Yesterday I mentioned that our house went up on the market. Now, we've had to do this before when we sold our condo, and it doesn't get easier.
For us, the steps usually go like this.
1. Realtor comes over and we walk her through the house/lot and have her tell us what things we should fix. She says declutter about 50 times, and notes a few minor repairs that will have a nice impact on the resale value of our home.
2. We get to the half way stage and have her come by to make sure nothing has changed. While we have obviously gotten rid of a ton of stuff, she says declutter about 30 times and we cry on the inside.
3. After 20 more trips to Good Will and 10 trips to free cycle stuff on the curb, we clean (and pay someone else to clean) our place to shining sparkliness and she comes by and tells us that we need a ton of new smoke/CO detectors, because the laws changed again.
4. We do all that and the house goes on the market. Profit?
If you are like me - and you'll know you are like me if any of the following words could apply to you: hobbyist, packrat, hoarder (but not like the TV kind), slob - then the first step is to take half of your stuff and put it in storage, or a pod. This is the high level getting rid of crap stage, and it is just the stuff you know without considering it that you want to keep.
That won't be enough. With the remaining half of the stuff, decide if you want to keep it, consolidate it into something else (I bought a pressure cooker/multicooker, so I could get rid of multiple small appliances), and get rid of/donate at least another third of your items. Buy trash bags and fill them. Make trips to the dumpster or curb.
Eventually you will be back down to the amount of stuff you had one or two dwellings ago, and that is probably closer to right. If you have a lot of things on your counters, move them into cabinets or drawers. No one wants to see even useful appliances out all over the place.
Scrub. Nope. It's not fun, which is why we hired someone to do at least the bulk of it, or it would have taken us another 2 weeks to get the house on the market.
What does that have to do with knitting? Well, I ran a stash sale and it is still going on. I also have more yarn to put up for sale. It's like the potential mess that keeps on giving. Now I'm going to procrastinate for a bit on touch up cleaning and knit.
