I won’t keep you in suspense.
We Moved!! I can’t say I would be shocked if anyone noticed my absence on The Working Homemaker, considering how new it is. Nonetheless, I figured I would still explain where I have been over the past little while. My husband and I decided at the end of May that we should start the moving process- what an absolute disaster that was! Now that we are getting settled into our new home, I think it would be fun (or maybe therapeutic) to unpack the experience for you!
The pets.
As you’ve seen on the homepage, we have five animals in the house. Before we could even consider putting my condo on the market we needed to take into account the stress that showings and inspections would put on the crew, mostly the cats. Harley and Mason are a bonded pair so they would have to be together no matter what and Tom could go elsewhere if needed. Thankfully we were blessed with a family member who could care for my boys, and a good friend that was willing to take Tom in! If you don’t already know, cats are kind of little dicks. Moving the three of them to temporary locations proved to be a very difficult task, however, they were able to muscle through and I am happy to report they are now living their boujee little hearts out in their new home!
Our girls were much easier (and quieter) about being out of the house for extended periods of time. Although I will say sitting in a car with them for several hours while showings were underway was a very hot and stinky experience. 2/10- would not recommended.
Selling prep.
With the pets having their respective plans and very temporary rehoming we were able to prep the condo to be put on the market.
I have always considered us to be relatively minimalist, and then we began packing. We decided to remove 80% of the items in the home before listing to not only make it look like a bigger and neater space, but it also gave us the headstart we really needed on the backend of the move.
We went through and touched nearly everything in the house, deciding upon whether it was worth the time, effort, and energy to move with us. With this in mind we probably donated around 20-25% of the items that were never used and just taking up space. It was a very freeing feeling!
Everything that we decided to keep was then boxed up and moved up the road to a storage unit. This was the ideal option for us as we could rent a moving truck for only one night (the day before our move) and fill it with only the essentials. Everything else was able to fit in the Subaru which saved us some $$$ on the actual move.
With the majority of our stuff packed up and moved out, we had a few very small improvements to work on and then it was time to list!!
Listing.
I would like to start this out by saying how eternally GRATEFUL I am that we were able to get offers within the first four days of being listed. That said, it was the most stressful four days of my life to date. We originally planned to list the condo on a Friday morning as I was taking my two cats to their temporary home on the Thursday beforehand. Our realtor insisted that we waste no time and list on that Thursday, thus rearranging my entire schedule (the WORKING homemaker), and forcing me to leave work early to accommodate the cats. So we all agreed, begrudgingly, on listing on a Thursday. The day before listing we had our house photographed and were told by our agent that she would prep the listing and once she had the photos she would get those added and list in the morning around 8. I begin my workday around 5am and to my absolute SHOCK and HORROR, discovered that she had already made the listing public without having us review it first. Not only did she have incorrect information on the home and our updates, but she listed the property SIX GRAND UNDER WHAT WE DISCUSSED. In fact, I pulled up our contract just to make sure I wasn’t mistaken, which I was not.
It is a miracle I did not suffer an aneurysm at work that morning.
Once those kinks were eventually smoothed out I ventured out to collect and move the cats.
Yet again, disaster strikes. My husband gives me a call while I am driving with the cats to let me know that we have someone requesting a showing but neither their nor our agent is able to walk him through the home. My husband agreed to give him the tour and we set it for 1pm. Shortly thereafter I arrive to drop off the cats when we yet again hit another snag in the road!
Mason is so mad at his new arrangement that he is spitting while hissing and poor Harley is frozen in fear. They have never had any issues with being in new spaces so I found myself in a position where I had no clue how to help them. I set up their litter boxes, food, and water, and planned to give them some space. I went to find them to say goodbye. Mason greeted me with hissing and growling while Harley was absolutely nowhere to be found! Panic sunk in. Did he somehow get out the door? I knew it had been closed the whole time but where is he?!!
I called my husband, he needed to have the showing moved to a later time while I tried to find this little fluffy jerk. Time is ticking, I searched absolutely everywhere. They were in a small condo- there weren’t many hiding places he could utilize. My family member who agreed to let them stay was gone for the weekend and I was wracked with guilt having to leave without seeing Harley and knowing he was okay. I called in for backup- My mom arrived an hour later and agreed to stay for a bit so I could zip home to the showing.
The showing was quick and uneventful and ultimately resulted in no offer. Afterwards I zoomed back to see if I could find Harley. To make an already long story short, I could not find him and called animal control to see if anyone had turned him in. While on the phone with them his sneaky self appeared out of absolutely nowhere! What a sneaky jerk! The remainder of the showings were a blur. We took the girls to daycare for one of the days so they would not have to be ushered in and out of the house and we were able to spend our day doing fun activities (We were so stressed out though that I cannot even tell you what we ended up doing). At the end of it all we were able to get two offers in which we were so incredibly grateful for. With offers in, that meant we had to start the even more stressful event, finding a place to go.
Finding our home. Trusting the Universe.
We had been looking at homes even before our condo was listed, however we knew no offers would be taken seriously without having our place at least on the market. In fact, we found what we thought would be the perfect place for us and it was five minutes from where we were already living, but they declined our offer due to having a contingency to sell.
