Hellobee

We’ve been toying with the idea of moving from our house for a little while now. We actually sold our house right before Pearl was born, but couldn’t find a house to buy during the winter months and eventually had to call the whole thing off, unfortunately. Lately we’ve seen a few houses come onto the market that we’ve been really interested in, so we decided to take the leap and list our house again, in hopes of getting a good deal.

The last time that we listed I had a toddler (Scallop) and was heavily pregnant. I thought getting the house ready to list and to show, multiple times, was hard THEN…well I had no idea what hard was. So here are my tips for getting a house ready to sell quickly, with 2 kids running around.

1. Do all the things quickly: Once we decided that we were seriously going to list our house again, we decided the best way to do it was as quickly as possible. One weekend, when I was out of town, Mr. Oyster rented a U-Haul, asked his mother to watch the kiddos, and hauled a very massive amount of our stuff to a storage facility (speaking of which, gosh I wish I had downsized ahead of time!). Two weeks after that we spent a Wednesday night starting to get the rooms ready to clean up, and then I spent all of Thursday readying the rooms. It was difficult for Pearl and Scallop, but I would try to organize a certain part of a room and then take time to play with them, or get something ready for them to do.

I cleaned and organized for about 15 hours total on Thursday (my FitBit-ish Garmin thingy told me I walked some 23,000 steps or about 9.5 miles). I was ready to drop by the evening, but Friday I woke up and got a few more things ready before taking the kids to the trampoline park. Then in the afternoon, our agent came over to take pictures of the house. PHEW!

2. Make a list: I’m all about making lists, so getting ready to sell our home was no exception. After our stuff went to storage, I went room-by-room and made a list of what needed to be organized and what needed to be cleaned. This made it easier for me to check things off as I went and not get completely confused as I forgot things throughout the day while taking care of the kids. Most of the rooms had similar things that needed to be cleaned (dust, wipe down walls, wash floors, etc.) and having the list helped to remind me what needed to be done, after I’d already done it 5 times in a row!

3. Clean and organize for anyone: Our house comes off as a very kid-friendly house obviously, but it is also the perfect home for a younger couple soon to have kids, or even an older couple who’s looking for a home in a quiet neighborhood. Knowing that I knew I had to clean up a lot of the kids’ stuff and make it semi-inconspicuous. I organized their toys into bins (as they’re usually supposed to be…on good days), put away the car rug that made our living room look a lot smaller than it was, and went on a cleaning binge – throwing away toys that weren’t played with or were broken. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot I could do for the kids’ rooms. Scallop has glow in the dark stars all over the place, but my cleaning time went to other things, as we were in a rush. Both rooms still look like kids’ rooms and there’s not a whole lot I could do to change that with the time I had. Mr. Oyster is really good at seeing past people’s “stuff” to the bare bones of a house, whereas I am definitely not. So I guess I hope people will have an open mind when looking past our stuff, or at least have someone else with them who can!

All of the stuff is everywhere

4. Be ready for showings: When I had to survive showings with Scallop we would usually just go across the street to our neighbor’s house. It was the middle of winter so there wasn’t a lot we could easily go do, and it was nice to spend time with our friends. However, since they’ve moved that was obviously not an option this time. Fortunately, we listed our house on a Saturday afternoon and our first showing was on Sunday, so Mr. Oyster was home with us. We were able to spend the day out of the house visiting a local farm while we had a showing, which was nice for the kids and for us. I’m not sure what we’ll do when we have future showings, but flexibility is the name of the game when trying to sell a house, which brings me to….

5. Be flexible: This is the hardest one for me. I’m aware of how flexible I’ll need to be in order to get our house sold. When my agent asked me what times the house wouldn’t be available to show, I immediately said, “well, not after 6 because that’s dinner time.” I think it took some major self-control for her not to roll her eyes at me. Seems that’s a prime time to see homes when you don’t have little children who need to eat and sleep on a schedule. Ok, well not after 7 then, please. I mentioned that Pearl’s nap time (12-2ish) was also not an ideal time but quickly realized that some things may need to be sacrificed for a short amount of time.

I’m also realizing that things might not look as perfectly as they did around the house for showings as they should. Trying to get the 3 of us out the door in a timely manner, while also making sure the trash is out, dishes are done, floors are swept, etc…well, something’s gotta give. Thus, I will try to be as flexible as possible, as often as possible, while still also being resolved to seriously sell our home.

Here’s to hoping!

*Update – that one showing on Sunday happened to go well enough that we got an offer that we accepted! Hooray!! One thing off our plate….now to find a new home.