Prep Monday—It Finally Happened!


All the papers are signed, the closing date is set, all the details worked out for possession, etc.

And I’m a mess.

You know how it is when you have SO MUCH to do? Me, I just kind of shut down. Random thoughts fly through my head at odd moments, and when I have a chance to sit down and think and make lists, my mind goes blank.

As you can guess, this plays havoc with my company. And family. And day-to-day stuff.

But we do have a plan. Sorta:

  1. Actually see the place.
  2. Go to the auction on March 14.
  3. Walk the property—this is separate from the first thing on the list, because initially we just need to see the buildings and check it all out.
  4. Decide where a few outside improvements are going to be built. We’d originally planned to camp while we were building the cabin, and even though it’s more like remodeling and cleaning now, we still need a place to sleep and cook and shower and all that. So that’s first on the building list. Plus, there will be a place for ALL OUR FRIENDS to stay while they’re um, helping. [wink, wink]
  5. Start the clean-up. The seller is having an auction, but we don’t really know how much of the “stuff” will be sold and removed, and we don’t know how much of the leftover stuff will be taken away. And, too, there’s some trash and things, overgrowth, and who knows what that will be need to be cleaned out.

Based on the calendar and our schedules, we hope to have these things done within a few weeks after closing; by the first of May, at least. Once school is out for the summer, we’ll have more time to go down there and stay for a few days or so. Of course, we won’t just be working—what’s the fun in that?

Next up will be putting storage stalls in the barn so we can start moving stuff out of our garage—if you’ll recall, over the last year I’ve been moving things into a big pile for a garage sale and packing up all the other things, memorabilia, etc., that I don’t want to exactly get rid of, but we don’t use. You know, kids’ mementos, papers and things from my grandparents, those kinds of things.

Our sale is set for April, and when it’s over, EVERTHING left—that the kids don’t take—will be donated. Stick a fork in me, I’m done. Ruthless. That’s the keyword.

And then we have the house itself to deal with. The stuff. That’s all moving out too, eventually, to the garage for the next sale. Whew.

By the way, I hate garage sales. Loathe them. Despise them. Words are not strong enough to describe how truly terrible it is to have a garage sale . . .

So, up and at ‘em, onward and upward, and so forth. Go forth. Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m getting a little loopy making all these lists!

Prep Monday—To Jinx or Not to Jinx


Well. We found another property—we’ve been looking since September, so almost six months. We’ve put in offers on two places; the first was a cluster from the get-go, and we ended up being the back-up contract, and it looks like it’s a no-go. The second place received five offers the same day, including ours, and we lost it too. Turned out to be a good thing—a hoarder’s house. That explained why so much interior had been removed from the cabin!

This new one, well, we were supposed to go look at it today, except snow happened. Lots of snow. And it’s bad here in the metro area, so I can only imagine what it’s like on the back roads . . .

Rather than wait, and lose out again, we, um, put in an offer last night. Sight unseen. Are we nuts?? Wait, don’t answer that yet!

See, the new place is 35 acres; it has a barn, a clean barn, with steel trusses. An old house, not worth much at all, which is by the country road with the barn. The drive goes back between them to the house—smack in the middle of the property, in the woods.

The house is 900 square feet, with one big bedroom, a bath, and a kitchen/living area. We can work with this. Even has a dishwasher, which I wasn’t planning on.

There IS some clean-up work to do—the elderly gentleman who just moved out has a lot of stuff—NOT hoarder-stuff, just stuff. He may have an auction; he may not. Doesn’t matter to us, either way.

Everything works, everything is clean. The property is a little farther out than I wanted, but in my husband’s mind, since it has a pond that evens things out. Still trying to make sense of that!

He said his first thing to do is call the conservation department and get the pond stocked.

*I* said his first thing to do was move the light fixture over the kitchen sink—it’s about 8 inches off!