Selling Our House Is Not Frugal! (2)by Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger 20 Dec 2006 01:08 PM
As I mentioned in part one, I share all of this with you now, "Partly it is to vent my little frugal heart, and partly it is to show you how having a perfect-looking house, all of the time, costs money." Here are even more ways that selling our house is making us not so frugal. Extra cleaners. A house that shows well is absolutely spotless. According to the realtors I've talked with, people who live in cluttered, dusty homes themselves will still notice if you have water-spots on your kitchen faucets. They'll come to the conclusion that your house is not well maintained. With three small children, I thought I was already cleaning all of the time, but I have had to step it up because of the showings. I am nowt pretty much cleaning the entire house from top to bottom every day. Extra laundry. Dirty laundry lying about is a no-no. So while I try to hide what I can, I do run the washing machine for small loads instead of letting it pile up to my normally frugal an extra large loads. Extra dishwashing. People are nosy creatures. They also need something to do when looking at a house, sort of like kicking the tires of a car. Turning lights on and off, or opening and closing the dishwasher may not give them any good information about the house, but they will do it anyway. Finding a half-load of dirty dishes is not appealing to a potential buyer, so the dishwasher gets run before it is full. Storage fees. In order to show our house well, we opted for short-term storage for some of our belongings. Seasonal decorations, clothes, my vast collection of books, toys, outdoor climbers and even some furniture went into storage. While we are pretty good at living simply, five people generate a lot of stuff, especially since we try to reuse as much as we can and often store clothes and equipment for the kids. Our things will fit nicely in our new, bigger home that is complete with attic space. But for now, we want our house to look as organized and as open as possible. Related Articles Selling Our House Is Not Frugal (1) The Families.com Real Estate Blog Learn more about Mary Ann Romans  Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat. Relevantfrugal tags User Comments No comments on this article yet. Be the first to comment! Community Tags house, moving, real estate Discuss this article
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In my earlier blog, 
