Selling Up

Currently, we're in the midst of the Open Home Phase of our journey towards living on the road.

It’s been a busy time as we've searched for and ordered our new home—a Sunliner 5th wheeler—and arranged to put our current home on the market. If you’re wondering what on earth a 5th wheeler is, it’s a little bit like a caravan, except you don’t tow it from a tow bar. It connects to a hitch on the tray of a Ute. I’ll post some photos as soon as it I can—after it arrives in New Zealand around the end of March.

Decision-making was a bigger challenge than expected. Deciding what to store, what to sell, what to take, and what to toss. We purchased a container from Royal Wolf to use for our storage and had that delivered to my brother’s farm. Thanks, Grant and Pam! xx.

The next few weeks we packed, cleaned, ferried boxes to the container, planned a garage sale and easily filled a skip bin.

Our garage sale was an interesting experience. We were forewarned not to put the street number in the advert, or people would be knocking on your door before you even got out of bed! So we advertised an 8.00am start and got up at 6.00am. Dave put the signs out at 6.30am and the first person arrived ten minutes later. Twenty minutes before our advertised start time we had around 20 people sifting through sale items in our garage. Thanks to our good friends Wally and Denise who turned up really early to help out. I don’t know where we would have been without them. And Fiona, who arrived with Starbucks coffees for all at 9.30am. We have the BEST friends! By late morning it was all over and I was ready to go back to bed.

So now the house is on the market, and we are a wee bit exhausted. Grounds and house are looking better than they ever have. As we look around at the clipped hedges, manicured lawns (albeit veerrry dry), pristine pool and well-weeded gardens, Dave comments to me, “what are we going do with ourselves when we don’t have a section to look after?” Big smiles!

Open Homes on Saturday and Sunday for three weeks—such is the plan. What you forget to think about too much is that your home is open non-stop for the next three weeks. It must be kept immaculate at all times. Yes, the agent calls you to warn you someone would like to come through at a particular time, but it pays to be permanently ready. People need to see the property at a time that suits them. And we want to sell. So, one must be prepared. That is, bathroom towels folded just so and looking unused, everything dust-free, nothing unnecessary on any surfaces, carpet spotless, kitchen benches empty.

Auction date is 9 March. Thirteen sleeps….