeping the crew fed with fabulous food. A mix of what I had in the garden, and what needed to be eaten down in the cupboards.

We eat well

The more orderly the place got, the more we could see imperfections that had been camouflaged for years.
And yet, miraculously, minutes before the first realtor showed up we finished, and the place looked FABULOUS.

See for yourself here: the virtual tour put together by my realtor. It looks like it’s always been this calm and lovely.

And in a way, it always has been…just hidden by all the STUFF.
.

Realtor reality check. Ugh.

Birdtoes' rats

Yesterday I showed my house to the first of three or four realtors I’m interviewing to see who might best represent my precious place to the most appropriate buyers.

IMHO my house is special – beautiful grounds, mature landscaping and trees, beautifully remodeled, uniquely inviting, views from every window, secluded and quiet yet close in….  etc etc.

The realtor and her business partner oohed and ahhed at all the right places, but when it came down to talking about price, they suggested a price about $100k below what I might have asked a couple of years ago. There’s such a glut of homes on the market that buyers are focused most on how cheap they can go, they said.

I knew it was bad, but I didn’t expect it to be that low.

“Well, you can ask more, but nobody will bother to come see it. Pricing it right is everything…”

Then they proceeded to tell me all the things I could spend thousands more dollars to fix it up so there’d be nothing to trip up a sale deal.

OK. I’ve already ordered a replacement for my front door unit  because it’s irredeemably wonky for years. I know that the turquoise wall color I chose for the upstairs bathroom is a little too wild – and I’m willing to repaint it something more muted (it’s small…) but I’m not going to re-roof or install air-conditioning.

They suggested I replace my current big desk with something dainty and unobtrusive so my office looks more massive than my desk.  (Humongo* desk – my other desk – used to sit behind the chair of my current big desk – aren’t two big desks better than one?  Of course.)

They also said, “The less you have in your closets, garage, bookcases, cupboards, rooms the better. So sell it, give it away or dump anything that won’t fit into your future 100 sq.ft. home.”

Ulp.

Check.

Then they said, “And have it ready to go on the market ASAP – no later than mid-August, because by mid-October buyers go into hibernation.”

They had to revive me with smelling salts. Three weeks to sort through a lifetime of treasures? I was moving at a six-month pace.

The boxes and cabinets of history on paper are what scare me the most.  I’m a writer…paper is my stock in trade, and I also have family photos going back a hundred years. Plus all the scrapbooks, kids’ mementos. The mind boggles.

I need a nap!

Bad neighbors – real estate bummer

My front yard - from the driveway

I have a pretty home in a nice neighborhood close enough to town to be convenient but far enough out to be quiet.  The houses are attractive, owner-occupied, with well-kept yards.

Except for two houses.
The two houses on either side of my little piece of heaven.
They are shitheaps.

They are shitheaps owned by absentee landlords who don’t give a shit as long as the rent comes in. Both yards are overgrown with noxious weeds as high as my waist.  These weeds blow and crawl down from the uphill shitheap, and they creep over and under the fence from the downhill shitheap.

Living here, it’s a constant battle against their blackberry vines, thistles and dandelions that migrate into my yard. It also reflects badly on home values in the neighborhood – most especially MINE.

The uphill shitheap (US, for short) situation may improve, because the landlord had a stroke and his business partner plans to clean it up and sell it (one dumpster load gone so far…).

The downhill shitheap (DS) was owned by a sweet retired schoolteacher when I moved in seven years ago, and she took great pride in her garden. But within that first year she died and her daughter and son-in-law, who live in 3 hours away in Seattle, turned it over to their two adult children.

Downhill Shitheap - blackberry choked driveway

When I stopped by and asked the older daughter if they could please deal with the weeds, she snapped, “Talk to the landlord… that’s his job”.  So last night I called Dad in Seattle, who was extremely rude. When I suggested that they hire someone to take care of the weeds, he snapped, “I’ve got better things to do with my money…

Perhaps if Mom and Dad lived next door they’d insist the kids “pick up their rooms”, but they’re Christian missionaries – too busy evangelizing to notice that Jesus’ neighborliness message isn’t getting through.

My own house has lots of curb appeal.  The question is how can I enhance the curb appeal of my neighbors’ homes?  Either I distribute blinkers to potential buyers, so they don’t notice the slobs that surround me, or I fork out some of my own money to help them clean up their yards (and I’m not even a Christian).   Grrrrrrr.