March 17, 2004
Coming clean about selling house
By
Herald Editor
In order to make a good first impression, you must come clean - as in closets and crawl spaces.
Putting a "for sale" sign in your front yard in mid March guarantees two things: more winter weather and early spring cleaning. Selling your home is a daunting task considering the fiscal responsibilities. The worst part, however, is transforming the mess of everyday life into the cover of Better Homes and Gardens.
Suffice it to say, this past weekend was clean-fest at the Leiva household. Three days later and my olfactory nerves are still shot.
While we generally keep a tidy house, we do have a "busy" two year old. I don't think a thesaurus is needed to further define that particular euphemism. Basically, anything not nailed down is fair game to her redecorating whims. Call it lack of style, but I thought you brought reading material into the bathroom, not toilet paper to the living room coffee table.
So this past Saturday we transformed our house from Sanford and Son squalor into June Cleaver clean. Actually, we settled for better than Roseanne Barr.
Unlike when family comes calling, cleaning your house for complete strangers takes work. The real problem is that you can't shove stuff into a closet. After all, a potential buyer might be put off when you scream "don't open that door!" Nor is it advisable to write "15 years of accumulated junk hidden in crawl space" on the seller's disclosure sheet.
Aside from casting out copies of Weekly World News from the magazine rack, selling your house requires a roof to foundation spruce-up. So you roll on a fresh coat of semi-gloss and steam clean the carpets - that way the new owner can panel the walls and rip up the Berber. The ultimate goal is to finish home improvements you put off for years so the next guy can strip your handiwork down to the studs.
While most of our home improvements were minor projects, the major job was eight feet underground.
Being a closet pack rat, I'm not one of those eccentric misers whose life is strewn across his living room. Instead, my disposal dilemma is kept in the bowels of the basement. I am a saver and I have the banana boxes to prove it. So rather than purge a single piece of paper, I delayed the inevitable and neatly stacked.
However, I did vacuum up a warren of rabid dust bunnies. The floor is now so clean you can eat off it; as long as you don't mind the lingering taste of concrete.
Just the idea of me vacuuming would blow my mother away. After all, she spent the better part of my childhood chastising me about the living conditions in my bedroom. I was the consummate "shove it under the bed" cleaner. Like the Toxic Avenger living in Love Canal, my bedroom was a cesspool of Star Wars toys and dog-eared baseball cards.
Today I call this room the garage. Unfortunately, it is attached to the house.
Although a trite truism, you do only have one chance to make a first impression. So in order to make it a good one, we are coming clean about our house. Just don't look under the bed.
Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416 or e-mail gleiva@gtherald.com