Home Free: The Complexity of Simplification

As we have been travelling these past few years we came to the realization that hanging onto our house was more and more challenging. After a lot of thought and debate, we decided when we came back from Portugal in November that it was time to sell. We spent the holidays with family and friends to finish off 2024, then got serious in January by interviewing realtors. This led to an aggressive target to list the house in May. Combined with helping Owen move out (he had been house sitting for the past year) along with a 3 week trip to Colorado in March, and a long weekend in LA to see Sarah and Sam (and to drop off some treasured kitchenware) we were really pressed for time to hit all the milestones. We were working long days/weeks/months to sort through all our stuff and prep the house for sale. In the end we got it done and the house finally closed in late July. We are “Home Free!”

The Decision to Sell

This decision to sell was not easy. Twenty five years ago we built the house on an empty lot to our own requirements, taking a year to design and a year to build. It fit us perfectly. We have many great friends, neighbors, family nearby, and the community is wonderful. California is an amazing state with so much to do that after living there for 35 years we still have a lot more to explore. And the house was filled with great memories and our family’s possessions. There is also the fear that leaving California real estate appreciation (and low property taxes) means challenges down the road if we want to buy there again.

However, after 3 years of travelling 8+ months a year we realized there are downsides to home ownership. Probably the biggest was 2 people in a 3400 square foot home, where we rarely reside and designed for a family was wasteful; it belongs in the hands of a young family. Owen and Sarah are not living nearby and not planning to return as far as we can tell. We had to hire people to care for the house, landscaping, and pool and had the usual monthly expenses, insurance, and taxes to keep it functioning. Every time we returned from travel, there were many house projects and more expenses to get it back to how we left it.

Also, as we travelled, we would ask ourselves, “Where would we rather be, home or travelling?” Even at the end of many months of travelling we still wished we could just keep going. Weighing all of these factors we decided we would sell the house, invest the proceeds, and be ready to buy our next house when we eventually need to settle somewhere.

We kept this question of, “Where would we rather be?” at the top of of our mind over the challenging five months to downsize and get rid of everything.

Choosing a Real Estate Agent Team

We did a lot of online research and came up with four experienced, local, real estate agent teams to interview. We created a scorecard to help with the comparison between teams. It turned out to be an interesting process even though the core services each team would provide are the same (and as we soon found out guided by a mountain of documents), yet they each had their own style and strengths.

In the end we chose the Menser Group, and are very grateful we did. They did an amazing job identifying the minimum work needed to get the house ready, created great marketing for our home, negotiated for the best outcome, and guided us through some challenges to sell the house. They worked hard for their commission, and we really appreciated their support through the entire process.

One challenge was that most of the agents strongly suggested we get the house on the market in March or early April to hit the peak selling season which would only leave us 2-3 months to go through our belongings and get the house ready. The Mensers however were confident they could sell our house any time of year as our specific neighborhood has a lot of steady demand. We decided May was more realistic…it aligned better to our schedule as well as gave buyers with a family a chance to get into the house before the next school year. May was the right choice, but it still ended up putting us under a lot of stress to get the house ready to sell.

Daunting Downsizing and Digitizing

To empty the house for staging and sale we decided to hire a company to hold an estate sale. It is a very curious business with lots of interesting characters involved. We went to a few estate sales in January to understand how they work, and they were eye opening. Random people walking through the house, items laid out everywhere, and trust that the people running the sale are ethical. We selected a company and worked on our timeline with them. We originally targeted mid-April for the estate sale, but as we got into March we realized that was too aggressive and moved it out to late April.

To get ready for the estate sale we had to remove all personal items from the house and categorize them (keep, donate, sell, toss, shred). When we built the house, we believed it was our forever home. We had a lot of storage space, so there were many closets, attics, file cabinets, shelves, and spaces where we had to pull everything out and make a decision on each item. Although Owen and Sarah had separated out what they wanted to take, we still had to go through the stuff they left behind as well. Owen moved out in late March (his packing progress below), and we helped with that.

We also had lots of videos, photos, and kids artwork to digitize. We digitized our videos first since we had most of the tools at our disposal and they are bulky to store. We tried to get all the photos digitized, but ran out of time due to the sheer number of shoeboxes filled with prints and physical albums we had. We are down to a few small tubs. We even scanned the childhood artwork that we lovingly kept. Dave plans to write up a blog on the digitization process as he would highly recommend doing it ASAP before the surrounding technology becomes more difficult to find.

