When I sold my house the day before putting it on the market a few weeks ago, the process of moving in with Nicole was only just getting started.
There was the garage sale.
Then there was the moving.
And saying goodbye to my old house.
Don't forget the signing over of the house.
Of course, there's the unpacking left.
The process started with selling my washer and dryer. I put it up on Craigslist for $400 with the intention of settling at $350.
Mike saw the ad and offered $300. I said $350. He texted back a few days later and then a few days after that, offering $300 both times. So no deal there.
Three others contacted me but couldn't fathom coming all the way to River Ridge to get it. Here's my favorite text convo:
Are you serious, bro? I get that the north shore is probably too far to drive from for a washer/dryer, but he never heard of River Ridge. Come on now.
I ended up selling it for $350 to an old grammar school chum. I had it on Craigslist for five days but sold it about one hour after posting it on Facebook.
Nicole sold the fridge to her parents' neighbor for $300 -- pretty good considering I never paid for it myself as it came with the house -- and I sold my beloved couch -- I miss it so -- to the new owners for $500, which I then flipped into this TV stand.
Next came going through the house. I had three categories: trash, keep and sell.
I filled five garbage bags and two recycling bins with trash. It was fun going through my old shit, but I determined maybe I didn't need that scantron test from the 10th grade. CBACCB.
The keep stuff went to the new house, and we brought that over slowly and surely. Still unpacking it all.
And the sell pile went into the garage for a sale on July 18. Bert and Paul joined in to sell some of their crap.
I wish I had sold more, but overall I did OK. Childhood dresser, $30. Childhood bed set, $50. Table, $5. Storage draw thing, $5. Pots and pans, $5. Bunch of different stuff, $1 a piece.
The customers were, predictably, entertaining. There was the Hispanic lady who was bringing my clothes to Costa Rica the next week and kept lowering the price each time she went over what she was buying.
There were the two dudes in their early 20s who showed up looking all kinds of out of place and bought Bert's complete works of Shakespeare for $2 after trying to get the monstrous book for 50 cents -- I saw the same book on sale at Barnes and Noble last week for $20.
There was the marble lady who narrated her adventure through our tables, as if she were the star of a reality TV show about people who shop at garage sales. "I ended up not getting the knife set because the asking price was a little too steep. I liked some other items at this stop as well and got some good deals. OK, onto the Kenner sale."
She bought a bag of marbles from me for $2. And she couldn't have been more excited, pulling some out and informing everyone of the names of the different kinds of marbles.
I had some bouncy balls from Mardi Gras parades of yesteryear also in there, and she told her camera crew that she felt she was being gypped, as she took out several and bounced them around my garage.
After she left, three other shoppers asked, "Do ya'll have any marbles?" Maybe we should have spread all my marbles into several bags, but we weren't prepared for the marble demand at a garage sale.
Then there was the couple who looked a little on the trashy side and had in fact brought a comic book found in the trash to my garage sell in order to possibly trade. Which Paul almost did.
Good times overall, and I was sad when it ended, wishing we had done it for more than one day. The rest of my stuff -- some of it pretty good shit -- ended up at Goodwill. Wonder how much they are selling it for.
The next day we moved my big stuff to the new house. Nicole's family and her friend Bridget as well as my dad helped out big time, and we moved my bed set, etc., in under two hours.
The sale of the house went through the whole process basically without a hitch.
The act of sale was July 24. I was expecting a bigger check but didn't factor in shit like county taxes.
Plus the agents' cut was bigger than I anticipated and the amount I owed on my house was more than my last statement said. It all factored into my check being $2,000 less than I had hoped.
But what ya gonna do. I made money on the sale, I'm moving in with my love, and I'm writing this as I'm upgrading to DirectTV. So life is good.
There's other shit going down for real, but let's save the rest for another post. Time to channel surf.
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