June 1 to July 1, 2026
Our house sale is complete and closing is over. But let me back up a bit first. I had worked my tail off (along with help from several friends) to get the house glowing for the showings before we headed to Kerry’s for a few weeks. Williamsville is really a sellers’ market right now. Our agent elected to try a new strategy that worked amazingly well! We left town on Friday. She hired a photographer who took pictures over the weekend (including some spectacular outdoor sunset shots). She spent Monday organizing the photos and listed the house on Tuesday making the house available for showings on Wednesday morning. As part of the listing, she mentioned that we would be taking offers until noon the following Tuesday. She held an open house on Saturday. Between Wednesday and Monday, there were 35 showings (I was so glad that we had decided to leave town!).
Over 40 people came by for the open house! Our listing got almost 20,000 views online (she told us that had never happened before – the most she had previously had were 5 to 6 hundred views). We ended up getting thirteen offers, all over ask, with seven of them offering to purchase it without an inspection. We ended up taking an offer that was more than $100,000 over asking price. The whole experience was astounding, especially when I think about our last experience in West Virginia where it took over two years for our house to sell! And in West Virginia, we ended up losing money (for the second time in our house owning experiences). I’m so happy that our last house-selling experience was our best (by far!). The house sold quite quickly, and we had about eight weeks to get it cleaned out. Easy, right? Everything went so smoothly with the sale, from choosing an agent, to agreeing on a first showing date and sales strategy, to choosing our buyer. Then everything with their financing moved right along, and we were off to the races to get the house emptied.
We returned home for a few days before heading to Anne’s to help out with Natan while Victor was away. Anne had just returned from her last trip while pregnant (to San Diego), and we had a nice visit. Unfortunately, one of them blessed us with a cold. Jim and I both came down with a mighty strong one that refused to go away for about three weeks. I helplessly counted down the days while we were too sick to accomplish anything. That too passed, finally. Now it was time to tackle cleaning out a house that contained all of our stuff from being together almost fifty years! This was a monumental feat that could not have been accomplished without the help of so many friends! I am SO tired! But so thankful too! We worked, and worked, and worked. Friends played musical chairs in and out, often filling their cars with their new treasures. I had helpers lined up pretty much every day. Thank goodness for those friends!!! I don’t know how we would have gotten it done without them, truly! I also had two friends that came and took out carload after carload of things to donate to the local mission and other places.
As we worked, we started to put things in storage too. We ended up selling about 98% of our furniture and selling or giving away about 75% of our stuff. But believe me, I kept some, especially my kitchen stuff! We started out with a 10’ X 15’ storage unit. I was sure that would be plenty big. But it soon became apparent that I had underestimated what I would be hanging on to. I wish I had been a bit pickier about what I was keeping, early on. I thought I was but later realized that I had kept more than I should have. But it was too late at that point. So, at the end of June, we decided to rent a large unit and move everything. Jim was so not thrilled. So, I hired movers. Our new unit was five spaces down the same hallway. They had it all moved in 45 minutes. $400 later, we were set to finish.
Luckily Jim had the foresight to hire some junk removers who came a few days before closing. They removed two full trucks of stuff. We kept working. And I kept trying to keep aside all of the things that I wanted to bring in the car with me for our year of travel. A few days before we finished, we had a dumpster delivered. The night before closing, we worked until almost 9:00. Our friends Ann Marie and John showed up and helped us carry the last of our stuff out to the garage (to be removed the next morning). John vacuumed every room and checked all of the drawers and closets. At that point, I had been up for about forty hours straight. We threw bags of things away into the dumpster at the last minute, too tired to care what it was. I’m still regretting throwing out two full bottles of Pampered Chef vanilla ($40 per bottle)! I was too exhausted to realize that I could have given it to someone the next day. Jim kept complaining that I was keeping out too much for the car, so I just started pitching things at the end.
Today, everything is finally out of the house! We got to our Airbnb in Buffalo and were in for a disappointment.
Although it was roomy, as described, it truly reminded me of a dorm room. It was then that I realized that we were staying in a place that had once been student housing. Each bedroom had its own bath, but they were tiny. My shower seat wouldn’t fit in any of the tubs. I had to turn it sideways and precariously balance on it to take a shower. Luckily, I was careful, and there were no mishaps. The furniture in the main rooms was uncomfortable and the place was quite dark. I had numerous other complaints that I won’t bore you with.
When we arrived at the Airbnb, Jim carried all of our things up to our place on the second floor. The last few days of our move were when Buffalo was experiencing an unusual, for them, heatwave! It was in the low to mid-90’s for several days. He was exhausted by the end and we both agreed that we could not travel for the next year with so much stuff. So, we had to pare it all down even more. I pared it down and then pared it down again. (He still thinks we have too much!)
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