Home for Sale

Putting a FOR SALE sign in your front yard is like leaving your diary open on the kitchen table. It opens a reality into your world were you welcome strangers into your home and invite them to closely inspect, evaluate and comment on your personal spaces. You do this in the hope that they will find your sanctuary compelling and enticing enough to want to have it for their own.

Your choices in design, color, style and decorating as well as your cleaning and landscaping abilities are openly and enthusiastically considered by random people roving through your home. Cabinets, closets and drawers filled with your possessions become fodder for the assessment mill, as do oddly, the contents of your medicine cabinet. Words of advice here, to individuals who wear strong perfumes and colognes, don’t touch things you would prefer others didn’t know you touched. Just saying……..

When preparing for a “showing” you usually lug out the big bag of mixed emotions. Excitement, concern, hope, doubt and curiosity churn in your brain as you try to remember if you put your shoes away or left your computer out. Your home is suddenly being seen through new eyes and the ceramic snail with the adorable blue flowers suddenly becomes too whimsical, the flooring in the bathroom you never really liked becomes hideous and you suddenly realize you should have mowed the grass yesterday.

An open laundry basket gives you pause to reflect on exposed underwear and you wonder if cooking broccoli and fish for dinner is really such a great idea. Much like preparing for a visit from your Grandmother you notice dust where you have never notice dust before.

You hope they will love your home not only because you want to sell it but also because it is a manifestation of you and secretly you want their appreciation and approval. The comments left by these unknown people are usually pretty benign, “The kitchen is too dark” or “I wanted a finished basement” and while your brain is telling you, “it’s constructive criticism” your heart is hearing, “your baby’s ugly and your Mama dresses you funny”.