Once we'd decided to move, things happened very quickly. Like, within a few days. We called our realtor, MJ, who came over and told us what all we needed to put in storage for staging and it turns out, it was half the fucking house.
Work was very busy and having to spend all our spare time packing seemed overwhelming.
That's where Debbie and Richard came in.
Folks, I'm going to let you in on a little secret: there are people out there in the world who LIKE TO ORGANIZE THINGS. And you can PAY THEM to help you.
I like things to BE ORGANIZED but I don't care to DO the organizing myself, because I am impulsive and indecisive and lack confidence in my own judgement, qualities which make me QUITE A CATCH and which have also intensified during this hallowed time of perimenopause.
So Katr found Debbie and Richard to help us pack and organize our stuff for storage. They were like magical Energizer bunnies in masks, packing Frog Boxes full of our books and games and kitchen shit and art and putting aside stuff for donation.
If you'd been to our home in Vancouver, I don't think you would have called it overly cluttered. It's not like we were hoarders. But once we started packing up, that place was like a fucking clown car, shit coming out of cupboards and from under beds and behind appliances just endlessly.
This process took us collectively 3 full days. And we had to call FrogBox and have them deliver more boxes. (I told MJ she should take a picture of the boxes for the listing, just to prove how much storage this place had. She declined.)
Debbie was very efficient and sort of put up with our jokes but Richard's other job was as a drag butler. That's right. He's a butler who takes care of drag performers. So he was used to dealing with fussy queens and also had a pleasingly courtly manner while he waited for me to make a determination about, say, where my Grade 7 drama trophy should go. That man was truly doing god's work.
Movers came and took all the boxes and probably a quarter of our furniture and put it in storage. We had a few minor repairs done, and some painting touch-ups by Jason from Port City Painting, HIGHLY RECOMMEND HIM. And then...it was time.
The house went on the market near the end of September. Surprisingly, you can still see the listing here. The photography made it look VERY BRIGHT, in reality it had more a "cozy cave" vibe.
In times gone by, we might have been able to find a house we liked BEFORE closing the sale of our place and either make our buying conditional on our selling or do something called "bridge financing", but not in the hectic market of September 2021, when it was considered outré to ask for a home inspection and très gauche to merely offer "asking". So we had to fully sell our house before we could afford to buy a new place.
This fact did not stop us from looking at the listings constantly and then becoming heartbroken when something we liked was bought within 48 hours. So we were thrilled when, after less than a week on the market, we got a good offer on the townhouse. "They're lesbians," MJ told us, "and they've really tipped their negotiating hand because they told me that finding this place was FATE. Apparently the street address is the same as their wedding date!" Oh lesbians...never change.
The other lesbians agreed to a 60-day closing, which we were sure would be ample time to find a new place in Victoria. Right? That's two whole months! No problem.
And now, a select 50x50 update:
- 5km walks: 2
- French podcasts listened to: 3
- "No dessert" days: 2 (white-knuckling that shit, tbh)
- Hours of knitting: 0
- Board game plays: 1
