Tom and I have decided to sell our house and move to Southern Maine. After having this house built and living here for 35 years this is not a decision we have taken lightly.
We love this house and the updates we made to it. The beautiful sunroom. The hardwood floors. A comfortable size living room. Expanded dining room. First floor laundry. The "man cave", work shop, home office, and the "woman cave" in the basement. Oh gosh, I love this house.
But a house or home can be made anywhere as long as there is love and the occupants are happy. There have been so many changes in our lives the past seven years. Ben passing away. Having to move Mom out of her home then donating it to the fire department for training so now all we see is an empty lot next door. Owen and Cora being born. Mom's failing health. My retirement from AGSC, Tom's retirement from BMHI. So many changes and many "ghosts" are still in my life. I need a change. A change to be closer to the kids, to see Owen and Cora more often. Change of drive to work, change of scenery, change in places to picnic, hike, visit. A change to be able to do things without driving 3 hours and using my spending money to pay for gas!
For the past two years I have been cleaning and sorting in preparation. Thinking of my life in another home. Will it be bigger? Will it be smaller? With the price of housing my guess it will be smaller and we will need to down size. What would I do with all of my stuff? Clothes, furniture, dolls, craft supplies, memorbelia, etc. The first thing was to start cleaning. Clean the closets, dresser drawers, the basement, overhead in the garage. Have a yard sale, which I can say was successful netting almost $900. Sell some doll and hobby stuff, netted me another $600. Did that first before making the decision all the while saying, "If we decide not to sell the house at least I cleaned and reorganized." So with the decision about 75% made I started packing (or should I say Mom started packing) the stuff I want to keep. Carefully wraping all of the tiny miniatures, dolls and memorbilia that I kept. Trunks cleaned out and re filled, boxes packed and stacked.
We found more items to get out of the house. This time donated to the Brewer Federal Credit Union for their annual feed the hungry yard sale. Donations twice to The North Brewer Eddington United Methodist Church rummage sales. Boxes of stuff given to two women at work for their church yard sales. And bags of clothes donated to the Shoestring Thrift Shop in Brewer. Tom said with awe, "I have seen all of the stuff you have sold, donated, etc. What I want to know is where did you keep it all?" That's my secret.
Now we begin the waiting game. The decision has been made not to sell the house and all of the land. Instead we will sell a 2.5 acre lot and then the house and rest of the land separately. This way we will realize more cash flow to use for the purchase of the new house and moving expenses.
The soil test on the land has passed, we're ready to sell. The first week we received quite a few calls and one person in particular wants the land however, he is having trouble with financing. Isn't that the way? Got to play by the bank's rules. So now we wait for someone else to call.
I'm not a patient person. I want the land to sell yesterday so we can move forward with the house.
But for now, I think I'll make a cup of tea and enjoy my some free time in the sunroom.
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