All in all, the process of living in someone else's house that is for sale has not been horrible. We are fortunate that we are not inundated with showings - on average, one every other day, but considering that we sometimes have 2 or 3 showings on a weekend day, in reality it isn't that frequent. During the week showings are usually during the day, which doesn't bother me at all. They are a little more inconvenient for Eric, since he works mostly from home, but he's learning to manage, and pops over to a coffee shop, and has even come to my office a couple of times to get some work done on days when there are longer/multiple showings (and considering that my cube is surrounded by empties like the last beer in a six-pack right now, there's plenty of space for him to work.) For the few showings that we have in the evening, we generally time our workout/running schedule around them. Only once did I get stuck down in the meadow after a run when a showing ran over their allotted time. Lastly, keeping the house clean and picked up all the time to be in "show ready" condition has become part of our routine.
There are some things I find to be minor annoyances. For example, about half the time, potential buyers and their realtors leave lights on in the house or in the barns. Now, my parents told me to turn off a light when you leave a room, but apparently, this is not universal.
Additionally, about 40% of the time, the realtor fails to lock the door when leaving. I'm a little more perturbed about this, since I like the security of knowing my doors are locked when I'm not there. Granted, we live in the woods in a very safe part of the world, but still. This is made a little more serious knowing the following minor annoyance:
About once a day, someone drives by the house, gets curious about the "for sale" sign, and motors their car up the lane to the house. On one hand, I understand because you can't see the house from the road. On the other, as the person who actually lives in the house, this is a bit creepy to have strangers showing up on the property (especially given that the hot tub is outside and I use it, including when Eric isn't home.) Now, Eric has had relatively few out-of-town trips this summer, so he's usually here, but I have taken to closing the gate at the end of the lane when he's gone and I'm home alone, just to prevent any uncomfortable encounters (like the one we had yesterday when a truck was coming down the lane as we were driving up it.)
However, there have been a couple of odd incidents recently.
Eric came home two weeks ago to find a family in the yard. When he approached them, the wife told him that they had called the number on the sign and that the realtor told them that they could go up, and LOOK THROUGH THE WINDOWS as long as they didn't try to open any doors. They then proceeded to hang around outside for another 10 to 15 minutes after Eric was home. Needless to say, we never had any notice from the realtor that this was going down.
Eric had a fit, on top of the fit that I was already having that day because the real estate office had called me to tell me on less than 24 hours notice that they were extending an open house they were hosting the next day from 3 hours to 8 hours. That kind of thing really puts a kink in your plans - good thing we are resourceful and like the out-of-doors.
The strangest though, might be one of the showings we had this weekend. We came home after the showing to find that the potential buyers had not only looked at the house, but thought it was appropriate to look through the china cabinet drawers. How do I know? Oh, because they failed to close them all the way. Additionally, we found that they had not only turned on all the showers in the house, but did not turn the one in the master bedroom bathroom off. On top of that, instead of just "testing" the toilet in the master bedroom bathroom, they had used it... and finished off the toilet paper, leaving the empty tube sitting on a shelf. (Really? I get that you need to go, trust me on this. But why the master bedroom bathroom and not the guest bath??) However, the grossest thing?
They sat and/or laid on our bed. You could see the body marks on the duvet.
Several rounds of Lysol spray later, and the creepy feeling is finally dissipating.
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