Moving Up--and Just Down the Street

I’m back from vacation, tanned and rested, rejuvenated from a week of poolside siestas, four-star dining, romantic walks on secluded beaches.

Not.

This certainly was not the most pleasant vacation I’ve ever spent . . . not unless you count as recreation scrubbing, sweeping, raking, repairing and crawling around in dark, musty closets in search of long-forgotten household items to discard.

It was a cleaning marathon that made my arms ache and my head pound, a succession of days so busy that evening could find me still in my pajamas, and my children had spaghetti for dinner five days in a row.

But the end result was a house so tidy and spacious that I felt--finally--proud to call it home . . . just in time for the “For Sale” sign to go up outside.

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Four months ago, I was bemoaning the loss of my next-door neighbors. Ten years after they’d moved in beside us, they’d packed up their memories and moved on to a grander home a few miles away.

Not us, I vowed. I could never move, never leave my street, my neighbors, my community, the only home my children have ever known . . . even though the walls were closing in on us and the house seemed to be shrinking every day.

Yet now we are packing, hoarding boxes, planning for the moving van to come. Or maybe all we’ll need is a couple of husky guys with broad backs and big muscles. Because we’re moving across the street, just four doors away.

It’s not much by today’s housing standards. The bedrooms are small, the backyard dinky, the “laundry room” a mere hookup in the garage. Still, with its big family room, cozy kitchen, vegetable garden and backyard pool, it’s been my dream house since I first moved onto this cul-de-sac.

Over the years, we’ve spent hours there, visiting with four sets of neighbors as the house changed hands every few years. I’ve dreamed of owning it each time it was up for sale but never felt prosperous or brave enough to throw my wallet in the ring.

I’m not sure why I’m now emboldened. But it felt like the stars were aligned in my favor when my neighbor knocked on my door last month with a simple, straightforward proposition:

His family wanted to move to a brand-new home in a less urban subdivision. He would sell to me at a price that would save us both money, if we could strike a deal quickly. I had to give him an answer right away.

I might have balked if I’d had time to think about it . . . been scared away by the financial consequences or the practical implications.

But I said yes and shook on the deal with a trembling hand, then rushed upstairs and announced to my children that before another sweltering summer rolled through, we’d be swimming in our own backyard pool.

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There was just one glitch. We’d have to put our home on the market right away . . . a proposition akin to forcing a haggard housewife into a beauty pageant’s swimsuit competition without giving her a chance to lose 20 pounds, tone those sagging hips, paint her toenails and shave her legs.

It’s a house that’s comfortable but--charitably speaking--aging and cluttered, filled with the detritus of three rambunctious kids, one busy mom and 13 years.

I thought in the language of real estate ads--”Mrs. Clean Lives Here!”--and wondered how they might describe me. Maybe “Mrs. Never-Met-a-Piece-of-Junk-She-Couldn’t-Imagine-a-Use-For.”

I’ve never thought of myself as a pack rat or scavenger, but my foray through closets and cabinets revealed a woman in serious need of a rent-a-bin or a yard sale.

I doubt there’d be much of a market for some of my finds--a single, mildewed, leather weight-lifting glove; a jagged chunk of red glass from the giant souvenir mug I’d received at my first sorority dance. (It broke during the earthquake, but I couldn’t bear to throw all the pieces away.)

I realized that I am a magnet for castoffs . . . the patio table with the broken top that my neighbor set out for trash pickup one morning, the rusted edger a gardener abandoned on my lawn, the huge wooden ammo box my kids hauled home from a neighbor’s.

Now, all of my junk is cleared away . . . discarded, donated or stored in boxes, stacked to the rafters in the garage. And the house is clean and sparkling. So spacious and pretty it seems a shame to leave. Or so barren that we might as well be gone already.

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We’ll have to stay out of the house this weekend to avoid what we hope will be a parade of well-heeled buyers and eager real estate agents marching through.

Our home just went on the market last week and already we’re weary from having to be on our best behavior . . . beds made, dogs quiet, cabinets clean.

And it doesn’t help that we launched our sales campaign with the kind of mishap that seems to dog our family’s days.

It was the morning of the inaugural real estate caravan, the procession of carloads of brokers who tromp through newly listed properties, clucking over the scuffs on the wood floors, the nicks in the kitchen counters.

I’d stayed up until well past midnight to make sure the house was in top condition. But I awoke that morning to discover a puppy with green paws and whiskers--and a blotch of green acrylic paint in the middle of my living room carpet.

It seems Puff had absconded with a vial of paint while we were packing away art supplies. Now there was nothing I could do but hunt through those boxes in the garage for a rug I could throw across the stain, and hope the carpet cleaner could work a miracle.

And a new marketing tactic occurs to me:

“Great home for sale. Needs new carpet but comes with its own puppy.”

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Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.