For Sale By Moaner
Common sense says spring is the best time for those wanting to sell their home. Yards look their best. Flowers are in bloom. The school year is winding down.
But ha! Who needs common sense? Not the Fullers.
Fullers list their house at Christmas. Fullers laugh in the face of common sense.
And common sense laughs back. OK, so maybe Christmas wasn’t the best time to put our house on the market, but our place was looking so nice all decorated for the holidays, and I needed that “For Sale” sign in the yard to get me to finish all those little projects I’d left undone.
What we didn’t take into consideration is how difficult it would be to keep our house clean enough to be shown at a moment’s notice.
Eight creatures reside under our roof. With so many, you’d at least one of them might be tidy. It didn’t work out that way. Our three cats apparently thought the “For Sale” sign actually read, “Shedding Competition Begins!” And both dogs seemed to believe muddy paw prints would increase our home’s value.
And the humans? Well, let’s just say we’d grown accustomed to our relaxed style of living. (“Relaxed” in this case meant a five- to seven-day notification was required of guests before coming to visit.)
Unfortunately, our relaxed lifestyle ceased when our house went up for sale, as we never knew when the next showing might be. We had to be on alert 24 hours a day. The vacuum ran at all ours. We could only go back to our relaxed style of housekeeping when we were absolutely certain no one would be coming.
When we’d think it was so cold that no one but penguins would be shopping for homes and we’d let down our hair—and our critters would follow our lead and let theirs down as well (generally leaving body-shaped fur outlines on the rug)—the call would come. Prospective buyers were on their way.
The first time it happened, a few days into the New Year, my husband had just left town on business. His last act before leaving was to drag our Christmas tree to the curb. Our tree had been sadly deprived of water during its last days in our house and had taken revenge by depositing 13,002 needles in our living room rug, then spreading the remaining 8,008 down our carpeted stairs.
I rushed home from work, hoping to vacuum all evidence of the pine massacre before the realtor arrived, but about half way through the needles, the Hoover started to smoke. I emptied the canister and pep-talked it into working again, and once the needles were up, I rushed around the house making sure the rest was in order.
That’s when I discovered the cats had broken into the giant tub of catnip they’d been given for Christmas.
The entire container had been emptied and the catnip had been rolled in, until it was thoroughly ground into the carpet. Out again came the vacuum. Out again came the smoke.
That’s when I learned that catnip, when combined with pine and heated in a Hoover, creates a scent not unlike that stuff Clinton didn’t inhale, so I rushed around the house lighting candles. Except one of those candles was located in regrettable proximity to an arrangement of cut eucalyptus.
I can’t even begin to describe the fragrance produced from combining a hazelnut coffee-scented candle with burning eucalyptus, but it caused my eyes to water and my throat to burn.
I suspect in the history of real estate, there have been briefer home tours, but doubt they were shorter by much.
We’ve heard the secret to selling is location, location, location. But common sense suggests the buyers might also like some non-toxic air.