I personally had the most stress around ensuring we would not become homeless during this process. I can handle living out of my car for a bit, however, the stress of where our animals would go for an extended amount of time had me breaking out in fits of tears and panic. My stomach was absolutely in knots and the stress was majorly deteriorating my health. That said- I need to take you on a little bit of a side tangent here (it ties in later, I swear).
The night before my wedding one of my sister in law’s asked me what my goals were for our first year of marriage. After giving it a minute or so of thought I let her know that I wanted to find the place to plant our roots. We were married on October 6th of 2019. We all know what happened in March of 2020. Our first year (actually more like two years) of marriage were spent in the condo I purchased when I was 20.
Fast forward to where we left off in the story, I was panicked and vulnerable. If you know me personally, then you know of my belief in the Universe. After a particularly stressful day I let my husband know I was going to take a shower. I ran the water and undressed while fighting to hold back tears. We needed to find a place.
Thinking back to what my sister in law asked me before my wedding, it hit me. Eventually I could no longer hold in my tears and while sobbing I declared to the Universe, “We have planted our roots, we just need a bigger pot”. Still crying I got into the shower in an attempt to soothe myself. About three minutes later my husband knocked on the door and said he had news. Through my tears I let him know that my heart could not bear any more devastation for the day and he was quick to let me know that it was good news. Our realtor called while I was showering to let us know that the realtor of the place I mentioned earlier had called her letting her know of another property they were listing that was also just five minutes up the road from us! WHAT?! Holy cow. How is that not divine timing?!
After I was off of work we hit the ground running. We had booked 6 showings for the day, the first of which was the house the Universe seemingly plopped into our laps.
We arrived at the house up the road with high, high hopes! Guess what? It was dirty, grimy, and severely outdated. It checked off so many of our wants and needs in a home but I could not look past the 20 year old carpet and visible filth coating nearly every inch of the home. It was a no from me. My husband was hooked, though. This house was his favorite one yet. After seeing the remaining houses on our tour circuit I had absolutely fallen in love with the last one. We submitted our offer which was incredibly generous for the age and size of the home. Guess what? Crickets. The sellers were taking their sweet time to review the offer.
Originally, our buyer agreed to let us rent back for up to 30 days while we looked for our new home, but then a day after this agreement they decided that they would rather not be helpful to us and they would be continuing to look at other places until we found our home. As I said, we had been looking at places since even before we listed. The time between us accepting our buyer’s offer and us placing our most recent offer was two days. We did not want to lose our sale and to be honest we felt like they had backed us into a corner. With hearing nothing back from the house we placed an offer on, we pulled a hail mary. We nervously submitted an offer on the house up the road. Admittedly I was not incredibly excited about this, but for the sake of my health, I needed this process to be over sooner rather than later. If it meant living amongst grime for a bit, so be it.
The following morning we heard back from the house up the road, they accepted our offer! This solved our immediate problems with our buyer and we were able to progress with moving! The closing date for our sale was set for 7/8/22, buuuuuuuuut. Of course, this would change. Before starting the whole moving process I wanted to be proactive about our financing so I had reached out to the loan officer that helped me with my first purchase. We came up with a plan to have the financing already in place before we even started to look at homes, meaning we already had a loan approval and all that was needed was the appraisal and a few other documents. As it happens our buyer had the same plan and we were able to close 15 DAYS FROM OUR OFFER BEING ACCEPTED. Things were moving fast and with the experience we just had from the Universe, it was easier to trust that everything was falling into place for our highest good.
Wrapping up.
There were a few more small hiccups throughout the 15 days to close, but I won’t bore you with those details. We made it to the closing without having to push anything back! The last night in our condo was a little bit overwhelming for me. We had begun to build our lives together in that space and saying goodbye was difficult, although like I discussed with the Universe, we needed a bigger pot.
With the move being done and over with and after having time to clean, update things, and settle in, I can say that I love our new space.
Moving in 2022’s market was quite a challenge but it is not impossible.
The most important thing for us was building a team of people who would be as supportive as possible and I am genuinely grateful for all of the help we have received and are continuing to receive. Two of my biggest takeaways don’t even necessarily have anything to do with moving.
The first is the connection between the mind and the body. The amount of stress I felt for the short amount of time it took for us to move was nearly unbearable for me. I am still losing hair and I lost around 15lbs. The stress was caused by my own worries. Imagine for a minute how much good we can bring into our lives by changing our thought patterns from negative to positive. This is a practice that I will be implementing daily and I cannot wait to see how it impacts me!
The second takeaway is that the Universe (God, Source, Gaia, Goddess, Allah, whatever you want to call it) really wants to see us thrive! Manifestation is a simple formula: Intention + Action + Emotion. If you are able to communicate those three things to the Universe it will provide. It may not always be in the way you expect but you can trust that it will get you where you want to go.
This is really all I have to speak on as far as how our moving process has gone! Keep an eye out for posts about updating our new space! Until then, have a great day.
-Sophia
OH. PS!! The pets are all home and have acclimated very well. All cats and dogs are very happy with their new space.
The Working Homemaker 