packing...

it amazes me how much JUNK can fit inside such a TINY house! i mean....it's not all THAT tiny, but....1330(ish) square feet for a family of 4 is pretty small - we outgrew it before matthew was born! (and how we lived here with 3 TEENS before noah was born is completely beyond my comprehension! ) i have seriously been working on this for at LEAST a month - ok, admittedly not DILIGENTLY working on it, especially in the beginning, before we got the $$ for the repairs, but.....still...i HAVE been working on it. and really busting my chops at it the last few weeks (except last week when i was in co - but cameron busted HIS chops while i was there). anyway...it still seems so overwhelming, everything that has to be done.

in some ways, i look at this house & think, "good grief, is it EVER going to end???" still so much junk in every single room - even the rooms i HAVE gotten completely packed, except the bare essentials! and the mess we're making as we pack - wow. i SO want to CLEAN my house, like that deep, old toothbrush for the corners kind of clean (someone call guiness, and FAST! hehe), but i just keep reminding myself that it's best to get all the packing/storing done and THEN clean, because i'll just be generating ANOTHER disgusting mess that needs to be cleaned. how did i let it go this long? (severe depression would be the answer to that - combined with pack-rat husband...) SO gross.

but then, in other ways, i look at this house & totally think, "we're almost there!" there's only 2 rooms that are so involved i NEED cameron's help to do, but...once those are done (hopefully by tues), the rest should go pretty quick. maybe it's my burned-out optimism telling me that, but....i really do think it will go quickly once we get those other 2 rooms emptied out. i'm SO ready - totally over the packing thing.

and then....replace the back door (yikes! $700 estimate for THAT! don't have the $$ either, because the majority of THAT went to the flooring - *makes mental note to call realtor about that*), paint the doors & steps, paint the ceilings, paint 2 walls in living room (and have sickening feeling that realtor is going to have us paint the boys bedroom as well...at least all this painting is inside, though...), lay the vinyl in the bathrooms & laundry room, do the laminate flooring in the kitchen & dining room, and then have home depot come do the carpet, while we do the landscaping outside.

i knew that selling this place was going to be an exorbitant amount of work, but i soooooo GROSSLY UNDERESTIMATED it! totally worth it though - just keeping my eyes on the goal (and Jesus, of course! i definitely could not still be this into it without Him! i'd have given up a few wks ago when we painted the OUTSIDE of the house, thinking, "eh, we've lived here this long....we can do it a little longer...").

i'm reeeeeeally hoping to have this place listed by the end of the month....please pray it sells QUICKLY! thank you!