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Life was getting too simple around here, so just for kicks we decided it would be a good idea to pack up and move around the corner.

We are fortunate to have found a lovely new home with more space than we presently have. Having secured a new abode we realized it was probably a good time to sell our current residence. Some people would consider this to be a no-brainer, but the idea of having two homes – one home for the adults and one for the children – gave me pause. (What’s for dinner, Mom? Well, in my house we are having lamb stew with toasted barley on a clean table cloth and with no extraneous noise. I don’t know what is being served in your house.  See? Pause.)

So we put our home up for sale, at which point I was told that my sole goal in life was now to ‘declutter’.  I made repeated walks through the house removing things that were not absolutely essential to our everyday lives. I took my high school English teacher’s advice about comma usage – ‘when in doubt, leave it out’ and adapted it to my home: ‘when in doubt, stick it in a box in the far corner of the basement and hope nobody looks there’. DVD’s that haven’t been watched in months – in the box. Old Quebec license plate that I think is hip and retro but is really filthy and random – in you go! Judaica that will not be needed until the new lunar cycle? You guessed it – in the box.

Our realtor extraordinaire sent over someone to help me ‘stage’ our home to get it ready to sell. I knew it was not going to go well when from the threshold of my front door she pointed out 17 things that could use improvement. In a very nice and perky voice she pointed to my favorite things about the house and said ‘now, what are we going to do about, um… this?’

I began to understand that to sell a house one must actually convince potential buyers that no one lives there. All evidence of life must be expunged – no personal pictures or fridge magnets that may distract passers through from their home-buying mission; no toiletries on the bathroom sink which indicate that ‘hey, there are people in the house and they brush their teeth!’ (Jokes on you, man, only some of us do…) People should walk into the home and see nothing but light, air, space and clutterlessness.

So I cleaned. I decluttered. I stuffed so many things in so many closets that my life has become a perpetual game of find the water pitcher, or the hand soap, or the children – (oh right, I shoved them in the linen closet so they would stop touching things… I can be so forgetful sometimes!)

See, six people live here, only two thirds of whom understand that if you walk through this house with your muddy shoes one more time I will stick my head in the oven!  What? The oven is already jammed packed with stuff that had nowhere else to go? Shoot.

It must be that home buyers are not so smart. I can hide the broom and the sponges, and instead of wondering how the house got so clean, these onlookers will begin to imagine their life in my sparkling home where life is always tidy, never messy or chaotic. Poor, stupid, naïve homebuyers…

I am grateful that I fully grasp the concept that a house is to be lived in, and that living can be untidy and imperfect yet still respectable. How ironic is it then that our new house is always clean? I mean, we haven’t moved in yet, but the pictures online are spotless, and when we went to look at it you could just tell that it is consistently clutterless; the kind of home where children couldn’t possibly argue and where bad moods dissipate upon entrance and where the lion and the lamb lie down together on the perpetually manicured lawn.

We move in this summer – you should totally come visit, and don’t bother wiping your feet when you come in. By the looks of them I think the floors clean themselves…