Cleaning & Mulching To Stage The Home To Sell
If it is true that cleanliness is next to Godliness, then selling our house is practically turning us into saints. Not that we were not teetering on clean freak status before, but I have consistently considered myself more tidy than clean (i.e. clutter’s a no-no, but the tub can go unscrubbed a little longer than I’d like to admit to my mom). But now that we have strangers touring the place it has kicked us into cleaning hyper drive – which I should note is much needed considering that having a newborn all but halted it for a good while this summer.
Yes, that is me breaking out the ladder to give a good wash to the outside of our sunroom sliders. Goodbye grime, hello sold house! Okay, perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, but here is hoping my ladder hopping efforts do not go unnoticed.
I will spare you photos of our other cleaning adventures (polishing all of the stainless steel fixtures, wiping down all of the kitchen cabinets, vacuuming, vacuuming, and more vacuuming…) and instead will subject you to photos of some of the curb appeal-ization that is been going down ’round here. For example, got mulch?
It took me three separate trips to Lowe’s to get sufficient of it to spruce up our plant beds (I do not normally go for the artificial color-boosted mulch, but it was on sale for the same price as the regular stuff and I figured this was one instance where “long lasting color” could do me some good). At least by the end of the day we had a crisper looking yard staring back at us.
Speaking of the yard, I have also been in the process of re-growing grass in some spots that the hot weather killed this summer. It is been going surprisingly well – especially considering that our county is on emergency water restriction due to a long sweltering summer. Now I am simply crossing my fingers that mowing over it as much as I have had to (to keep that “maintained yard” look that buyers like) does not harm those wee sprouts too much. Note: we simply seeded and waited for rain- no sprinkler or fertilizer usage was required. Thankfully we have had our fair share of showers in the past three weeks and we have learned that grass truly wants to grow in bare dirt. So rain plus grass seed typically equals luck.
And when I am not mowing, I can typically be found blowing the driveway clear of acorns. We are in the middle of our annual bombardment, courtesy of the oak trees surrounding our house, so our driveway gets littered with ’em quite swiftly. Simply check out the collection I am working on at the driveway’s back corner where everything gets blown. Methinks the squirrels should hoist me over their shoulders and sing “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow” for this service to them:
As much as keeping the house in ready-for-a-showing shape is exhausting, we have to admit that it is pleasant to live in an über-tidy house nearly 24/7. And we have our fingers crossed that the extra effort will pay off soon when it comes to wooing a buyer. Ok, off to remake the bed…
