List: March Madness

If February was Morning Sickness Month, then March is A Little Bit o' Madness Month with hopes that April is Moving Month.

We found a house we love.   A house with more space.  A house on a canyon (surely with fairies) and cul de sac, with a front yard and raised garden beds for my green-thumbed husband and with a decadent deck (a deckadent!). 

The offer we made on the house was initially rejected.  But I couldn't stop thinking about it, and neither could the kids.  So when the call came last Wednesday that the other offer fell through, we jumped at the chance for another chance.  We'd have to sell our dear bungalow quickly.  We called our friends with a mobile storage company and ordered one to be delivered the next day.  And we (well, mostly Husband, with the help of our dear neighbors), loaded that thing up on Friday with half of our shizzle so that our house was "staged" for professional photographs on Saturday (staging which includes litter boxes and baskets of shoes and a few dust bunnies). Open House on Sunday.  Offers on Tuesday.  Counter offers on Wednesday.  Accepted counters on Thursday.  And I'm reluctant to say more than there's hope we have a new home soon, but there's hope! 

In the meantime we moved the dog and ourselves (so sorry, Bunny and Kitty) into my parents' home so our house stayed reasonably clean for folks taking a look.   There's been driving back and forth, meetings with inspectors, appointments at the city, finding and faxing and scanning and signing of documents, phone calls from realtors, and minor cliffhangers about financing and offers and inspection reports and disclosures. 

But we're so darned lucky that it's all happened so fast (knock on wood).  I'm feeling a lot of respect for sellers whose homes are on the market for months, enduring long stretches of keeping their houses clean and hoping it will all work out. 

Here are a few conclusions I've drawn from our experience thus far:

1.  Mobile storage containers are ingenious. 
2.  I'm going to hate myself when we unload that storage container.  Because we were so desperate to move things out of our house post haste, I packed many unlabeled boxes of random stuff worth nothing, which we then threw willy nilly into the container.  Many of you have commented that I'm likely moving my Piles of Denial to a new abode.  Indeed. 
3.  One should not pack last year's tax returns into the storage container.  I believe it was only a few hours after the storage container drove away that I received the email asking me for our 2010 and 2011 tax returns.  I actually know which box I threw those folders in, along with some of the girls' schoolwork from kindergarten and a few framed photographs and art. Maybe a few Polly Pockets. 
4.  Packing a house and a storage container provides rich fodder for spousal squabbling.
5.  A fish can survive many things, but not our hectic week.  Also, I changed the water in its bowl.  Let's call this a science experiment with a clear conclusion.
6.  I appreciate him, but I don't want to be a realtor.  I've watched ours work very hard, as well as be available to us at all hours. 
7.  It's wonderful to live close to my family.  I do not take it for granted. 
8.  If you're grabbing outfits one day at a time, you're bound to forget a key component.  On Monday I was glad I had flip flops in my office at school.  On Wednesday, I wore a jog bra.