Just Stuff

When I really love something, I figure that everyone else should share that feeling and I become almost insulted when they do not.  The last week of June 2013 with my house on the market brought a rush of showings and I was fairly certain that I would have it under contract by the end of the next month.  Who wouldn't want to buy it?  My “conservative” budget estimate put the sale of my house around August, but July came and went with the number of potential buyers quickly dwindling, and August brought almost no showings.

Apparently nobody else "understood" my house like I did.

Pulling up my spreadsheets again I calculated how much cash I would pocket if I were to use a Realtor to list my house (meaning, of course, losing 6% in fees) and sell it quickly, then I used that number to estimate how long I could leave my house listed as “for sale by owner” and still get an overall better return.  Neither option looked very promising.  The opportunity to get to Le Cordon Bleu by March was slipping away.

I'll toss in a bit of free advertising here: In late July while at the beach with my sister’s family, a flat-fee listing agent named Angie with Real Estate Advocates called me to offer her services.  She was one of the few Realtors that I did not automatically dismiss, and I listened to her spiel because I was not familiar with the flat-fee process.  At the time I told her that I would think about it, and in mid September we talked again.  For $800 she would install a lock box on my door, put up a yard sign, list my house, and handle the brokering services, and my only other financial obligation would be the 3% fee to the buyer’s agent.  As I filled out the paperwork, I took a leap of faith and raised the asking price of my house by $10,000.

Within four weeks I had two offers.  The first offer won and my house was under contract with a closing date set for November 22.

Once again God timed everything perfectly, but isn't that always the case?  If I had sold my house for the original asking price in June or July I would have made less profit.  I was cautiously low with the initial price because the summer before when I refinanced, my house appraised for $10,000 less than what I bought it for four years earlier.  Thanks to an improved housing market and another house on my street selling just before mine for an outstanding price, sixteen months later the appraisal value had increased by $26,000.  Angie’s call also saved me a few thousand dollars that I would have lost paying 3% to a seller's agent.  I am learning over and over again that when things don’t work out according to my plans, they are going to work out better.

Two weeks after the contract signing, I had my first moving sale.  Before that Saturday I had advertised the sale on Craigslist and a few people contacted me about buying some items that they had seen in the photos.  That Friday night as my parents helped me set up for the next morning, the first person arrived and plucked up two decorative pillows from my sofa, the bedding from my master bedroom, and the kitchen rug.  Later someone came and whisked away some of the first furniture that I ever purchased when I got my own place, a pair of cute little red gingham club chairs.  Not long after that I bid farewell to my most long-time companion, an electronic piano that my parents got when I was in college and that had accompanied me to a dorm room in graduate school, an apartment in Wisconsin, my sister's house back in Greenville, and two apartments and two houses of my own (I used to move a lot).

It would be lying if I said that watching people dismantle my home, every item seeming to have a story or to hold a memory while I received in return a tiny percent of what I had spent for these things sometimes only months prior, was an enjoyable experience.  Except for the exchange of money it felt like passively watching my house being burglarized.  Surprisingly, I never shed a tear.

Mom, on the other hand, was weeping, tears triggered by the sofa pillows (they WERE lovely pillows) and primarily out of pity for her daughter, and, I believe, the sudden realization that I was really leaving.  Only now as I think back on that evening do I become a little teary-eyed, not over any personal feeling of loss but over a strange feeling of pity as well for third-person Kerry, as if we are two different people and I’m watching her stoically face that night.

Please don't think that I'm attempting to elicit sympathy ("Oh, poor Kerry - she had to get rid of stuff to go to culinary school in Paris.  CRY ME A RIVER!"). My point is simply that most dreams worth pursuing will require making tough and sometimes painful or frightening decisions that can be carried out only by keeping everything in perspective - focusing on your goal.  One question pushes me forward whenever self-pity starts to rear its ugly head: "Would it be better to sacrifice this lifelong dream in exchange for taking the much easier path of keeping my life exactly the same?"  Without hesitation, my answer every time is, "What a stupid question." 

Anyhow, one unexpected result of selling off those things early was that it had the effect of ripping off a bandage – as soon as my house started losing items and looking less like my home, the initial shock and pain decreased and the detachment began to grow.  My rules for what to sell were pretty simple – whatever I kept needed to fit into a rented 5’x5’ storage space.

In the “keep” pile were photos and albums, yearbooks, other small personal items that would be of no value to anyone (e.g., diaries that I probably should have burned), and any non-furniture items that would be basic necessities when I finished schooling and moved into a place of my own (throwing in a glimmer of hope for my parents).  If the storage space still had room, I was allowed to pick out a few special items.

While my goal was to handle the whole event objectively, the “I just bought these things and I really like them” argument won out on three larger pieces that ironically could have made me the most money – two bedroom rugs and a giant round metal shelf – lest anyone think that I had completely conquered materialism.  Conquering the guilt of selling things that friends and family had given to me as gifts was actually harder, particularly when someone who shall remain nameless was frequently reminding me of it ("Didn't your sister just give that to you last Christmas?"), but my resolve won out in the end.

Saturday’s sale cleared out much of the house, but enough remained to warrant a second sale the following weekend, and several items went on Craigslist.  My growing detachment had become more apparent because I was finding more things to sell that I no longer deemed as necessary or as too sentimental in value.  Laziness might also have been a contributing factor after I grew tired of packing boxes and hauling them to the storage space.  The growing bank account didn't hurt either.  By the night before closing the entire house was cleared out, undoubtedly one of the simplest moves that I ever made.

That evening of the 21^st I wiped down every cabinet and drawer space, dusted every shelf, vacuumed and mopped the floors and baseboards, cleaned the bathrooms, scrubbed down the refrigerator and freezer, and even patched up and painted over any holes and marks on the walls.  My Pathfinder was packed from the dashboard all the way to the back window with the last remnants of things that would stay with me in my parents’ house, and “Anatevka” from Fiddler on the Roof was melodramatically replaying in my head.

As I stood by the front door surveying my handiwork one last time before switching off the lights and heading out into the pouring rain, the feeling was bittersweet – the sad foreboding of many more farewells to come but the happy recognition of being one step closer to achieving my dream.

The next step was to enter into what I like to call my "beans and rice" phase of life.