I need to be on a TLC or HGTV show...

...Called, "UGH, Sell My Freakin' House!"

That being said, here are some thoughts about the home selling process.

First of all, we don't even really want to move. Don't get me wrong. We want to follow the call God's placed on our lives to move to Charlotte and start RWOC Charlotte. But that is easier said than done. We love our home. We love the new floors and upgrades we've done. We love our neighbors (more on that later). We love our friends who live here. We love Greenville. AND...we don't love having to pack our stuff, find a new home, move our stuff, unpack our stuff, and reorganize our stuff. It's a lot of work. We're certainly not opposed to work, but dang...what a hassle! We don't love trying to sell in this economy and the prospect of losing money on this investment. Who does, right?

Re: neighbors...we live in a great neighborhood. People are friendly. There are tons of little kids to play with (about 18 with two more on the way) on our cul-de-sac. We've got a great mix of young and old, married and single, working and stay-at-home...it's just fun. We have block parties and borrow each others' lawn machines and watch each others' kids. Brandon and I have been blessed to have this be the first neighborhood we bought a house in. And we realize that it's taken 4 years to get to this point in our relationships with our neighbors, and that it's going to take probably just as long to build that up in a new neighborhood. Again, work. Again, not opposed to work.

Secondly, have you ever tried to keep your house "show ready"? This means, clean, clean, clean. It means all the windows clean and the floors sparkling, and the toothpaste spots on the mirrors and faucets wiped away. It means keeping the carpet stainless, keeping the curb appeal up, and keeping up with minor repairs. It means making your beds right after you get out of them just in case a showing gets scheduled for that day. It means packing half your stuff away and "staging" your home, which therefore means bye-bye to things that make it homey like family pictures and special knick-knacks. I don't miss the knick-knacks, but I do miss seeing my pictures around.

Now try to imagine keeping the house show ready with a 2 year old and a 3 year old in the house. And a kitten. And a husband. And me, too...I guess. It's tough. So tough, I'm surprised I'm not in a mental institution after doing it for 6 months. At first I was neurotic about it. Running behind my family members with a rag and a broom. And that was not sustainable. For me or my marriage. So we've had to decide on a happy balance because it's just plain impossible. Usually, the house is pretty well picked up and somewhat clean. But it still takes a good 2 hours to do a top-to-bottom-pre-showing cleaning. And that's a lot of work.

Then you get things like this:

That's crayon on the carpet. Yes. It. Is. In the shape of a cross. As in, someone's about to get crucified in the Berry household. Can I get an amen from all the folk who believe in spanking your children? Cause that wasn't from my 2 year old. It was from my 3, almost 4 year old who knows better. And tried to blame it on her sister at first. This blog is my sanity break from cleaning it up all morning.

So we've cleaned and staged and marketed and showed this house plenty of times. We've had some real characters come through here. People who have knocked on our door during our morning jammies/coffee time (that's too early, people!) and been super aggressive trying to get us to allow them to lease-purchase the home (only to find that when we actually asked them to get a CREDIT CHECK, they mysteriously backed out. hmmmmm....). We've had people who were ...this close...to putting an offer in and then something came up that made them back out. It's been truly hysterical. I can't tell you how many times I've heard from agents, "my client loved, loved, loved your house...if they could just pick it up and move it (to the country, to Simpsonville, downtown, etc...) they'd be all about it. If I had $10k for every time I heard that, I could...well, I could buy this house again.

And finally we figured that maybe the Lord has had us stay here for this time for a reason. Yes, we need to get to Charlotte eventually. But we definitely didn't have to get there as soon as we originally thought we did.

As far as the natural side of things, we've done everything we can do to get this house sold. And so we wait on the the Lord. LORD, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God (Ps 38:15).

So if you're the TLC/HGTV watching type and they announce a new show, sign me up, please!