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Perfectionism and the housing market
Perfectionism and the housing market

Perfectionism and the housing market

I am a recovering perfectionist. I may have mentioned that once or twice or eleventy billion times. I struggle against it daily, sometimes to the point of appearing to not give a damn. It’s also glaringly obvious in the 1) stacks of books I have here that I haven’t read yet, 2) the immense number of various projects that haven’t been begun, and 3) putting what I enjoy until absolutely last when everything else is “done.” If it ain’t gonna be the perfect start-middle-end, it’s nearly impossible to get started.

And now we’re moving.

In addition to the soul-sucking misery that is throwing a house into cardboard boxes in the hopes you find things again, you have to stage a house for sale. In this post-housing crash buyers market, everything has to be perfect. And it’s killing me. Once I get into a perfection mindset, any little thing that is NOT perfect gnaws at me like my sons on my last nerve at the tail end of homework time. It’s not pretty, and heaven help the young man who doesn’t put his shoes away or forgets to make his bed or generally doesn’t pick up after himself. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been touching up paint and making minor repairs and cleaning things that react with shock that they are no longer dusty and basically making our humble abode look as though no one has farted in here for the last seven years. Oh, and putting in the final six-panel doors. See, when our <family show> builder put in the doors, they put in slabs of wood. Ugly as sin. So for the last three years we’ve been putting in purty new doors and suffering through painting them and hanging them and redoing them because they got all janked up and swearing at them and finally calling in a contractor to finish them because we.were.done. Three years of door hell. And now we’re moving out. Irony tastes like paint fumes.

But I digress. As usual.

Today our realtor comes to take pictures and the house we built almost eight years ago will be up for sale. And then I will hit DefCon One of perfectionism. Everything must be perfect. All the time. Everywhere. You never know when The Person will come to see the house and want to throw large sums of money your way for the privilege of living here. I refuse to give anyone a reason to not want this house. So I will make sure everything is Perfect. Always. At the expense of my sanity.

At least the mountains viewed from the back porch are perfect:

And I can trust them to stay that way. Buckle up kids, here we go, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride!

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