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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

For sale

Has anyone out there sold a house with three small children??
At least if someone responds I will know that I will live to tell about it.

We have had our house up for sale for a while now and trying to clean it for showings, get all of the kids out of the house while they walk through AND maintain some sort of a nap schedule is going to do me in.  I actually got a slap-on-the-hand call from our realty because I think I have said "no" one too many times to showing requests so I sucked it up and let them show the house yesterday.
At dinnertime.
When Mark was working late.

They came early.
Right after naptime, no diapers changed or snacks handed out, early.
No time to stuff the rest of our crap in every inconspicuous place and load the kids in the car early.

The realtor said she had twins so she understood but she didn't look like she understood and as the showing went on it was very clear that her nanny keeps very long hours.

So they are in the house for two minutes and someone stinks.
I'm trying to casually sniff behinds and once I figure out the offender I am then debating on what is better, changing a stinky toddler in a room they may pop into or letting him walk the house and hope that our potential buyers have no sense of smell.  McKenna solved that debate for me by feeding the baby a price tag so I moved on to fishing it out of his mouth and Twin Mommy realtor starts asking me to come open doors that have child proof handles (more evidence of the amount of overtime her nanny must work).
So I'm carrying the baby, McKenna is hanging onto the back of my leg for dear life and Parker is following with what I assumed was a trail of flies at his diaper by this point.
By now we are pushing dinner time and since the price tag didn't fill Sawyer up I had to feed him.  While feeding Sawyer, Ashlyn began a mini meltdown over mexican dip and Parker and McKenna began screeching and beating each other over a bubble wand, while standing on the chair that I was sitting on to feed the baby.  Oh, and did I mention at this time they are taking pictures of the main floor from our loft, capturing this whole lovely scene??

At this point I tell them the kids come with the house.  They barely smile because I'm assuming they are horrified by this whole scene and telling themselves they will never have children that act like this and all Twin Mommy can say is that this age is so fun.  That is just what I was thinking.

They thanked me for my time and left quickly so they could get to their car and shake their heads over the insane asylum they just visited.  I continued to feed Sawyer, untangled a bubble wand from my hair and calmed two toddlers with toys and a teenager with mexican dip and prayed that these people buy our home because we are never showing it to anyone again.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

OMG...Kill me now..LMAO..that was the best..I needed to read that and see that others struggle with the whole "stranger in the house". Isnt it crazy how calm they can be until someone wants to come over..INSANE...I am visiting from Mott Multiples facebook page. THanks for your contributions to my page and I am now a follower..keep writing and I will keep reading..
Heather

Steph said...

First off, I've only seen pics of your house from this blog but why are you moving. Your lake location looks amazing!

As for selling, we had our house on the market for 8 months this year! CRAZY. We have a small house - less than 1400 sq ft and 3 two year olds. We insisted on appt only showings. We NEVER said no (as we really needed to sell) but we did try to arrange the time either before or after nap time.

We also never stayed in the house during the showing. It would creep me out and I didn't want strangers seeing my kids in the house - I know, I'm weird. Plus they say that the buyer really needs to envision themselves in the house which is hard to do if the owners are home(that's why they also recommend getting rid of all personal photos around the house). We tended to arrange play dates at other people's houses or at least go for a walk at the time of the showing. (Often times realtors were late and we would kind of hide at the end of the street and watch for them to come and go - not that we could "hide" very well w/ a triplet jogging stroller).

Luckily most showings were on weekends. We would clean the house after the kids went to bed Friday night. I know, we're such a fun couple. Every freakin Friday night for 8 months we cleaned the house spotless. I'm talking steam clean the floors, clean all the windows, remove fingerprints from stainless appliances, clean bathrooms... Then we'd try to do mostly outdoor play when the weather allowed or head over to a friends house on the weekends. We obviously would stay home sometimes which would lead to a messy house. If the showing was to be after nap we'd clean up again during nap. If not, we'd load the kids in the car or the stroller and then clean up while the kids waited.

Anyway, we survived. I was so happy when we took our hosue off the market. I swear I'm never moving again (we're moving to FL from CA next month and then never again). Good luck to you!

Liz said...

Seriously, you are hilarious! Thank you for the 15 minute laugh!

mom said...

LOL! I totally understand the moment, though I haven't been trying to sell my house during the chaos. My sister-in-law recently sold her home with 5 small children (no twins) and her husband already out of state with his new job. It was nuts but they did it. . .

Anonymous said...

I did it! I have 7yo ASD (like a 2yo), 5yo, and 8mo. My DH works 4am-7pm. We did it and survived. It was ALOT of hard work. But you can survive.

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