In the attempt to downsize one has to sell one’s home and, to do that, one has to engage a real estate agent. It is they who advise you on how to arrange the various rooms, what to get rid of, and what to keep in place. They also have your home open to the public for an ‘open house’ at least once a week for the month leading up to the auction. For the owner, an open house involves packing up anything that identifies them, anything that looks like clutter, or can be interfered with, and anything that is easily nicked should some light fingered person wander through the house. To this end, we pack up laptops (on one of which I write this), chargers, external hard drives, family photographs, jewellery, knitting, etc., into several bags or backpacks, and load up the boot of the car. The car is then backed out of the garage, so it cannot be blocked by the real estate agent’s vehicle, or any early arrivals for the open house. Just before the agent arrives, we turn all the lights on and unlock all the doors. When the agent arrives, we open the garage door and turn its lights on, hop in the loaded car, drive around the block and park about 100 metres from our home to see how many cars turn up to look at the house. We have been told that so far 28 groups have shown up, which is apparently a good result (we guessed it was somewhere in the 20s). This ‘open house’ caper has been going on for close to a month now and I am thoroughly sick of it. It is time consuming, repetitive, and draining, and is only assuaged by glasses of wine and ‘8 out of 10 cats does countdown’ on what used to be called the idiot box.
The auction of the house happens in the next week, and I can hardly wait for it all to be over. On the other hand, it will be hard to leave this place, as it has been a home for almost half my life. The place we are moving to has not yet been completed, so we will be homeless for a few weeks. This will be filled with travelling about the countryside visiting relatives and friends and bludging a bed off them for a night or three until we can move in with all our stuff.