It’s been a chaotic few weeks. I thought they were over, but it looks like the fun is still going on.
I had been slowly trying to get the house ready to sell. Packing up stuff I didn’t need immediately and putting it in storage. Packing up more stuff and hauling it off to Goodwill. I had even taken some of the furniture and even my main computer out to storage to try to get ready for staging and photos to be taken.
We weren’t on the market, but my Realtor had a “coming soon” sign in the front yard, and an investor called her. I agreed to let them look at the place even though I still had stuff scattered everywhere.
They liked it enough to put in an offer. It was below what we were hoping to get, so my Realtor told me we were ignoring it. Then, she called me back a few hours later and said, “I did some math; call me.”
They were asking for no commission or closing costs on their side. They wouldn’t ask for any repairs or upgrades (and a few things needed repairing and/or upgrading). If we had a full-price offer, with a commission on both sides and $10k in closing costs/repairs (which would be reasonable), we would make…
…an additional $450.
At the time, we thought it wasn’t worth turning down the offer for an additional $450. So we went ahead.
That was the 16th of November. We scheduled closing on the 30th of November.
I now had two weeks to clear out the house and find a place to live. And that included Thanksgiving weekend. I had to hurry.
I contacted a few “Estate Sale” places to see if they could help me clear out the “stuff” I had. Only one bothered to call me back, and after she looked through the house, she said, “You really don’t have anything.” I would have to pay them $1k upfront for them to even run the sale, then be out of the house the week after Thanksgiving so they could stage the house and run the sale. And at best, she thought I would only make between $2 and 3k. And I still had to pay them $1k of that.
I had nowhere to go for that week and wasn’t sure what I could do. I thanked her and declined.
In retrospect, maybe a mistake, but I was still optimistic that I could deal with everything.
We started putting in offers, trying to find something that I could buy outright with what I made from the sale. We found one that looked acceptable, but the seller kept not responding to offers and ignoring us for days at a time. Meanwhile, time was running out.
We got the buyers to let me stay in the house until the 14th of December to give me time to find a new place and move. So I had a bit more time.
Thanksgiving came and went, and we still didn’t have any good response from the place I was trying to buy. Then, on the 29th of November, another place came on the market. One day, and “highest and best” offer by 7pm. I wasn’t expecting much, but I went to look at it.
The condominium community was older, and I was dubious when we drove up. Then I saw inside. The previous owner had upgraded everything. The inside looked great! And it had not one but two fenced-in areas off of it that I could let the dog out into.
It was a bit smaller than I would have liked, but it was otherwise perfect.
My Realtor reminded me of the “highest and best” clause. I looked at what I would be clearing from the old house, adjusted for what I thought it would cost to move, and gave a number $10k higher than they were asking.
Again, I was low on time.
They took our offer. I later found out that we weren’t actually quite the best, but we were offering cash, and they decided that they liked that.
So now I had a place to move. But I wouldn’t be closing until the 9th of December. Fortunately, the closing on the old house had been delayed until the 2nd, so I had until the 16th to get out. I thought that was fine.
I kept packing and hauling things off to storage and other stuff off to Goodwill. At this point, I started getting concerned. I kept taking more and more stuff out of the house, but it didn’t look like I was making any progress. I had underestimated how much actual stuff was in the house. I took three days off of work, then another week, and still didn’t seem to be making any progress.
We closed on the 9th, and I hauled a few loads of stuff over. I started getting frustrated at the 20 minutes it took me to drive one way between the old house and the condo. I would spend 45 minutes on every round-trip just going, not counting the time it took me to load stuff on one end and unload it on the other.
And so much of that stuff was still scattered around everywhere. I ran out of boxes. I bought some, then dumped them at the condo and took the empty boxes back to the old house to refill. And taking some of them to Goodwill still.
How did I have this much stuff?
I had scheduled a garage sale for the weekend of the 11th and 12th. I opened the entire house. I told people to make me an offer. I know I practically gave away a lot of stuff. And I still had way too much stuff.
In retrospect, I might have been better off just packing stuff and hauling it to Goodwill all weekend. I didn’t get rid of enough.
Sunday afternoon, there was still too much junk in the house.
The investors buying the house had agreed to help me a bit. There was a huge china cabinet in the house that I didn’t want and didn’t have a good way to get rid of, and a huge mirror and a bed and frame. They allowed me to leave them there, but they wanted everything else gone by Thursday. I was fine.
I moved and hauled off what I could before I ran out of vacation time and had to go back to work. I rented a U-Haul. Maybe if I could carry more at once, I would save time. I’m not sure it worked. I made two round trips before having to take the truck back. And the house still looked like I hadn’t removed anything.
I thought I still had more time until my Realtor called me. I thought I had all of Thursday. Instead, I had to be out by 9am on Thursday.
I was out of time.
I got an emergency House-Clearing service. Yes, I paid them a lot of money. As their supervisor kept reminding me, “I had to pull these people off of other jobs.” They showed up at 6am. We wound up dragging everything into the yard, then from there loading it into dumpsters to haul off to the landfill.
I know there was a lot of good stuff in there that I never had time to go through. I tried to go through it as fast as possible, but I knew what I was missing. Some personal items. I hadn’t thought about some items until I suddenly realized that I didn’t have them. And some things I had planned to grab but were nowhere to be found when I went looking for them.
And I somehow wound up packing a bunch of useless stuff I had just planned to haul off anyway. I actually got to the condo with a box of packing papers.
But… I ran out of time.
Time. It’s the one thing no one can get more of. Anything else? Yeah, you can at least try. You get a second job to get more money–sacrificing your time for that–and hopefully, that gives you enough to get whatever you need. But Time? There is no way to get more of that. You can never get more time no matter how much money or fame or whatever you have.
And I ran out.
But now… it’s over. I’m in my new place. Gypsy, the dog, is happy here. I can go forward here. I’m still working on getting some snags worked out, but I can start moving forwards again.
There were a few items of sentimental value that I had set aside that the junk removal people got to before I did. Three that I’ve noticed so far. And about a dozen other things that I wanted to keep are gone, but I can replace them. But… it’s over.
I was sick for days after the move. Throwing up, stuck on the toilet, unable to get out of bed sick. I did as much work as possible; I was out of time off, remember? But I was literally sick.
I’m finally moving again. I still have problems; the outlet the refrigerator was on went out three days into the move, the dryer hose vanished in the move, so it wasn’t hooked up (which I found out the hard way), the Internet still isn’t working correctly, and I still can’t convince the Post Office that I have moved and will they please start forwarding my mail? Or at least deliver the mail from places where I got the address changed to my new address? It isn’t empty anymore. Promise.
And I somehow don’t have the cables to connect my computer back up. At least power cords and HDMI cables are relatively cheap. I’m sure they’re in my storage unit somewhere, but it is so full of Goodwill/sell/”why did I hang on to this stuff” that I can’t even get to it.
And I’m going to have to hire someone to transport some of the furniture there to my new place. I hauled that off a month ago, preparing the house for staging, remember?
All of this is a mess. I am so stressed out. I’m not sure what I can do next.
But… after my year so far, this is a huge milestone passed. Yeah, it didn’t end the way I wanted it to, but I’m not sure that it ever would have. As of now, it is done. I can deal with the regret later. I have to deal with what is in front of me for now.
What’s behind me isn’t important. Yeah, the grass is always greener on the other side of the bridge you burned behind you, but that’s where I am. There is no longer a path back. I only have forward.
See everyone in the future.
Leave a Reply