Not our house anymore

It's interesting that we haven't moved or vacated yet, but our house is starting to not be our own anymore.

For one thing, we're already emotionally separating ourselves from the house in our choices. In all of our decisions of what to buy or what to do in the house, it's all for the sale, for the people walking through, not for us. It's just about getting this house clean and marketable. The appliances we chose, ack. The new hardware and fixtures were chosen by starting at the bottom of the price range and going up until we found the first palatable item. Giving up new doors because painting them white is just good enough. Which trees to remove or keep. When we're indecisive or deadlocked, we just defer to our realtor, letting her make the choice because she knows what will sell or not. It's actually liberating living this way, like we don't really care anymore. If this was a remodel of a home we are staying in, we'd be going even crazier now.

Our place is starting not to look like ours anymore either. For one thing, it's becoming less and less cluttered as we start to pack. I actually like that part! Second, we changed took the red slipcover off our couch to show the stagers how not clean it is and we're too lazy to put it back. So we're back to having a white (gray) couch which seems to have changed (back) the feel of the living room.

And last but not least: tomorrow our exterior gets painted. I'm actually a little sad about this. I can't say I loved our house blue, I probably wouldn't have picked that color myself. But it was only one of two houses on the block that weren't some neutral color. It was kind of cute. And knowing Tobey likes our house blue made me sad that we're painting it a much more ubiquitous khaki/neutral color. I even broke the news to him tonight (he seemed to take it well, knowing that his room is staying blue), treating the issue with extra care. Our house will look like every other house on the market, which is the idea.

So begins the process of breaking away from this house. We never thought of it as the house we'd stay in forever. And being old, we've had a love/hate relationship with it (love the layout, hate trying to fix anything non-standard). But it was our first single family home, the home Eli came home to as a newborn, the one where Tobey learned to walk. Just as Tobey remembers nothing of the condo, so Eli may remember nothing (and Tobey very little) of this house. But it is ours.

Or soon, "was" ours.