14 February 2012

Selling a House is Not Fun

I bet you thought it was.  It really isn't.

It's taken over our entire lives.  All I think about is keeping the house tidy and how very very annoying daily  pregnancy-induced heartburn is.  I've learned some things so far, so thought I'd share...

Our house is super dusty, and as a result the shiny black glass entertainment unit was not a smart purchase.  Also, anti-dust surface cleaners are just spray bottles full of lies.  Dusty dusty lies.

Cats are horrible animals and will do anything they can to mess up your pristine house.  They were also not a smart purchase.  Special Cat managed to get his very own photo on our house listing, while Zari vomited all over the cat room floor the very morning the photographer was coming to take said photos.  I swear they're leaving cat hair clumps all over the place just to annoy me - usually within an hour of me vacuuming.  The cats now spend their nights locked in the bathroom so any further furball incidents are easily cleaned up.

Toddlers love gardening.  And by gardening I mean throwing bark around the courtyard, eating dirt, putting the weeds back into the garden and trying to destroy the actual plants.  Oh, they also enjoy digging paving sand (that you just spent hours re-doing) out from between the pavers.

Inside the house, toddlers continue to be great helpers.  Cupboards and bookshelves are emptied daily, just to make sure there's no dust lurking anywhere.  Alex seems to have some kind of sixth sense about when I've just polished the front of the dishwasher too - she'll zoom straight over there and check for handprints all over the front.  I always seem to miss them!  Similarly, she'll check the edges of our (glass) desktops for tiny finger prints..

Cats are (despite appearances) quite smart, so they get a second paragraph.  When there's an open home or viewing we have to hunt down the cats (who now realise exactly what is going on and have become very good at slithering out of our grip - even Basil!  ...Though he probably oozes more than slithers) and bundle them into the carrier.  Then we pack up the litter trays and various cat beds so as to not appear entirely crazy-cat-people to potential buyers, thus ending up with a car load of excess cat and baby clutter, valuables, two Very Sad Cats and a usually pretty cheerful baby.  

So there you go.  Just in case you have pets and a toddler and are thinking about selling your house, my recommendation is not to.  Cleaning and tidying gets undone almost as quickly as you do it.  And then once you've spent hours cleaning and re-cleaning the place for a 20 minute viewing, the buyer decides that since there's no second bathroom downstairs the house just isn't right for them.  How many 1970s townhouses have two bathrooms???  

*cough*

Anyway.  Tenders closed today and I was hopeful that someone had decided they loved the place so much we'd get some kind of crazy awesome offer.  We did not, so off to PBN we go...

Perhaps I could take away a silver lining here?  By the time we do sell I'll be so very used to keeping the house spotless that I'll just carry on being an awesome domestic goddess even after Baby 2.0 arrives.  

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