We’re Hanging it Up

After reading articles like this, this and this, we have decided that now is the perfect time NOT to sell our house. This decision comes as a great relief, since we have felt as though we haven’t really lived here since we put the house on the market in October of last year. At that time we “de-cluttered” the house by moving many of the little-used items in our house to our parents’ houses. We took down the kids’ pictures that normally hang over the fireplace. We moved some things to other parts of the house and have missed having them in their old places. Now we are ready to move back into our house and put everything back the way it was. Well, not quite everything. A lot of what is sitting in our parents’ basements right now needs to be sold or donated. We’ve decided that if we could live without it for all of this time, we can live without it for good.

We set out on this house-selling adventure for mostly financial reasons. We had only lived in our house for a little more than three years. But over those three years our house payment had gone up more than $120 due to of a rise in property value and consequently real estate taxes. We were stretching to get into this house in the first place, and were not expecting such an increase in payments. We also added two more children to our family since we had bought this house. In addition, my husband’s employer had begun being rather vague about the future of the company within this last year or so. We decided that downsizing would be a smart financial move, so the sign went in the yard. Things have changed, however, as we just received a notice that our house payment has actually gone DOWN this year. My husband tells me that things at the office are looking up, and there’s a chance we might even get that bonus we were told not to expect. Therefore, we feel pretty good about pulling that sign back out of the yard.

It also feels pretty good to be able to start some projects around here again. I’ve been wanting to paint the dining room, but was nervous about being in the middle of it if someone would call to see the house. I can begin to think seriously about turning our dining room into a den without worrying about how it would look to a potential buyer. Then I can rearrange the bedroom, knock out a wall in the basement, tear down wallpaper in the bathroom…..