I have been sporadically sharing my buying, selling and moving posts over the past few months. Initially, I didn’t want to bombard you with too much about it, but there is still so much to share. So this week I am publishing all my adventures and tips as many of you are moving and wanting my moving tips!! I have only moved a handful of times, now 3 times with the kids. But I have to admit this last move was really stressful, only because the auction for the house we purchased was a week after we found it and then we had to put the house we were living in up for sale soon after to hopefully be sold by Christmas.
My diary of getting the house ready for sale
I wrote a little diary of the days leading up to putting our house on the market. I didn’t publish this at the time of our move for my kids and our family’s privacy. I kept it quiet on social media, not telling many people we were moving because I didn’t want non-buyers looking through our home out of curiosity. However, our agent did try to talk us into it thinking the more people looking at inspection times the better. But privacy was our priority, I am sure you can understand.
DAY 1 – SATURDAY
We purchased our new house! We were ecstatic and on a real high after the auction process.
I couldn’t help myself on the way home we stopped in at a storage shop and purchased some moving boxes…. however in hindsight I won’t do that again as I later found out they were very expensive. We got home late that afternoon and after the excitement of purchasing the new house I didn’t have much energy to actually do anything with the boxes.
If you are thinking of buying a new home you can read more from my purchasing a new home series:
- what to ask the agent about the house you are considering to buy
- what to check in the home before making an offer
- things to considering when offering a price to buy
- things to do before moving into your new home
DAY 2 – SUNDAY
I already had plans in the morning so once I got home I spent the afternoon packing away most of our personal items, things like our family photos, kids drawings etc. I’ll share more tomorrow why I did this. My hubby Scott was trying to watch the car racing and was looking at me thinking I was a little crazy being so eager to start packing. The following week he did say he was thankful that I started as soon as I did.
DAY 3 – MONDAY
We both worked today, but later in the afternoon we got our local real estate agent over and signed all documents to sell the house.
Now, we had to start thinking about getting the house presentable for sale, we could have done this before getting the agent in, but we didn’t realise we’d find a house and purchase it so quickly. At the moment it is homely and exactly how we like it, but we need to make some changes to help make some of the rooms look more spacious.
We want the house on the market ASAP because Christmas is approaching and we want the settlement to happen before this. However, we have quite a bit we need to do to the house before it’s ready to go on the market, our list:
- declutter shelves
- store away large furniture
- patch up some holes in the ceilings where we removed lights and put in fans
- clean the exterior of the house
- get pool certification
- fix the pool heating
- remove my bromeliads from the gardens, (they were my mums and I didn’t want to leave them behind as they are a beautiful reminder of her.)
- add plants to the gardens from where I removed bromeliads
- mulch the gardens
- get the carpets cleaned
- clean the house
DAY 4 – TUESDAY
I got a local handyman to come in and help patch up the holes in the ceiling.
I made a start on packing a few more boxes, but as I was doing this I started to find items I haven’t used in a while and decided to throw a garage sale on the weekend, so I started to pile everything orderly in the garage. I usually keep my car in the garage, but decided I’ll leave it out until we move so I had room to store garage sale items.
I couldn’t sleep so I got up and cleared all the surfaces in the home. I stood in my kitchen area and realised I had so many fake flowers, one under the big mirror, one by the TV, one next to the door and another on the dining table. It had never occurred to me until now I had far too many flowers in one space… I was starting to look at my house through different eyes. I grouped all the flowers I had in the home together to pack in the one box… I do love a pretty flower.
DAY 5 – WEDNESDAY
Today I booked in times to get quotes for some work I need done to the new house, carpet, painting and electricity.
I ran out of boxes, I heard they are cheaper at Bunnings so I purchased 10 large and 10 medium sized boxes. I should have got 20 of each as I eventually needed more. Bonus with Bunnings, if you don’t use them all you can return them! The boxes weren’t as thick as the ones from the storage shed, but they are so much cheaper. Also look or ask on your local buy and sell Facebook groups for boxes, I ended up selling all the boxes after the move on gumtree, I sold them for 50c a box.
On the way home from school pick up clouds started to roll over, people were parking cars under bridges, so I turned on the radio, a hail storm was approaching….. I quickly called my hubby to get him to move all the stuff I put in the garage to the side, I need to get my car in, hail is coming.
Sadly all my neatly piled items for the garage sale were no longer, I was really cranky. But I did then realise, I really didn’t have time to do a garage sale. What was I thinking? However, we had furniture that I know wouldn’t fit into the new house, kids toys they no longer played with so I put it all on our local Facebook group buy and sell page, they all sold, some within minutes, others within a day or two. Less hassle than a garage sale!
