Dog in Chair and Other Things.

First, Vi's wish is my command - pictures of Dudley in his chair (and I do mean IN his chair):





I have been unemployed for one month. It has been a productive month, certainly, yet somehow everything is not done, and new things that need to be addressed before the house is "market ready" keep cropping up every day. The latest is electrical work. The outside electrical outlet for the pond equipment needs replacement, as do two light fixtures, one interior, one exterior. Then there's all the dead landscaping, thanks to the ONE DAY freeze. Still need master bedroom carpet, too. Nothing like getting the house ready to put on the market to make you see that yes, you were living in a friggin' dump all this time.

Then there is the "staging" of the house for sale. Modern home sale etiquette advises that one must "stage" the house for sale, meaning, erase any evidence that messy real people actually live there, and create the warm, homey ambiance of a Pottery Barn catalog. Some sellers really resent this, and take it as an insult. I don't. I think this is really fun, like a game, an exercise in applied psychology and sociology. Back when I worked for The Big Homebuilder Which Must Not Be Named, one of the more amusing aspects of my job was touring model centers, looking for things that could be used as anecdotal evidence of some sort of discrimination - ferinstance, if every model in the model center has fake family photos of extremely blond and blue eyed families, with no mix of ethnicity or ages, or the bookshelves are full of potentially offensive fake books, (political and religious books are a good example of "things you probably shouldn't display") we would advise "neutralizing" the decor. You'd be amazed at the crazy things model decorators will use, because they aren't looking at it from a HUD inspector's (or plaintiff's lawyer's) eye.

Ten years later, this concept has spread to the resale market and is called "staging." The object is to "de-personalize" the house as much as possible, to allow a buyer to mentally "move in." It does make sense. Some people don't need it - I know I don't, I have bought and sold enough houses to be able to look past the beer can collections to the bones of the room, but even I will admit that a distracting personal item becomes the thing I remember about the house (the beer can collection example came from real life, and yes, we did buy the house).

As part of "staging," I am putting away all the family photos, not that I display that many anyway. After I am working again I am going to treat myself to a nice digital photo frame, so all of the family pics I'm scanning will be displayed in a single slide show. Those things are a gift to anti-clutter.

I also need more boxes, because about half of my books are going to be discreetly hidden away. Cookbooks, knitting books, some of my nonfiction, and politically neutral bestsellers will remain on the shelves. Political nonfiction will be put away for the duration. Republican money is green too.

I am out of practice with keeping a house in model home condition, and I am NOT looking forward to it, especially after I am working again. Stripping the place down to bare simplicity will make that part of this ordeal easier as well. So this week I will concentrate on that aspect of the preparations, along with calling the electrician and pruning back the dead landscaping and going to Goodwill and....

Today is going to be a mad day of running around: a Goodwill drop off, Home Depot, etc., ending with a run to the airport this evening to pick up Boy. Tomorrow Boy and his friend will work on the car and, with luck, cure what ails it. Wednesday they will drive back to Asheville, by way of Charlotte. Don't ASK.

And the week is off and running!