Selling a Waterloo Region home can be difficult. There’s a lot of work involved (although far less if you choose the right Realtor) and often more than a few inconveniences that have to be tolerated. One thing that can surprise and blindside home sellers though is the amount of emotional upheaval they experience with the sale of their home, especially when they finally get and accept a great offer and the whole ‘time to move on’ thing becomes real.
Even if you wanted to move, your house is – and soon will have been – a part of your family. There are usually a huge number of memories associated with every square foot of the place and leaving is rough, even when you know it’s the best thing for you.
But there are some ways that can make it easier for you to let go. Here are just a few.
Create a ‘Life In’ Photo Album Before You Stage
Home sellers are correctly advised that they should clean their home, repair it where necessary, depersonalize it and, to varying extents, stage it. These steps really are a huge help in getting your home sold, but it often leaves behind an odd feeling that the familiar home you loved has been scrubbed away. The imperfections you loved, the decor you lived with for years, the toys in the garden where the kids played, these things held memories. That’s why you should document them before they’re gone.
Resolve to create a ‘life in’ photo album before you stage. Photograph things the way they were before the big staging to serve as a visual record of the home the way you lived in it. Such an album makes a great keepsake and can be rather comforting. But one word of advice; make it an album of real photos, not just images uploaded to Facebook. That way you’ll have something that can last for decades to come rather than until the next big social media site comes along.
Take a Little Piece of it With You
Normally things like basic household hardware, light fixtures, even garden plants are included in a home sale and are not to be removed by the departing owners. But that does not have to mean you leave everything behind.
Love a certain shrub in your garden? Take a cutting to plant at your new home. Can’t quite bear to leave the mid-century light fitting in your living room behind because it was Grandma’s? Either specify up front it’s not a part of the deal or simply replace it with an attractive new one before you even begin showing the home.
Focus on the Future
Even if it’s all making you rather melancholy now it’s so real, you know that you had very good reasons for putting your home on the market and moving on. Maybe you were downsizing after being left with an ’empty nest’. Maybe you are moving to take a new job. Or you simply needed more space. Whatever your reasons for a move revisiting all the positive aspects of the change on a regular basis will help make the transition a lot easier.
Throw One Last Party
Many people have a housewarming party of some kind when they move into a new home but a ‘house goodbye’ party can be a nice – and very comforting – way to bid farewell to your old place too. It does not have to be a huge deal – maybe one last cookout – but it will be a great way to leave your old place on a positive note that you’ll remember for years to come.