There were many long days during this time, it seemed like we had an endless amount of stuff to dig through. It was daunting. Diane decided to sell Sarah’s and Owen’s Lego kits online as many of them had become collectors items. It was surprising how much some of them sold for and it was interesting to get messages from the new owners who will store them in professional cabinets or put them back together with their families. Dave sorted through a pile of old phones and computers. Erasing all of the personal information was challenging, especially on the older devices. Fortunately the estate sale company told us not to throw away anything; they told us we would be surprised what people would buy. But we still filled our (and our neighbor’s) garbage cans every week with trash.

The Estate Sale

The final couple weeks prior to the sale were frantic as we continued combing through the house making decisions on keep, sell, donate, toss. Five days before the estate sale, we locked all of the items we wanted to keep into two bathrooms, taped those doors with “do not enter” signs and handed over the house keys to the estate sale company. They recommended that we not be there because they pull everything out, place items on every square inch of counterspace, tables, and even on the beds. Also they said it can get emotional for the seller. We used this week to drive Owen’s car out to him in Pittsburgh, PA, help him with some initial move in work at his apartment, and then flew back to be at the sale just as it was ending. Hundreds of people went through the house and we hit the high side of projected sales. We also sold many items that we wanted to see go to people vs. get thrown away. The images below are what we came back to after the sale and when the crew took away the remainder of the items.

The sale was a success, but it was odd to see our house and belongings in such a chaotic, messy state. The next day a company came and took the rest. They sorted it for another round of sale, donate, and trash. Then our house was completely empty except the minimum we needed to live for the next month or so: our mattress, basic kitchenware, camp chairs, and TV trays. Our house by this point did not look like our home anymore.

Sale Prep

The next two weeks were filled with contractors getting the house ready for staging, photos, videos, and sale. This included: painting, grout replacement, window replacement, general cleaning (carpets, windows, house deep clean), yard refresh, and lighting changes. Meanwhile we were still working on wrapping up the photo scanning and sifting through items we couldn’t finish before the estate sale.

Once we had the contractors through the house the staging was brought in. At this point the house was looking even less like our home. They choose furniture to look good in pictures and neutral to people walking through. Fortunately we got to use the furniture during staging which made living there more comfortable.

Selling the House

The estate sale turned out to drive lots of interest in our house. A house nearby had just gone up for sale and had multiple offers with bids going well over the asking price. The buyers that did not get that house were still looking in the area. We had two of those buyers come through ours just before we listed in mid May and two more on the day of listing. By the day after listing we had four offers and our realtors were working with each buyer’s agent to optimize their offers. We had a great offer and the house appeared to be a great fit for the family that took it into contract.

Unfortunately a month later the first buyers backed out three days before closing (yes, we kept their earnest money). By this time we had started our travel and were staying in San Francisco and Sausalito for a month. Our agents quickly contacted the previous unsuccessful buyers involved in our bidding process and got a new contract established within days. It took a month and a half (until late July when we were in Sweden) to complete the sale. Luckily the process went smoothly, the house sold, and we are home free!!

What’s Left?

Not much! We used a small U-Haul U-Box to ship what was left to Boulder, CO and rented a climate controlled storage unit near Dave’s father.

We started with a 25 foot square unit, but it became clear that any time we needed something in it would take a lot of unpacking. Luckily a 50 square foot unit became available on the same day we moved in, so we took it.

We have financial papers, ski equipment, travel gear, a few boxes for Owen and Sarah, and some of the equipment we need to finish digitizing our pictures. We know there will be a point where we can downsize it some more, but we can worry about that in the future.

Thoughts on The Whole Process

We are often asked about our emotions during this time. There were difficult moments as we dug through mementos and realized we were parting with 30+ years of stuff from a very important time in our lives. There were some happy times with laughter as we sorted through items that brought back fun memories. As the house evolved over the 5 months, and especially after we had the estate sale, it became more real that this was actually happening. But it also came with the realization that the house was no longer ours. It was being guided into a position to be ready to sell. One poignant moment was when the kids bedrooms were painted beige (Owen’s had been bright green and Sarah’s was purple) and it seemed the home lost its personality, which hit hard.

We also were pushed on the timeline and we worked way harder than ideal in a retired life. But on the other hand by completing it quickly we got back to what we love: travel!

The other source of stress during this time was planning for where we would go after we left the house. We usually take our time and do thorough travel planning. This time we had to focus on the minimum to be successful and trust we would sort out the rest later. We quickly put together a travel calendar, booked some hotels, Airbnb’s, and flights. Our plans for this fall are still evolving and being booked, but that’s okay. We are writing this blog post in August from the seaside town of San Sebastian, Spain where we are staying for the month at an apartment with some much needed time to relax, have fun, and catch up.

Throughout the whole process we kept up our mantra, “Where would we rather be?” and that kept us focused on the larger goal.

It was a hectic, crazy, and busy first half of the year, but in the end we are happy with the result!