To help make the house look spacious or ‘clutter free’ we want to remove some of the furniture, so I hired a storage shed. When I called to book the shed I asked if they had a trolley we could borrow, to make moving the furniture from the house to the car easier. She said no, but they do have a truck. We can hire it for FREE for 4 hours. Freeee whaaaat!! Yesssss please!! I booked it in and then called my Mother In Law to see if she could help with the kid’s school pick up tomorrow so we could take advantage of the time with the truck.
Note: I got the removalists to pick up everything from the storage shed after they packed up the house so then we had everything we owned at the new house and save us having to move it all ourselves again.
I have a mess at my front door, but it’s all organised. I had a pile for:
- charity
- the tip
- to go to storage
- selling on Facebook
DAY 6 – THURSDAY
Pool heating got fixed and the pool certification was approved, we had to cut down a frangipani that was too close to the fence, but I didn’t mind because I could then plant it at the new house! I can recommend my lovely friend Trudy and her hubby who run a family business Inspex.net.au on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane.
Scotty and I worked half the day and then we spent the other half packing up the truck with the boxes I had packed so far and the larger furniture items:
- lego unit and bookshelf from sons room
- unit from lounge room
- 2 bookcases from mancave
- chest and a lounge from dining area
Scotty’s dad who is a tiler also fixed a few tiles that were lifting up in the laundry. By fixing the little things like this eliminated the possibility of it being picked up in the building report and the buyer then trying to renegotiate the sale price.
DAY 7 – FRIDAY
We spent the morning at the new house getting trades to quote for new carpet, painting indoors and some electrical work. Then we both worked a few hours after lunch and did a little more packing after school pick up, not too much as my back is sore.
DAY 8 – SATURDAY
The house got washed today, we did consider re-painting it initially, it really needed it, but our Agent said it should come up nicely with a wash. It washed away the dirt but didn’t hide the fact it needed to be repainted, never mind, new owners can paint it whatever colour they like!
It did help that I woke up at 4.30am and managed to pack most of my office before everybody else woke up. I wanted my office to be bare minimal items (as office can easily look cluttered), I removed all my boards and inspiration board off the wall. Scott later that day had to put away all his clients work (for privacy) and tidy his desk (wowser his desk is always a mess so this was a huge job for him).
I’ve ended the day with just about all boxes packed and made a start on the cleaning. However, I’m typing up this diary note, it’s 12.30am (remember I mentioned I woke at 4.30am) now I am thinking the 5 coffees I had today to help keep me awake because I woke up so early was not a good idea.
DAY 9 – SUNDAY
I got more boxes, as I mentioned above, it’s probably a good idea to just buy more than you think you might need in the beginning. Everything is packed and the house is spotless and just about ready.
The kids helped out too, Miss 11 cleaning the dirt off our Swan who sits in our pool.
We spent the afternoon resting, we are all exhausted.
DAY 10 – MONDAY
Bromeliads were removed from the garden and potted up ready to be taken to the new house (doing this before sale removes any arguments about me taking them out of the garden after the house is sold), we added some coloured flowers to the front garden beds to make it look more appealing. As much as Scotty and I are capable of mulching the garden I did get a local gardener to help with this to ensure we had everything ready for photos to be taken.
The carpets really needed replacing, instead of going to that expense we got them professionally cleaned, I used Electrodry. There was one stain that wouldn’t come out, so I purchased a really inexpensive rug to cover the obvious mark on the carpet.
The house is ready!
DAY 11 – TUESDAY
All the agents from the real estate came through to have a look at the house, they were very impressed. My agent was speechless and couldn’t believe the work we had done in a week. He then understood why I am The Organised Housewife, lol, being able to get it all we did within a week. I live up to the name in his book!
DAY 12 – WEDNESDAY
I waited till the last-minute to take down this little “shh… baby is sleeping” sign. This has been hanging in the doorway of my youngest room since I was pregnant with her, over 11 years ago just a few week after we built the house, very sentimental. But we needed to remove it in case the new buyers want it to be their babies room, they can have their own precious memories in there rather than ours.
Photos being taken of the house today and we have our first inspection this afternoon.
SOLD!
It took us 3 weeks to sell the house, which we were pleased with and wouldn’t you know it, settlement happened on the last business day before Christmas, perfect timing.
Do you find moving stressful?
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