Living Show Ready

The bulk of our prep-work to get the house listed was centered on making it look PERFECT for the online pictures. We all know, every person in the world that knew we were going to list our house would be all over the online pictures. I didn’t want to be the gal with the bra hanging from the ceiling fan in our pictures. Not that that’s ever really happened. In this house, anyway.

For weeks we I scrubbed and sorted and trashed and donated. EN spent most of that time in the basement looking through his crap, moving piles from one spot to another. At the end of our allotted time, the basement and garage looked marginally better and the inside of the house looks spectacular. I will say that I carried on doing little projects here and there. At the very end, all I had left to do was carry heavy stuff out into the basement. EN was so willing and helpful that the Ice Princess did NOT have to foam at the mouth and scream, “Stop fucking around in the basement and get your ass in here to help me.” That never happened.

Last Tuesday our realtor came and took the pictures and I must say, our house looks pretty fabulous. Everything is neat as can be. There’s nothing anywhere but furniture. No piles of papers, no toys, no nothing. Even the front of the refrigerator has nothing on it. Our house echoes, y’all.

Our dining room. It almost always looks like this... because we only eat in there twice a year!

The kitchen. Where are you supposed to put all your stuff?? 

 Herein lies my question, do people really live like that? I can’t imagine. Where do people put all the paper that normally consumes my house? I actually put everything in a box that sits at the bottom of my basement stairs. “Emergency papers”… you know, the newsletters you might need from school next week but not now. The paperwork for the new house. The girls’ medical forms. You just never know when you might need that shit.

For a week now, we’ve been trying to live “show ready.” It’s really near impossible so we do our best and then run around like crazy people right before a showing to make sure everything looks good.

We’ve had a couple of showings so far. The first person thought the house was too expensive. The second person really liked the house but it’s at the top of his price range, so he’s off in a corner somewhere crunching numbers. Then we had an Open House on Sunday and more people came to see it, including the number cruncher. Another couple spent a long time there and seemed to love it, the rest weren’t interested, including the man who said our house “smells like dog.” How humiliating is that?

As I have strangers wandering through my home when I’m not there, sometimes think I would like to be a fly on the wall so I know what they’re saying. On the other hand, I think my feelings would be pretty hurt so I’m better off not knowing.

Honestly though, can anyone really live in a house that is “show ready” all the time? How do you do it?? I mentioned this to one of Sugars’ friends moms and she said, “None of us live that way.” Since I live in the town of perfect little Stepford Wives, I assume they all live that way. What a relief to know that the perfect show-ready house is just a façade. 

xoxo

Ice Princess