Out with the Old

This past weekend, Derek and I began the process of the necessary cleaning to get our house on the market.  The first thing on our list was to clean out the garage.

Although we have a large workshop on our property, we have used our garage as a staging area for all of our home remodeling for the last 4 years.  It was just much more convenient.  And, if we saw a good deal on something we would need for one of our upcoming projects, we would buy it an put it in the garage.  It was not unusual to see a toilet, closet storage systems, plumbing supplies, a wide array of paint, numerous power tools, shop vac, a big stack of tile, trim, a double oven...you get the picture.  Add to that the trash from our latest project, our normal household trashcans, recycling containers, and the chest freezer and there was no way our cars were fitting in that garage.

Well, we rented a truck and we hauled a bunch of trash to the dump.  1,100 lbs to be exact.  This included all of the items from the chest freezer. (We are going to sell/donate it).  The most interesting trash?  I would have to say that it was probably our wedding cake topper (minus the piece we ate on our 1 year wedding anniversary) and some fish that my dad gave me before I even met Derek.  YUCK. 

Then we loaded up remodeling supplies that were left over from various projects and took them to our local Habi.tat for Hum.anity Re.Store and donated them.

Next we cleared out the rest of the tools and supplies and took them down to the workshop and got that place all organized as well.

People, I am proud to say that we parked in the garage for the first time on Sunday.  It is really nice.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been working on decluttering our upstairs.  So far, this has consisted of a lot of sorting and organizing.  I still have a little bit to do upstairs, but for the most part things are going well.  I still need to de-personalize things and take down pictures of us and our families.  That is probably the part of putting our house on the market that I dislike the most.  And the part that I dread the most is the built ins in the family room.  I am struggling with exactly what to pack up and not leave them looking totally empty.

We have also been working in the basement cleaning up the storage areas.  I have a huge stack of items to be donated in the coming couple of weeks.  I have been labeling boxes and color coding them as to their importance.  (I know, such a geeky thing to do, right?  But it totally works and it makes me feel in control of something). 

The color codes stand for the importance of the box.  Since it is entirely possible that we will be moving in phases (house to apartment to apartment to house), I want to have things that will go to storage regardless of where we move in a certain color, boxes in storage that is easily acceptable in another color, and boxes that will go to the new location period in a third color.

We have another real estate agent coming to speak with us tomorrow night, so hopefully things will go well.