Now's the Time

Over the past seven years I'm not sure how many times Sky and I said that we were going to move. When we first purchased our house we went into it thinking that we would be here 3-5 years; we saw this as a starter home. Originally we chose to buy a house near both of our jobs, which made a lot of sense at the time. However, over the past few years, we have realized that there are things offered in the city that we want to be closer to and all of them are on the north central side of the city.

It is so frustrating when all I want to do is make breakfast on Saturday and the ingredient I need is a 30 minute drive away at Whole Foods! Our entire Sunday has to be coordinated around making a trip to the northside of town. Sky's game is at 12:00, we want to do grocery shopping, we're celebrating a birthday later in the day, but before that we have to get a gift. All of these things have to be taken into consideration because we only want to take one car and even though we both don't want to do all of these things, we end up doing them together.

So moving to the north central part of town has been something on our mind for the past few years. We had our realtor come to our house to put it on the market right before the decline in housing a few years ago. The prospect of selling our house seemed too challenging in that climate, so we held off until last Spring. Sky had gotten a new job and we were making considerations for future expansion of our family, so it seemed like a good time to try our luck and sell our place.

I didn't realize how stressful it would be to have our house on the market! I'm the kind of person who does a big clean every couple weeks, so little cleaning jobs daily just 'in case' someone wanted to see the house was pretty stressful. We settled into it though and it has been a good exercise in keeping our house tidy. Showings came in spurts. Good weather, updated pictures, and a drop in price kept interest coming. In November it was time to either do another price drop or do something to set our house apart from the field. We anticipated a drop in showings around the holidays, so we figured that was a good time to put in some granite countertops. By the first business day in January we were right back into it. We hadn't had a chance to update our listing to reflect the updates before we had our first, and last, showing of 2012! The family was interested in the house before they even knew about the countertops. The updates really seemed to seal the deal!

So, here we are. We've gone through the inspection process during which they didn't find anything that we need fix. Lucky us! The appraisal is tomorrow and we are home free from there! It will be hard to say goodbye to our first home. It's not real for me yet. I know I need to pack up our things, but I haven't gotten the urgency that will come with a fast coming deadline. The buyers asked to take possession on February 1st, but we were able to negotiate out to March 1. Over the next month and a half I will think about memories made here in this home and look forward to making new ones wherever we end up. My ten minute commute, proximity to international food on Lafayette Rd., and watching reality TV with Mandy are things I'll have to make the most of before we move!