There's no place like...

There are no shortage of cheesy quotes about the idea of "home". Dorothy informed us that there is no place like it. We all know that "Home is where the heart is", "home, sweet, home", "home is a place to call your own", and (my favorite) "home is where you are loved."

Then, why does our brick colonial feel more like a museum than a home right now?

The full answer? Dan and I have been making all the appropriate moves to, well... move later this year. The market is lousy, but the low interest rates and deals on houses in better school districts are tempting, so we figured we might give it a shot. I'll write more on the emotional side of possibly saying goodbye to a house we adore later.

This post is dedicated to how getting our house ready to sell has been a royal pain in the ass.

It turns out that Dan and I are fairly disgusting. To the outside observer, our house seems uncluttered and charming, but if you were with us when we were scrubbing our floors this past week, believe me, you would judge. Grime, dust bunnies, dead crickets... oh my! (Okay, okay, I promise that will be my last allusion to Wizard of Oz.) We realized how often we accumulate an army of water glasses upstairs because we're too lazy to bring them down after we are finished using them. In his closet, Dan has a mountain of dirty clothes that could rival the size of Octomom's pile on laundry day. I wake up to wadded tissues when I miss the trashcan in the middle of the night. (What? Don't judge! I have a cold...)


Now, we live in the Land of Obsessive Tidiness (ruled by that bitchy tyrant Queen Clean). We can't wear shoes around the house lest stray leaves and dirt mar our perfectly polished floors. We have to keep swiffering to ensure dust free base moldings. And the worst part? We have to keep tiptoeing around the "exhibits" we have staged. Gone are all the dog-eared magazines and smudged cookbooks. Hello, bowls of green apples and useless candles. I staged all our closets with labeled boxes. We even have a fluffy, white bathroom mat that we plan on putting out right before people come to view the house, while we use a dark gray one in the meantime.

(What kind of anal-retentive person can actually keep a white rug, however small, clean? If you are one of said people, do tell me how you do it because I completely envy you and your spot-free existence!)

The one bright spot? I get to buy more loot for our house in the name of "staging" our home!

Here was our foyer before last week:

And here it is after a mini makeover:

On the other side, Dan thought of framing this photo of our house after last week's snowstorm:


Here is a close-up of that photo:

It's definitely still our home, sweet, home.

The saying is right: "Home is where you are loved"...
even if you are two of the most hopelessly messy people :)