The cleaning that is. Our main accomplishment this week was meeting with the stager about what we need to do to get the house ready to put on the market. She gave us a number of suggestions. Some we already knew (get rid of the clutter(!) and de-personalize the house) and some we didn’t (get rid of the ceiling fan in the dining room). To get us motivated we set a date to have a moving sale (April 16-17) and to aim for listing (April 27). We started the de-cluttering by getting rid of a lot of the baby accoutrements that had overtaken the storage room downstairs, and that made a big difference. It’s nice when you can see big progress with just a little effort. Next will be to look at some carpet samples, since we’ll need to replace some of it, especially the living room. And to continue organizing and cleaning. We have a decent amount of stuff, just as everyone does, but I don’t think it’s excessive so it should be manageable. Once we get the furniture that we’re going to try to sell out of the house and into the garage I think it’ll really open things up. The advice we got is to bring everything, even if you’re not sure you’ll want it since many things tend to be more expensive in NZ. But at the same time, it’s not helpful to move things just to move them, so it’s a balancing act between what to take and what to leave. I’m not looking forward to cleaning out the garage though.
One other thing I’ll note. We got a few inches of snow here in Denver yesterday and Hopscotch had a great time playing outside and building a snowman (unfortunately the dog ate the carrot nose almost right away). It’s funny to think that since we’ll be leaving in October and arriving in NZ just as their summer is starting that it could be a long time before we see the white stuff again.
Kiwi Bound 