Crunch Time!

Exactly one week from today we will be signing over our house to it's new owners. Life has been hectic, to say the least. We've been purging, packing and organizing like crazy. Even though we are making good progress, with each week that passes, the pressure increases. Yikes, we only have one more week! I haven't even had enough time to catch up on the blogs that I follow, much less write one! But I'm taking time out today to share our progress.

The house is getting bare and our living conditions are quite humorous. Almost all of our furniture is gone. We now have one chair and one lamp in the living room. They have been sold to a friend of ours but he graciously agreed to let us keep them until we move out. Tracy and I are forced to fight over the chair, because the other option is the dog bed! We bought Hunter a new bed, but will not let him have it yet. We thought we were saving it for the new house, but now it appears that we were really saving it for us. I have used it several times! Are we cruel parents?!

Our bedroom is not much better. We sold the bedroom set but kept the mattress and box springs. That is the only "furniture" left in that room, with clothes piled where the dressers used to be. We have brought the other lamp from the living room (sold to the same friend) upstairs and placed it on a milk crate, which serves as our nightstand. It's very dorm room chic!

All of the area rugs have been sold, so the house really echoes with the bare hardwood floors. The pictures and accessories have been removed from the walls. Oddly enough, we still have both TVs. We thought they would sell this weekend, but they did not, so at least we have entertainment...not that we have time to sit and watch!

We had our final garage sale this past weekend, which proved successful. Garage sale buyers are an interesting bunch. First is their eagerness. We had put a sign out in front of the house on Friday advertising the sale on Saturday. Several people rang the doorbell and asked if they could look early. We told them they would have to wait until Saturday. We also advertised on Craigslist. We had one lady ring the doorbell before 8am on Saturday asking when the sale would begin. The ad clearly stated 9am. So she just waited outside until the doors opened. There were a few others wandering around so we finally opened the doors at 8:30 and the mad rush started. It didn't calm down until about 10:30 and probably 75% of the stuff was gone. Wow! We had a few stragglers throughout the day and finally closed the doors at 2:00, an hour earlier than we had planned. We were exhausted!

It always amazes what people buy. We had a box of free stuff - old paint, fertilizers and stuff we just couldn't figure out how to price. That went quickly. There was also stuff that really wasn't worth anything, some of which we got free, but we put price tags on them and they went! Then there were the things that we didn't even include in the sale. We had a lot of outdoor pots in the backyard. They were pretty weathered and full of dirt so we didn't want to bother hauling them around. We were just going to leave them with the house. One person inquired whether we had any, so Tracy escorted them around to the back yard. As they were walking out with an armful, another lady asked if we had any more. She bought the rest of the pots and was enamored by a rock. Yes, a rock! We have several rocks as part of our landscaping and officially they should stay with the house. But she was adamant about buying this rock. She offered us $10 and made her ex-husband haul it out for her. Well, alright then! What's even funnier is that we had a $20 mirror for sale that she would only pay $15 for. We finally accepted the lower price and then she turns around and pays us more than that $5 difference for a rock that we would have probably given for free!

This weekend we also sold our 2nd car. We thought about keeping it as there are many advantages to having a smaller, more fuel efficient car for day trips. But we didn't really like the idea of having to drive separately and our car was not very practical for Hunter, so we'd probably end up driving the truck most often anyway. We ended up getting a decent price for it. Like everything else, it was a little less than what we would have liked, but we would have easily paid more than the difference in insurance and registration in the first year.

So things have really come together and now we just have to hunker down and figure out what to do with all of the remaining STUFF. Our RV pile continues to grow and I often wonder if it will all fit. I suspect we may be forced to do another round of purging once we realize there isn't enough room for it all. It sure would be easier if we we had the RV now to move items in. Unfortunately, we will not be getting that until later this month, which means that we'll have to move it all to storage temporarily. It's a bit of a hassle to have to do a double move, but that's the way it goes. I guess we can't expect everything to work out perfectly! I best finish this up and get back to working. These things aren't going to pack themselves!