So you want to sell your house?

So you want to put your house on the market while you have an eight month old and a two year old at home?  First of all, let me congratulate you on reaching a new level of insanity.  Many are too afraid to put themselves out there and go for this brand of crazy, but not you.  Kudos. 

Might I make a suggestion right off the bat?  Hire a cleaning lady.  Before the house goes on the market you will need to do an extensive deep clean.  No one in their right mind can do that with a baby and a toddler.  Outsource.  She will spend the day scrubbing areas of your home you never even noticed were dirty but now that you see them clean you wonder how you ever lived in such a slovenly pigsty.  If (when) you are satisfied with her work ask her if she would consider becoming your sister wife.  At least until the house sells.

Now, once you’ve taken great pains to clear out your years of crap in an attempt to “de-clutter” and hired your future sister wife to make the place shine like the top of the Chrysler building it’s time to officially put the house on the market.  Are you wondering what to expect when this all goes down?  Well, expect to live with a low level of panic and anxiety twenty-four- seven.  Your home, at one time a safe and moderately tidy respite for you and your family, is now a battlefield.  Imagine you and your family moving into one of those historic home museums like Graceland.  Kept in the exact, pristine condition, as it was when Elvis roamed its halls, Graceland is no place for a two year old.  Your house is now Graceland and every time you leave the house you must leave it exactly the way Elvis did, because you never know when someone might want to drop by for a showing.  In my experience two year olds respond very well to requests to not touch anything. 

Maybe it’s just my monster, but he seemed to have a knack for getting into the most obscure, tucked away things on days we were trying to get out of the house for a showing.  Never before had he noticed the flags rolled up and tucked away in a corner behind the coat rack.  But today- as we are frantically trying to shove everything out of sight and race out the door before an 11:30 showing?  Today is the day he must discover how to unroll an American flag.

And your eight month old will repeatedly spit up on the duvet cover of your made bed moments before you need to leave the house.  The dried spit up on the brown cover will leave an unseemly stain that suggests a Bret Michaels sex party last used your bed.  And of course there is no time to wash the cover and flipping it is useless because the other side contains a similar looking stain from yesterday’s spit up.  So there’s that.

Inevitably there will be a day when you will bust your butt to drag two unreasonable kids out the door leaving the house immaculate in the process only to return home to find your porch door locked from the inside.  A porch door you had locked earlier that morning while your toddler was playing in his little tikes car on said porch.  A porch door you forgot to unlock when you left out the back door.  A porch door for which there is no key.  This may or may not cause you to drop some language bombs that are not for the faint of heart.  Because, hello, you just about killed yourself getting out the door and unless the realtor showing your house had the sense to enter through the back you just locked a potential buyer out of your home.  Mother Ef.

You will go through various stages of love/hate with your home as it stays on the market.  You will find yourself nostalgic, waxing on about all the memories this home contains.  You will hate every single thing about this house and hope and pray some poor schmuck will not notice all it’s flaws and take it off your hands.  You will find yourself deeply insecure that you could ever have bought and loved a house that no one seems to want.  You will be thankful you have a home at all.

And there will come a day when you become so disillusioned with the process and so sure that no one will ever want to look at your house again.  On that day you will leave for a long, far from home excursion with dishes in the sink, toys strewn about, beds unmade and underwear on the floor.

And of course on that day, hours from home you will get the call… “someone would like to see your house in an hour…”