It’s no secret that we have been trying to sell our home since spring. We had a whole plan, which included selling and cashing out on our current house in order to move into a more affordable neighborhood, closer to my mom, so that we could afford for me to take some time off when baby #2 arrives.
Right after we moved in, 2015
Well, things haven’t gone to plan. Our home has been listed for two and a half months, we’ve had a bajillion showings, we’ve lowered our price several times, and we haven’t received a single offer. (There are lots of potential reasons why, but I think the main one is that the market is just flooded with new construction right now.) With just under three months to go until this baby’s due date, I’m sure it’s obvious why we are starting to panic a bit about selling. But the plan is to keep on trucking because we believe selling is the right financial decision for us, even if the house doesn’t sell for as much as we had originally hoped. We have a backup plan in case we don’t sell by the time baby #2 arrives: I will enroll Little Cotton Candy in a pre-K near our current neighborhood, and we will pull our house off the market for a few weeks while we adjust to our new family member’s appearance.
Arguably the worst part about being on the market for so long is the inconvenience of repeated showings and open houses, and the amount of work that goes into it every time. The staging, the cleaning, the organizing, etc. Meanwhile, I’m accruing a pile of hand-me-downs for baby #2 at an alarming rate. Don’t get me wrong—they are much appreciated. But I’m running out of places to stash them and keep the house looking put together!
I am feeling quite unsettled and longing for the day when I can finally begin nesting. I don’t need to buy a whole lot for this baby, but I would like to purchase a secondhand glider, and I absolutely need to purchase a new infant car seat. And probably some diapers. This time in my pregnancy with Little Cotton Candy I was deep-cleaning the fridge, scrubbing baseboards, thinking about prepping freezer meals. I soooo want to be doing those things now, but instead I am in the daily slog of checking my phone for showing notifications, cleaning fingerprints (and face prints—ew!) off of mirrors and windows, vacuuming cat litter, and being entirely more anal about the cleanliness and orderliness of our house than I would like to be. I am trying to loosen up about toy messes and just let Little CC be a kid because I know all of these changes have been hard on him.
I guess I’m begrudgingly becoming an expert of sorts on how to keep your house clean and staged for showings while living in it, and working from home, with a four-and-a-half year old. The least I can do is share what I’ve learned with you, so here are my best tips.
- Keep your kid out of the house during peak showing times. We tend to be on the go a lot, especially when Little Cotton Candy is on school break and home with me. Some days I take him to my mom’s house for a few hours, but on the days where it’s just us, we will head out for adventures to the children’s museum, the library, the pool…we even went to a cat cafe a couple weeks ago! Not only does this keep the house clean and straightened up, but it’s also a lot of fun. The next new activity we have planned is going to a toy library—we are both super excited for that one! I try to avoid places like coffee shops and Target so as to not be tempted to spend extra money.
- Do a big tidy at night. After Little Cotton Candy is down for the night, I will clean up the entire downstairs so it’s ready to go for the next day. The final touch is running the Roomba to get rid of any stray dirt or crumbs. I’ve never been more grateful for this device—ours has been working hard for probably close to five years now!
- Make sure windows are clean. Cleaning the windows and mirrors isn’t a fun task, but it also never takes as long as I think it’s going to. It really makes a big difference! I like to use the homemade glass cleaner on this post from I Heart Organizing, as it’s super affordable and effective.
- Stash an activated charcoal odor neutralizer behind the litter box. Since I’m pregnant, I’m not supposed to clean the litter box. So if Mr. Cotton Candy hasn’t gotten around to it, I do a quick vacuum and make sure the odor neutralizer is doing its job.
- Do a quick wipe down of the bathroom and kitchen counters. It’s amazing how much of a difference this makes!
- Stash all papers, notebooks, phone chargers, and other clutter in drawers and closets. I try my best to put everything away neatly because people are nosy and like to peek in all your cabinets, closets, etc.
Here’s to hoping for some showings today and an offer in the coming weeks!
pomelo / 5084 posts
Aw that house is gorgeous! Good luck! FYI we are in a similar boat. Put our house on the market about 3 weeks before we moved into a custom build in April. Still waiting to sell it, have dropped the price 3 times.
blogger / cherry / 142 posts
@wrkbrk: Thank you! This process can be so stressful. Best of luck to you!
pomelo / 5084 posts
@Mrs. Cotton Candy: SO STRESSFUl.
wonderful pea / 17279 posts
Your house looks brand new/ new construction. Very lovely! I remember gearing up for putting our home on the market when I was pregnant. We had so many boxes of baby stuff we kept on the garage. In our old state people treated their garages like storage facilities so that was the one place no one would judge a mess: One thing I wanted to avoid was open houses and our realtor was in agreement. Besides the added cleaning he said they generally don’t result in a sale. Has your realtor had success with them? Could that be one less house activity you have to deal with?
blogger / cherry / 142 posts
@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: Thank you! Unfortunately, we are competing with a lot of new construction on the market right now, as in built this year, whereas ours has been lived in for 2.5 years. I think at this point our realtor is trying everything in his power to get our house sold, including open houses. We did have to cancel ours for this weekend due to some unforeseen circumstances, so I’m kind of relieved.
blogger / cherry / 142 posts
@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: And yes, our garage is a mess right now!
cherry / 220 posts
What a cute house! May I ask what city this is in?
blogger / cherry / 142 posts
@oscarthegoon: Sure, we live in Austin, TX.
guest
Good luck! Very stressful but hopefully your house will sell soon! We just bought a new house and had to sell ours. It sold quickly but it was such a pain to show it. We cleared out 50% of our belongings (donated some and used. storage unit for the rest) before putting it on the market and we actually moved out and lived with relatives for about 10 days while it was shown.
wonderful clementine / 24134 posts
Good luck!
The other thing we did for staging/showing was to have all our toiletries in a little bathroom caddy (like for a dorm room). After we would shower, I would stash the caddy below the sink which allowed the bathroom to not have any personal effects sitting around.
guest
These are some great tips that are easy to follow. I can relate to the whole thing about stashing the clutter, but if I can add more idea, it relates to medicine cabinet. Folks tend to look in there when perusing around the restroom. Why? I don’t know. So keep that in mind when storing OTC or prescription meds. Thanks for the tips!