Saying Goodbye to a Home you have Sold 🙁
Buying a home for sale is a major purchase for just about everyone, and it’s very often also an emotional one. As large purchases go, people tend to be more emotionally invested in their home than they are when they buy a car.
While buying real estate is often recognized as an emotional purchase, selling real estate does not always evoke the same sentimental impact. But when it is time to sell the home that, once upon a time, you fell in love with, it’s emotional, too.
It’s often hard to say goodbye to something that’s been a part of your family for a period of time, here are few suggestions for home sellers who are faced with saying goodbye to a home they’ve sold. Preparing for a home sale can be an emotional rollercoaster.
Let someone else paint
When you moved into that home that was new to you at the time, perhaps you prepared a nursery for a growing family or painted your kitchen a color that gives you a certain feeling. If so, recognize that it could be difficult to let those things go.
That’s why, if you have to change things for the new homeowners, it makes sense to pay someone else to cover over those memories. That nursery? Let someone else paint the neutral wall color everyone is saying you need. That family kitchen’s warm walls? Pay someone to change them.
It’s easy to pick up a roller or brush and physically change the appearance of rooms yourself, but if you’re emotionally invested in those rooms, let someone else do the work. It’s much easier emotionally.
Host one last party
If you have a home that’s been the site of fun events, have one last fun event.
At some point, you likely entertained a group of people for the first time in your home. Now that you have sold that home, you have a final opportunity to gather the same people who are important to you and host the last party in that home. You’d be surprised at how many of your guests over the years might share an emotional connection to the home with you.
You christened the home at one point with those people, so give it a bon voyage with them, too.
Have a garage sale
This might not seem all that exciting, but purging your home of stuff you don’t need serves several purposes.
First and foremost, everything home sellers decide to sell is something they don’t need to pack for their move to new digs. Also, however, just like having a final party is a way to say goodbye to the home with friends, a garage sale is a way to say goodbye to the stuff in your home you no longer need while making a couple of bucks. You might enjoy the purge that comes with the preparation for the sale, and it might give you a profitable way to part with possessions that were once part of your life in the home you’re leaving. Selling those things, rather than throwing or giving them away, also can provide you with some closure on items your mind connects with the home.
Family First
If you host a final party for your friends, you probably owe it to your family to do something similar. If you have a fireplace where you’ve hung stockings at Christmas, have one last fire. If you have a room where family movie night has been a thing, have the last movie night.
Take your family, room by room and travel back through time. Shuffle through the memories you all have of each space, and spend some time with each other in those same spaces. If nothing else, a room-by-room memory-making tour will give you something to remember that house by forever.
So re-connect with each room, as a family, before you have to leave the home for good.
Last Supper
Moving can be stressful. It’s not unusual for a family’s last meal in a home to be pizza or something else easy. The boxes are headed out, the trucks are getting packed, so a rushed takeout dinner is the final meal shared in the family home.
That’s not the way to do it, though, is it? Prisoners on death row are given a better alternative. So instead of the final meal in your home being an afterthought as you rush out the door, let the trucks go. Leave the boxes for the next day. You might not have any furniture or dishes or whatever, but cook a final meal that you will remember. Share it together.
Even with no silverware, plates or whatever, a meal that you’ve made yourself and had to eat off paper towels with your fingers is more appropriate a goodbye than takeout from boxes.
Don’t undersell the emotional aspect of moving from a home. It was an emotional decision to move INTO it, a home full of great memories and family “firsts.” So don’t be shy about constructing family “lasts.” Say goodbye to that sold home properly.
