Lessons From Maybe-Moving
If you’re not familiar with the term “maybe-moving” let me define it for you. Maybe-moving is: Moving. Maybe.
Here’s what it looks like in real time: Your wife walks into the living room one day while you are innocently watching To Catch A Smuggler (the drug dog just nailed some dude hiding coo-kii-aine in a Stratocaster!) and casually says, “Hey, we should move.” She then presents an elaborate case for moving that she has obviously been practicing and polishing for quite some time. It is logical, practical, and (here’s the thing) compelling. It’s even exciting. So you, making the fatal mistake of not counting the cost, respond with an enthusiastic, “Sure, babe, let’s do it!”
The Big 3
“Let’s do it” translates into the big three:
· Cleaning every nasty corner and cranny of the house that for the past six years you have avoided, ignored, passed over, and generally not cared to venture into, much less scrub with a brush.
· Repairing all of the little (and large) things that your wife has been mentioning for the past six years but you have effectively been dodging and forgetting and otherwise pretending not to notice.
· Improving your home in ways that you’ve considered but balked at because of the required expense, effort, and/or time involved. This includes dream improvements that make you (for more than just a few milliseconds) consider what it might be like to stay here and enjoy them.
Listing
Next in the process, as every homeowner-turned-homeseller knows all too well, is the wonderful, satisfying, and decidedly terrifying process of listing. Thankfully, we have realtors who have seen us through a long series of often unexpected, occasionally planned, sometimes difficult life events, and are still willing to offer their services in order to assist us in hawking our abode.
As everyone knows (apparently), in order to sell your home, you have to make it look like no one lives there.
Living Like Monks
Under their careful advisement, we launched into the next phase. Namely: living like monks.
As everyone knows (apparently), in order to sell your home, you have to make it look like no one lives there. Actually, that’s not accurate. You have to make it look like someone does live there (furniture) but that they are neat freaks on steroids (no clutter, no photos on the walls, no personality whatsoever, no dirt, no dust, no nuthin’ that implies actual life). It must look like a GREAT house inhabited by ghosts. Ghosts who are obsessive/compulsive about cleaning.
In order to check this box, we sorted and tossed and downsized, ushering unnecessary items to either Goodwill, the dump, or the garage. By everything, I mean... everything we like. Art, guitars, books, exercise equipment... All that remains are empty desks, empty tables, empty chairs, (almost) empty closets. The result is a feeling that we’re camping, except without leaving town or getting away from our obnoxious neighbors.
Now, with that elaborate context, let me share the deeply (d-e-e-p-l-y!) life-changing lessons I’ve learned during this tumultuous, traumatic, and, most of all, LONG process.
1. Don’t Mess with Moths and Rust (Mostly Moths)
You may remember Jesus talking about the virtues of NOT putting your time, money, and energy into things that moths and rust could destroy. Well, let me tell you about the former... Every year in Colorado, we get a moth infestation. It lasts for a couple of months and is, depending on conditions, anywhere from mildly annoying to horrifying. This year, it’s close to biblical proportions. I found this out while stashing my extra art at my parents’ house. I encountered waves of moths, blankets of moths, sun-extinguishing clouds of moths, and, of course, heaps of moth doot. They really do ruin whatever they touch.
Bottom line: Yuck!
2. Always Be Ready (Even 30 Minutes Early)
Jesus said he’s coming back and it will be like a thief in the night. He expects his followers to be ready. Well, if you’ve ever put your house on the market, you know EXACTLY what that’s like. You can go days with no lookers, then suddenly, boom! You have multiple showings. You have to be ready! You have to have the place clean and in order and looking like the OCD ghosts are living large – otherwise you risk offending a potential buyer. And get this: sometimes they show up early! (Today, for instance, the 12:15PM person was here at 11:45AM. 11:45! We were still loading the dogs and granddaughter into the truck...).
Bottom line: Being ready takes (groan...) effort!
You have to have the place clean and in order and looking like the OCD ghosts are living large – otherwise you risk offending a potential buyer.
3. Get Used to Pilgrim Status
In the Bible, it talks about this world NOT being out home. It says our home, if we’re followers of Jesus, is heaven. This (imagine me waving my arm at my seriously empty basement office) isn’t really our home anymore either. Once that sign appeared on the front lawn, the MSL website picked it up, and all our good stuff was relocated to the garage... Not our home anymore. If/when we sell, we’ll be bumped out. And since we don’t yet have eyes on a new place, we will officially be pilgrims in a strange land!
Bottom line: Life is an adventure.
Bonus Bottom Line: Stuff makes life fun. Without guitars, for instance, really, what’s the point?! As one wise sage once noted, “Money can’t buy happiness. But it can buy guitars – which is pretty darn close!” Actually, that has nothing to do with this blog, I’m just saying...
As of this writing, our house has NOT sold. We don’t have any offers. But that could change at any moment. That’s the tightrope we’re walking. Will there be another showing today? What about tomorrow? Will there be an offer today... next week? Or will we live happily – in market-enforced, Marie-Kondo minimalism – in this house for the rest of our days on planet earth?
The answer to all of these questions is a definite: Maybe.