Moving Etiquette

Tell me ladies (I say ladies because I assume that is all that reads this blog), is it proper etiquette to clean the years of filth from your house before you turn it over to the new owners? Today, I decided to start packing a few things up. I feel like we are pretty clean people, until I clean out bathroom cabinets. Ewwwwwww! How does that grime get down there? I broke out the 409 and started putting muscle into making the cabinets look shiny new. As I'm scrubbing, I started thinking about how I'll be doing this again in our "New to Us" digs. We've never bought a pre-existing home before. We've had two houses in the course of our marriage and we built both. Did I mention that I am OCD about other people's germs? I am. I even take my own towel to hotels and don't dare walk around without flip-flops. Seriously. I wasn't kidding when I said I was OCD.

My glass half empty frame of mind tells me, that the people living in the house we put an offer on over the weekend, aren't going to go the extra mile to clean the place. And lets be honest, even if they did, I'd clean it again anyway. Its just my nature. And probably the nature of the woman who is buying our house, which brings me full circle in my question. Should I or should I not be scrubbing things down as I empty them out?

Ryder's room looks sad and blank now. We have so many memories in this house and many of you know that I have been torn about leaving this house. But, as I was taking the things off the walls of his room today, I had a realization. It is not his room that I love. I love him. I love all of the things in his room that we have collected since I was pregnant with him. That is what makes his room...not the four walls.

So there it is. Today I made my first steps towards this new adventure. We aren't moving far. Not out of the state, not the other end of the state...just a town away. It's a little bit country, but still close enough that our life can stay mostly the same. Ryder will still attend the same preschool, we'll just have to leave 20 minutes sooner. We'll still attend our Church, we'll just just have to leave a little earlier. We'll still have our Play-dates. We'll still go to Sonic and the Car Wash, it just won't be around the corner. It's gonna be fun...we are Blessed!