House-selling saga: Planning ahead

Having a house for sale is not for the faint of heart. First, there's the problem of keeping your house perfectly clean and presentable at a moment's notice.  With two young sons, my daughter and SIL solved that problem by staging the main house perfectly and then bunking with his parents while the house is on the market.

I, on the other hand, am living in my little house out back...which means I'm sweeping, mopping, vacuuming and dusting constantly, as well as turning on all the lights and refilling the candy bowl in the main house first thing every morning. I'm also leaving home constantly, sometimes for large chunks of time. For example, there were three showings scheduled yesterday, starting at 11 a.m. The last one was supposed to be from 3:30-4:30. I had been away from home almost all day, and my daughter needed to pick some things up after work, but when we got to the house at 5:00, people were still there. And they were still there till well after 6:00. That's fine when the house is vacant. Not so much when it's occupied.

We agreed to show the property with no advanced notice, meaning someone driving by the house could call the number on the sign and be walking through in a matter of minutes. That's good for selling, but it's not always so easy on the seller. I had finally settled in at 6:55 and was about to order take-out when I got a text. Another showing at 7:15.  These days I do laundry and take a shower after 10 p.m. I even have to schedule bathroom breaks around house showings.

But who am I to complain?  Now I have all the time in the world, while I'm sitting in the grocery store parking lot (my new home-away-from-home when there's a prospective buyer looking through my closets), to plan all the things I want to do to a new place.

My parking lot hang-out

And my stake-out down the street,
if I don't feel averse to being a bit of a creeper

Once a time-sucker, now a time-filler