Staying Sane While House Is on the Market

My sympathy. It's tough. We just sold and it was on the market 9 months so it was pretty hard. At the start though we got a storage unit and put everything in that wasn't absolutely necessary. If there is less stuff, it makes is much easier. Like the idea of the baskets and loading them at the last minute!!

When we sold our old house many years ago, the kids were 5 and 1. I used to drop them off at their daycare in the morning and then come home and spend 15 minutes tidying up before leaving for work, for any showings that might happen during the day. I also kept a laundry basket out, so once we were home from work in the evenings, if we got a call that someone was coming for a showing, hubby or I would run around the house and collect any clutter items into the laundry basket and hide it in the trunk of one of our cars!
Good luck!

We have our house on the market, too, so I feel your pain.

I second the idea of baskets around the house that can go in the trunk of your car on a moment's notice. I've actually done that myself.

It helps to keep your basic cleaning up. Think about hiring help temporarily.

Good luck! Hope it sells for what you want!

I hope your house sells quickly so you don't have to put up with this for too long. We seemed to get a lot of showings when the house first went on the market and then interest dropped off and it was kind of aggravating to have the house "show quality" and then not have anyone come. After we dropped the price a little, interest resumed and we were able to sell it. First, I think you can set the time frame for showing the house- example : requiring 3 hour notice to show the house to give you a little more time. Of course, you may lose a few showings if you have some "spur of the moment realtors with clients." I used to get up each morning and make beds, wipe out basins, throw all clothes laying around in a laundry basket each day or shove them in the washer. Then I would wipe down the kitchen countertop and put all dishes in the dishwasher and then wipe out the sink. I had a bag of stuff to do in the car whenever I had to leave. Since you have children, I would have a bag already packed in the car with some things for them to play with, an extra jacket to play outside in and a list of ideas of what you can do for an hour to entertain your children while the house was being shown. Good luck - you could try making it a game for your kids to see how fast they could pick up their rooms or play area!

We are listing this week. I have a 6, 4 and 1 year old (and she just started walking and ripping into things --her favorite game is taking books of a shelf.)

This is my plan: after dinner every night, I will let my roomba vacuum the family room and office. iI will also tidy the downstairs bath at this time. First thing in the morning, bedrooms and living and kitchen will be vacuumed and cleaned up. And the main bath will be cleaned after everyone is ready for the day.

I will have a basket for the trunk of my car, and one large storage bin in the play room that can then be put in the storage in the work room for misc stuff.

I did clean out my house of about 40% of our stuff, so our main living area is totally staged. The office is going to be the hardest thing for me to keep clean. The kids craft in here, and it is usually our dumping ground. This is probably where the trunk basket will go.

I;m actually loving my sparse house! In fact, I don't think any of the toys and things in storage will really be returning ;-) I like the modern, less is more approach to things, and kids have really destroyed this for me.

hang in there, hopefully your house will sell this week!

Oh yes, my other plan is to leave the house every day and just go on big outtings. I have a long list of places we haven't visited in a long time, so I'm going to play tourist and just leave the museum every day ;-)

If you have a routine or plan, which it sounds like you do, stay focused. Your home, if priced well will see quickly.
In this market if it isn't showing almost daily I'd be surprised.
Good luck and it will be over soon.

You just sent my mind back to - well, practically antiquity! When my family had to move after twelve years, I was in junior high school and my sister was in senior high school. You may think our ages meant my mother's job was easier, but - not really so. Teen girls can be as self-absorbed and brain-dead as toddlers. In later years my mother talked about how tough it was to have a house on the market for six months, with my father already at work in another state (he would come home for a weekend every two or three weeks). She became an organizational machine as far as the house was concerned - with a fixed system to have the house in reasonable order all or most of the time, and in "apple-pie order" when a viewer was due. She had so many ups and downs - because of house-viewers, because of some realtors (some were downright rude!), because of the weather canceling open house plans, because she sometimes wondered if anything good would ever happen. No one was more overjoyed than my mother when our house finally sold. She kept a good, positive attitude for us kids, she told us how helpful we were (I don't remember being helpful!), and she didn't voice her worries in our presence until long after the whole adventure was over.

Just do the best you can. I don't understand why someone looking at the home, can't see beyond the few things left out because you live there. If someone is not going to buy your house because you left coffee cups in the
Sink, then they should not live there. Then again if you watch House Hunters you see people reject a house because of paint colors. Hello you can buy paint and change the color. Hopefully your home will sell soon. Good luck

We sold in October 2012. It took 9 months, I had a 5 year old and a 2 year old. Our realtor had us on an electronic lock box where we got emails and could accept or reject showings as we wished.

Just try to keep dirty dishes out of the sink (put them in the dishwasher) and make the beds and pick things up off the floors (towels in the bathrooms, etc.). It is okay if there are toys out - makes it look kid friendly. Don't try to keep your house like a model house or museum! You will be crazy before you sell.

Do the best you can but you will not end up getting an extra 10K because there were no fingerprints! Hang in there. It took us 7 months from list to close. We took the first offer! Last night at dinner my older son said he loves our new house and is super happy we moved:)