I think that for many people when their kids leave home, they cherish the memories that they have in their house, and they feel like they have to hold on to it forever to maintain the memories. Steve and I, on the other hand, had almost the opposite reaction to our kids leaving. We had so many fond memories of the kids and their friends, the parties we threw for marching band, lacrosse, etc. the ringing of laughter within the walls and the toilet paper we had to clean from our trees. So after the girls left, our house just felt empty. It was no longer fun to clean it for some upcoming event. It was no longer fun keeping up with the large yard that we once used for hosting parties. It was no longer a bustling household. It was a house that was bigger and emptier than we wanted, and seemed to us that it had become almost a burden instead of a place of enjoyment. So a few months ago, after a year and a half of cleaning out and freshening it up, we put our house on the market.
We didn't make any real plans of what we would do, or where we would go if it sold, we just knew that it was more house than we wanted to take care of when we could be out traveling and exploring instead. So to our surprise, in early January, after the hustle and bustle of the holidays had ended, we got an offer on our house. The buyers didn't have a lot of stipulations with their offer, but they did want a quick close. Our inspection was on January 10th, and on January 16th, we found out the results of the inspection. Our buyer asked for very few repairs and wanted a closing date of February 14th so he could buy his wife a house for Valentines Day. And that was when the amazing race began....a race to empty the house!
