The Vince Files

Now that our home is on the market and people are aware of our upcoming Open House, it’s time to clean up.

We actually rented a unit at the local Maple Leaf Storage.  I took a lot of the boxes just sitting in the back of our tandem garage and brought them to the storage.  These past couple of weeks, I’ve been parking the car outside as we shuffle stuff inside our garage.  Also, my sister’s got some stuff in our garage that needs to be taken away.  She also took a lot (and I do mean a lot) of Claire’s baby stuff like 2 high chairs, gate, toys, clothes.  And she took an electric fan, and a portable air conditioner!

As for the inside, it’s been mostly general cleaning.  I did, however, do some painting of areas that needed to be painted.  But for the most part we haven’t done any major overhauls (e.g. replace carpet with laminate or hardwood).  There were areas in our kitchen and bathroom that needed new caulking.  And of course, I replaced our kitchen faucet.  Yesterday, Friday, I took a vacation day from work to do further cleaning and painting.

For landscaping, we kept it simple.  Anna de-weeded our backyard patio area as well as the planting areas in our front entrance.  Our front entrance faces south and the Hostas there weren’t faring too well in the direct sunlight so she transplanted them to the back patio where it’s shaded.  The Hostas are now thriving.  We also bought some cheap, small flowering annuals to plant in our entrance and at the back.  A bit of topsoil, mulch, and Miracle-Gro and we should be all set.

Now, we’re just into some last minute cleaning and removing any valuables and potentially dangerous items (think safety for your real estate agent) from the premises