I discovered the ultimate life hack this week: selling the house you live in

I know that selling a house is a rare event, but I think I've found THE way to both be more productive AND have more fun family time.

In case you missed it, this week we hit 3 years in our perfect house in our new hometown… and we’re moving. We’re staying here on Anastasia Island, but as the kids have grown so much in the last few years, we’ve learned that our family could function better in a different house with more space in a different neighborhood. “Where’s the life hack though?”

I will get to the life hack, and I know that not everyone is moving to a new house in the next few months, but I’ll explain how this has totally helped me in lots of ways. Also, I’m excited to share a few travel things we’ve got planned, because like always happens, things shift and change, and moving has caused us to rearrange our plans.

What’s the life hack and why is it related to moving?

So, here’s the scoop. Since our current house is on the market, we had to work together to declutter and have had to keep things really clean for potential real estate showings. Everyone has been very much on-board with this and our house, both inside and out has remained exceptionally clean and organized. And wow, apparently clutter and menial house tasks were really eating away at my focus and productivity.

In case you missed last week: Reliving Our Cross-country Move

Since we all worked together to get the house ready to sell, I personally have had so much more free time and have been able to focus on work much better. So many of us work from home now and it can be really difficult to focus, differentiating between work time and family time. For me, I’ve cracked the code of it all and I’m loving it.

Here are our steps we went through, and then hopefully you’ll see how it directly impacts the day-to-day:

1. family meeting to talk about the future move and how everyone can help

2. go room by room with somebody to de-clutter and purge, freeing up surfaces and created organized spaces. This includes kid areas and having them be a part of deciding what they MUST have around during the home showing period

3. do a deep clean of the house like somebody is going to be inspecting it

4. BOOM! Distractions are minimized and everyone that helped feels a bit invested in keeping things clean.

5. At the end of each day, we each confirm that each of us has put things away so the house can be shown the next day.

“I’m not moving. This won’t work.”

I know that everyone is different and every family works differently, but hear me out. Spend a day with your cohabitants pretending that you’re going to be listing your house to move. Do just what we did, removing the things that we can live without for a month or two. You can box things up and put them in the garage or storage… or give them away if you like.

Lightening the load all around you can really make a huge difference in how well you focus on work during the day. You’ll find that without little messes and distractions, when you sit down at your computer, you will have a more clear head and less excuse to delay getting work done. AND THIS IS WHAT FREES UP TIME FOR REAL LIFE.

Not needing to spend an extra hour or two dinking around the house doing mindless cleaning and picking up means that I can go into my work space and tackle it. It means that when it’s time to pick up kids from school, I’m basically done with work for the day. I feel good about closing my laptop and walking away, and then I get to hang out with the kids and play or read or whatever. And we have been going for more walks too.

If you’re not moving any time soon, why can’t you go through this process? If you live everyday like you’ve got something exciting in the future to be ready for, you’ll see your time free up and you’ll build a new rhythm in your home. It’s pretty amazing. And not having to clean continually because it’s just the mindset frees up so much time.

Less Stress is my Jam

The big bonus to all this is also that I personally no longer am in a stressful environment. I know that I’m a nutcase when it comes to things that stress me out, but one of the biggest things that impacts me is clutter and messes. I tend to say to the kids 10 times a day “What’s the easiest thing you can do?” They know that this has two answers and they always give me the one that’s not applicable to the moment, but the two answers are:

1. be kind to others

2. put things back where you got them

Between that simple question and these two answers we’ve managed to change the tone in our house during what would normally be a pins-and-needles period in our lives. Moving is such a huge life event for both kids and adults, even when it is still in the same town, so kindly working together to manage the experience really does alleviate the stress.

Love It, or List It

Another bonus to this has been the whole “Love it or List it” concept. If you haven’t seen that show, what they do is a team goes into somebody’s house and finds out what they need for a house to be right for them, and in the process they fix things at their current home, do some redesign and LOTS of cleaning and decluttering.

Sometimes these updates completely shift the family’s plan and they choose to stay and love their house instead of list it. They can see their home in a different light and they’re totally happy about it. While this isn’t going to be the case for us because we’ve already purchased a new home and we know why our current house doesn’t work for our growing family, we really have re-fallen in love with our house and we see how much we will miss it. It’s made this last month here really pleasant and a great way to finish out our time here.

Anyways, I hope this is helpful to somebody somewhere.

Changing Schedules and Flexibility

I like to give the impression that I’m easy going, but if you know me personally, you know that I’m actually not. I am high strung and accept it. I work on it daily in little ways, but still. Good times. So with that, I have really had to be okay with being more flexible with our travel schedule since we’re going through a move and other life things.

I run the blog as a business and am all about business planning. I know the articles I want to write and the photos I need to get months in advance and plan our fun to also check off some business boxes. With moving, we need to have more home time and I totally accept it and am looking forward to it, but it derailed several things I’ve been working on. Also, we have a project this fall that we’re all SUPER EXCITED about, but it falls on the dates of a trip I planned months ago as a reschedule of a trip that I planned a year in advance that got cancelled last year… so while this may sound petty/first-worldy to others, to me they’re tough to mentally get over.

But here’s what’s so exciting:

• We’re not camping for the synchronous fireflies in Congaree National Park anymore. Bummed, but that’s okay.

• We are MOVING

• I have a trip to the Florida Keys with my bestie and we get to experience Key West Pride and SO MUCH NATURE

• Our July plans spiraled into who knows what as the travel partner I was working with went onto early maternity leave and nobody picked up where she left off…

Good times. I guess it’s just all about rolling with the punches and enjoying whatever we do.

New Blog Articles This Week

So far 2023 I’ve been able to manage my time pretty well. We have big goals for the blogs, with the ultimate goal being Chris getting to work with me full time on them, but in the meantime, it’s moi. So here’s what I’ve rolled out thus far besides Rob Explored podcasts:

• Unique Art Museums in Maine

• West Quoddy Lighthouse: the Easternmost Point of the USA (thank you Kelly!)

• Can’t Miss Historic Sites in Savannah

• Guide to the St Augustine Lighthouse and Maritime Museum

The goal for the upcoming week includes finishing our cross-Florida road trip plan (Jax to Miami), Summertime History Travel in FL/GA, and a guide to Tybee Island. Truth be told, I have 211 drafts of blog articles that I’ve just got to sit down and edit and add photos to, but that takes more time than it might seem.

Speaking of which, anybody want to work on my Explored sites with me? I need the help…

I think that’s it for this week. Hopefully my next newsletter will be shouting with excitement about selling our house and bumping up our moving date, but we’ll see. Until then, have an amazing weekend and, as always, if you have travel questions or need help planning, I’m here to help!