staged to sell

I've been in a stage of nesting and purging for months now. And it means my house is looking quite tidy these days. And then I went an convinced Rory to let me have house cleaners come for 90 minutes to hit my kitchen and bathrooms. Which is my other great motivator: someone coming to clean? I will have the place nearly empty so you can clean as thoroughly as possible. And I will do the messy tasks before they come...like clean out the toaster oven, change the tin foil on the stove tops, clean out the coat closet and dirty shoes. Anything that has the potential to mess up their hard work. This is my fifth time having cleaners out here in five years. An annual clean is a total gift. And I am so, so grateful.

All this to say, my house looks ready to be put on the market. But I promise we're not going anywhere. I spent a few days cleaning the nursery after Hattie made the switch to the big kids room. By the way, that transition is going remarkably well. Ivar sings worship songs to her at bedtime and it is the sweetest thing I can think of. We are strangely thankful that our kids have to share a room. I think really good things will come of it.

Plus, it's fun to have the nursery rid of toys and toddler clutter and back to being for babies (except for the thomas reading chair and board books, that Hattie still frequents daily.)

The bags on the bed are ready to be packed when it feels like labor is beginning. It's hard to pack kids weeks in advance...we need those clothes! But there is a system and a list and a plan all in place, worked out with the grandma's and I think I'm as organized as I possibly can be. Even if we have to take off suddenly...

And here's our bitty room, all tidy and cute. The sign below is right next to my head when I wake up int he morning. When I went to Seattle this winter I left notes around the house for my kids to find. One of them said, "my happiest job is getting to be your mom." And when I came home Ivar had hung this note next to my bed. It's a personal favorite forever.

Of course there is more house to show, but I never got a picture of the kids room...I will work on that because I do want to document the crib set up. And, as always with full disclosure, I feel like I can post these lovely pictures because the truth is, my house looks way more like the pictures below than the pictures above. But it is fun to have lovely shots of your house when it's clean. (Remember these pics of our Minneapolis house? I still love looking at them.) So I'll post these pictures above and look at them for motivation in the future!