A History of Our Homestead - Part 4
For the next month, we showed our house (a lot!) and visited properties as they came available. We had no idea what was in store but figured we’d give it a few months and, if nothing happened in that time, we’d call it quits.
It was also an interesting process to be selling a house without a desperate NEED to sell the house. The other 3 homes we’ve ever sold have been due to a job relocation, where we’ve had to actually move cities…and we’ve been much more desperate in the process. This time, we knew what we needed to get out of the sale in order to make it a valuable opportunity for us as a family. We had no interest in uprooting everyone and causing chaos just for the sake of moving homes.
All of that is not to say that the month+ wasn’t exhausting. It really was. Always on the go. Learning to make life more efficient by doing things like - packing a really well-stocked go bag full of snacks & having water bottles filled and ready to go. Precooking several meals so that the house doesn’t smell like supper if someone wants to see the house on short notice (which did prove very useful more than a couple times!). And then there were the things that weren’t so efficient but had to be done, like - keeping the floors clean (not an easy task with 5 kids and 2 dogs). Opening shades and blinds in the morning. Keeping the laundry going. Making sure the front yard stayed picked up. Fussing at the kids because they aren’t being clean enough. Fussing at the big dog because she drinks her water so messily. Fussing at the little dog because she went out digging. Fussing at the chickens because they would. not. stay. in. their. run! Enjoying life in the midst of all the fussing ;) Cleaning. Cleaning something else. Getting in the car and go to the next showing appointment. Sleeping? What’s that?
You get the idea.
If I’ve learned one lesson in my experience as a human, it is that having the experience of losing out on something - while difficult - can be amazing. Because the first thing sets you on a path that you’d never have gotten on otherwise…and without losing out on it, you may’ve never found the actual thing that was meant for you in the end That sounds convoluted, but I’ve got at least a few different examples of this happening throughout life - it just happens that we’re talking about a house right now.
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So to make a long story short, Laurie called one day to say that a co-worker was getting ready to list a house for sale and that it sounded like something we would really like to see. We didn’t waste any time because our curiosity was piqued. And wouldn’t you know? We LOVED it. It was much different than anything we’ve ever lived in…but the property. The property was dreamy. The size of the house and land were almost equal to what we already had…but the layout of the house seemed like it might suit our family’s needs a bit better - and the land was flat and much more usable for the purpose of homesteading. Plus, it was farther away from civilization, which is what we wanted (and is both a blessing and a burden, depending on the day and circumstance!).
Anyway, to make an even longer story shorter, we made an offer, hoping that our (then) current home would go under contract. Amazingly (but, in retrospect, not surprisingly), all the pieces fell into place, and we found ourselves cruising through the home selling/buying process once again. On a cool Friday morning in November 2022, we closed on the home we were selling and an hour later, we closed on the home we were purchasing.