Neatness





  Neatness … is next to craziness!!  Yikes … I’m reading through the instructions for what to do to sell your home quickly (a nice notebook of info from the real estate agent).  It includes such things as it’s nice to have a separate laundry room – which we do – however, no dirty laundry should ever be seen in it.  So … where do I put the dirty laundry … it’s only me living here during the week and the pile of laundry I generate is rather small. 

 

But it shouldn’t be kept in the laundry room and it shouldn’t be kept in a closet.  Other than the backyard or the garage, both of which will be inspected by any prospective buyer, there is no other place to put it.  Except … the trunk of my car!  There!  Problem solved. 

My husband was home for the weekend and his usual Saturday lunch is tuna fish … has been for years.  He’s the kind of guy that likes his routine and sticks to it.  But this week I had to remind him that the smell of tuna is not one that we want to have permeating the house.  So from now until the house sells (I wonder how long that is going to be) … no tuna for lunch and  no fish for dinner.  You know how fish smells linger … you get used to it and don’t notice until you leave the house for a few hours and then when you return it assaults your nose again – and you haven’t cooked fish for a week!

Everything I’m reading in this little notebook tells me that I want my house to have that lived-in look but don’t have anything showing or smelling or sounding or looking like it’s lived in.  That’s a pretty good feat if you can pull it off.  Before I leave the house to do some errands I run around looking to see what activity of daily living might be visible to someone visiting my home.  It’s funny really … how we have to give the impression that no one lives here, that this house just looks this way because it does and for no particular reason … just so someone else can picture themselves doing exactly the same thing we normally do from day to day.

Who are we kidding?  We all know that the pristine environment we see when we visit a home for sale is not how it’s going to look when we’ve moved in and made it ours.  Ah … but for the moment, the fantasy is alive and well.  And I’m doing my best to make sure it works.

Enjoying a chuckle from all this, Ann