A Pandemic brings Personal Perspective
Right before COVID-19 became a real issue, we put our house on the market. If any of you have done this before, you know the time and energy it takes to de-clutter, deep clean, stage, and address any of those "honey-dos" that have been haunting us for weeks...months...OK, OK, years! Even the most organized and clean homes need this effort before pictures are taken and you let the public in.
This decision came about in December. Yes, D-e-c-e-m-b-er. The most hectic and glorious time of the year. You might be thinking, "WHY would they put the house on the market then"?? About a week after we decided, I was thinking the same thing. It was a decision driven by my desire to commit completely to our business. When we started FoxVale, I moved to a more consultative role in my corporate marketing job, so we could launch our company. But as we were approaching 2020, almost 2 years after starting FoxVale, I still wasn't able to resign from my corporate gig. Selling our home, and making a profit (as we have done with our other properties) would help us attain our dream of being complete entrepreneurs. Why wait one more day to postpone our dreams?
I feel energized when we embark on a project. So, it was an exciting time--tons of showings, offers (yay!) and of course the pursuit of our FOREVER HOME. In chatting with my husband and business partner, Brook, I told him that our next home needs to be our forever home. I wanted a place that our 3 boys could grow roots in. I wanted memories of Holidays and Birthdays and Friday Pizza Party Night to be specific to this next dwelling. That meant we needed a great room that we don't have in our current home...it meant we needed the structural bones to install the kitchen of a lifetime...it meant we would need to be in an amazing neighborhood...it meant the yard would need to host impromptu football games, garden parties, our sons' weddings, the presidential inauguration...all for a bargain price. I wasn't putting too much pressure on this Pinterest Perfect house hunt, was I?
Flash forward to now. We have been in quarantine for about 6 weeks. We don't have a ton of potential buyer interest, but isn't that because we are in a pandemic?! On the daily, I question EVERYTHING. Like you, I am trying to meet the demands of being a teacher (not happening BTW), a mom, a wife, a corporate employee and a entrepreneur, all without losing my cool...yea right! I know my daily struggles don't compare to what is going on outside of these walls - people are suffering: death, loss and risk.
In our commitment to flattening the curve, we have spent more time in our home than I thought was possible. Being here day and night, experiencing every range of emotion - anxiousness, frustration, tension, happiness, sadness, anger, love, gratitude - I realized that these 4 walls provide us comfort in the midst of all the good and the bad. This home has been our constant. One day I'll get to live my dream, but for now I don't want to leave what we have...