Realtor Stress

Well, we met with the realtor today. There are a bunch of things I like about her:

- she's genuinely enthusiastic about our lovely but quirky house
- she named a selling price we think is right
- she knows the neighborhood and has been successfully selling in it for years
- she's got a reputation as an honest person
- she thinks she can sell it within 2 weeks of the first open house (I think that's optimistic, but I hope I'm wrong).

The downside, and it isn't something that's unique to her, is that she wants to virtually empty out the house except for our beds, a couple of dressers, a sofa and side table, and a couple of lamps. No bookshelves, very few books on the built-in bookshelves in PH's office. Most of my cooking stuff will go into storage, as well as the stereo and CDs.

We had to fight for a desk for PH, whose desk here IS his work office (he sees clients at a church) and a desk for me, who works from home. I'm still negotiating a TV set so I can watch the evening news and a few guilty pleasure TV shows.

StrongOpinions is highly resistant to changes to her room, so I'm going to do a major de-clutter and only do the last couple of things right when they're about to do the open house. Plus they want to move Moses the gecko to the basement.

The realtor wants us to take down our curtains in the bedrooms, for heavens' sake! I said I wasn't about to let the neighbors see me change into my jammies. So we're allowed to keep up the curtains, at least until the open house.

Change is hard. I know that. But emptying my house of all my stuff and still living in it (or trying to live in it) for 90 days seems a bit much.

Grrr.

The good news is that I'm "editing" our book collection, and the regional church Book Sale will benefit from it.

Please remind me again that this is a good thing.