It can also clutter your garage.
And sometimes moving on is the only way to exorcise the phantoms. Like that pile of all my college papers. What's the point of keeping them? Or Jim's ubiquitous collection of Stars Wars memorabilia. Why can't he bring himself to part with them? But when you are trying to sell your home and buy another, you must face the fact that some things aren't worth the move. Or are better left in the past. And that's a hard box to pack. But after the stomach-churning decision to move on from this house, we are eager for a new start in a home our family can grow into. In a house that doesn't have a garage packed with our past. Maybe in a house with an extra bathroom. A bigger dining room. And maybe even some usable attic space.
Selling
As part of our seller's agreement, we've asked for a one hour notice before our house is shown. This was my brilliant idea to give me time to tidy up and to ensure my child's nap time wasn't cut short. I imagined our realtor would text me that a showing would happen in an hour, at which point I would twirl around my sparkling clean house, maybe put out some fresh flowers, gently wake up my child from her nap and take her out for frozen yogurt while potential buyers would walk around our home gushing about my decor.
Instead, my realtor texts while I'm in the middle of changing an atomic diaper, which my daughter made after getting out all her toys, pulling half the books off the shelves and drawing all over the kitchen walls. And instead of an hour, the realtor says they will be there in 20 minutes. So I sit my child down in a half fastened diaper, and speed around the house shoving everything I see into places I know the potential buyers won't look (floor vents, toilet tanks, washing machine, our cars), corral the dogs into the neighbors' yard and race out the door to later hear the potential buyers were only mildly impressed.
Last weekend, we were given a full 12 hours notice before a showing. Jim and I used that time to finish every home project he'd been trying to do over the last 13 years. Then, 20 minutes before we needed to leave for the showing, our child found a mug of cooled coffee sitting on the dresser in our bedroom. She picked up the mug, walked three steps and then spilled all the contents of it onto the carpet. Cut to me and Jim unfurling the paper towels from the dispenser in the kitchen and racing down the hallway and into our bedroom without tearing them off the roll. Both of us down on all fours, blotting, cursing, blowing, spraying and shooing Lowery away with forced genteelness. And with the time quickly ticking away until the realtor showed up with the potential buyers, and the paper towel roll spinning and shrinking, we knew we had to call it what it was and walk away. And what it was, was a big stain that probably looked to the potential buyers like someone had been murdered there.
Buying
Walking through other people's homes is a trip. You want to giggle and point and say things like, "Who would ever choose that wall color?!" Or, "The couch makes more sense over there." So Jim and I tried to be extremely respectful of the homes we toured by talking with only our eyes. In one home, for instance, when we walked into the dinning room I cut my eyes to the left to say: Our table wouldn't fit in here. He blinked back to say: It smells like cat.
When you look through a string of homes that don't match what you want, require too much work and are far above your price range, a magical thing happens when you come back to your own home. The sun shines brighter, your neighborhood looks more charming and you spot a beautiful elm tree you had never noticed in all your years of living there. Your home seems different. The space feels bigger, cleaner and smells of cookies. You turn to your spouse and say, "I love our home. It's so much better than anything out there." Then you happily go inside and bluebirds help you fold laundry.
But when you find the home you love, the house that fits your every need, including the price, you have a much different experience when you come back to your house. The sky is grey, the neighborhood looks overrun with weeds and unattractive people, and you can't stand looking at all the dumb trees you've seen every day for the last decade. Your house seems smaller, cluttered, covered in a layer of grime and you smell the faint odor of despair. You grumpily go inside and shove a pile of dirty clothes under the bed.
And this is exactly what happened when we found the house. The one that meets our needs, is in our price range, is in the neighborhood we want and has a beautiful, wide staircase that I can't wait to stand at the bottom of when Lowery comes down in her prom dress.
So we decided to make an offer.
I've never been through the process of buying a home. Jim owned the home we live in now before we met. I just assumed that negotiating a home purchase would involve me sitting in an all white room with a single light bulb while the sellers yelled at me until I said to them, "Let us pay double the asking price. Then we simply must have you over for dinner."
I didn't realize you don't actually meet with the sellers; instead, you work through your agents with emails and texts. And in that kind of de-humanizing environment, my inner beast came out. I was able to stand firm, get angry, counter back with force, threaten to walk away, take a shot of tequila, sit in the corner of a room biting on a strip of leather while Jim massaged my shoulders, come back to the table with our final offer and be deemed victorious.
