Clean House

As I sit on the floor of my new master bedroom the first thought that comes to my mind is not "Ahh, the joy of vaulted ceilings," but rather, "Thank God Guy cleaned this carpet!" As you may have noticed, I haven't updated in about a month, but I have an excuse. -- "move-in ready" houses are never truly move-in ready. Since we closed on the 31st, life has been a mess of trying to come up with design schemes, shopping for necessities, shopping for items to contribute to design schemes, returning said items, packing, cleaning, telling Guy what to clean, and telling Guy that he missed a spot. There are many things I can say about buying a house, but I have one main theme to this post, and it goes out to home sellers more than home buyers. If you are moving out of a house that other humans soon intend to live in, clean it before you go! Even if you haven't vacuumed more than twice within the 7 years of living there, lift a finger and leave it in a nice condition for the new owners. I was cleaning the bathroom vanity the other night when I encountered (gag me) a drawer where the previous owner presumably kept his electric razor. You can only imagine my disgust at the sight of dozens of tiny hairs Grizzly Adams had left behind for me to clean. Now not only do I have to attempt to block out this image every time I eat a meal, but I am convinced the previous owners were slobs. And hey, I can be a slob myself at times, but it's one thing to live in your own filth and another to sell it to someone else for $120,500.

Homeowners' Fret

We signed our lives away yesterday in the form of a mortgage. Homeowning is exciting, but it also comes with a whole new set of worries. For instance, how cold will we have to keep our house in order to be able to afford the gas bill? How about, what if our furnace explodes? And who can forget, did I leave the garage door open? The last worry has been consuming my thoughts ever since we left there last night. We were there to pass out candy to Trick or Treaters, and I remember hitting the garage-door button when I left, but what if a little mouse ran under, triggered the sensor, and it went back up without me noticing? Now hobos and ragamuffins are probably making themselves at home in our 2 1/2 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath semi-house. I guess that's one way to meet the neighbors.