And yet, I couldn't help shaking a feeling that we were missing something. We'd been through the house three times, once by ourselves, once with a contractor, and once with my parents. We'd talked to other couples in the neighborhood, researched the home's appreciation over the last 10 years and driven by numerous times to check the neighborhood activity. And so, after the sweat and tears of negotiations, I wondered only one thing about this beautiful, spacious, 1930s home with the finished basement in the perfect neighborhood: Why were they selling it?
I texted my realtor: Why are they selling?
Realtor: That's undisclosed information.
Meg: Seems fishy. What don't we know? What aren't they telling us?
Realtor: A family, on average, moves every 3 to 5 years. Could be for a million reasons.
Meg: Think it's because there's a ghost?
Our realtor assured me that a ghost was probably not the reason they were moving. Perhaps they wanted new construction, or were moving out of town, or downsizing, or divorcing. It wasn't a concern that they were leaving; it was an opportunity.
And though that didn't really assuage my concerns, life had to go on. I still needed to go to work, and school and feed my kid. And on top of everything else, a couple of my friends told me about a Mommy and Me gymnastics class, wanting me to join with Lowery. With all the stress of buying a home and trying to sell ours, and Jim traveling for work, and wrapping up my dissertation, a new activity seemed like murder. But it was guaranteed time with my friends, so I signed us up.
Lowery and I showed up for our first class yesterday and sat in the lobby waiting on my friends, eager to tell them about all the home negotiations, the difficulty of keeping our house clean for buyers and to tell them of my deep curiosity about why the couple is truly selling their home. When I heard the door chime, it wasn't either of my friends walking in. It was a stranger who looked deeply familiar. I recognized both her and her daughter, but from where? When I introduced myself and she said her name, I knew in an instant where I had seen her before. Pictures. Family pictures. All over the house we are buying.
When my friends finally did arrive I shoved them into the bathroom to tell them what was happening. And they convinced me that I needed to tell her who I was. Give her my last name. Fess up. Otherwise, it would be quite awkward at closing. And I agreed with them. Though I wanted to wait a little bit. I wanted to study her. See if I could get some clues as to why she was discarding the house we wanted.
I watched her closely during class and couldn't see any obvious clues. She didn't seem to be coughing because of a lung problem that resulted from years of living in undetected mold. She didn't have a broken ankle from tumbling down deteriorating stairs. She didn't seem to have dark circles under her eyes like a person kept up all night by a roaming and angry spirit.
So I took a deep breath and approached her, and reintroduced myself with my last name. She smiled brightly and said, "I'm so glad to meet the person who is getting our home!" I smiled back. She continued: "I hope you know that I'm not mean. My husband and I aren't mean people." I smiled again, thinking back to the weekend and the death match that resulted in our final agreed upon offer.
"I'm not either," I laughed, surprised at how great she seemed. "We were each just doing what we had to do." She paused thoughtfully and then said, "Selling this house has been such a hard decision for us. We love that house. We just needed a fourth bedroom."
"That's it?!" I exclaimed. "You just needed more space?" Thinking about how this house was almost twice the size of our current one.
"Yes. Just need a fourth bedroom for my mother."
"So...no ghosts?"
She laughed and continued on about the neighborhood's summer block parties, the Christmas lighting, the Halloween parade of costumes, the farmer's market, and told me about all the people who lived on her street. She smiled with affection as I gushed about the plans I had for each room and what colors I think would look great in the living room (Plymouth Rock) and the dining room (Carolina Gull), and what fun plans we have for the basement to be a game room.
And then we stood there in silence, with our children tumbling around our feet. There wasn't much left to say. She seemed relieved that the people buying her home would love and take care of it. And I was relieved to hear the home wasn't molded, or crumbling or haunted. And that, in the end, they were selling their house because they, too, just wanted to move on.
And I wondered for a moment if potential buyers of our current home would look around at how charming and cozy and beautiful it is and wonder why we were selling. Would they question why anyone would sell the house, and would they be concerned about a rotted foundation or a moisture problem? Perhaps. And though our home is safe and sound, I would have to confess this: our home does have ghosts. But we plan to take them with us.
The new house has plenty of attic space.
