We haggle with our clients (or they haggle with us I guess when we cut margins on a bid) so I have no issues with haggling with others. It's kind of the American way isn't it? Heck it's the European way as well everywhere I've been. When I owned an antique booth at a store I'd often get calls from the store with offers. Some were fair, some were silly, I didn't counter those, and some were rude...my favorite came from the new owners daughter who made me an offer of $5 for a dressmakers manequin I had there to display an antique wedding dress. Her haggling went something like this: I just saw that same thing at a garage sale for $5.00, will you take $4? I said she should have bought it at the garage sale, I'd take $80 (I wasn't really selling but if she wanted it...what the hec LOL). It is all in how you ask and how you react. I often ask what the lowest price they can do is, and as noted above, normally the price comes down. But lately, shopping with a three year old...i'm more likely to offer them an addiional twenty bucks just for putting up with us LOL My haggling has really been cut to the core by a very buy little man! Most furniture is marked up significantly and the stores aren't losing money at 50% off. Markups are typically around 200% just like jewelry.

I don't have any advice, but just wanted to say, I feel your pain! I can totally relate to what you are saying. We have a very hard time throwing things out too. And not because we pat ourselves on the back either, it is because we just can't! Sometimes I am jealous of those that can. I don't mean something like hoarding...I mean changing something out because we are tired of the old. We have two behemoth tube-style televisions. We do not watch much tv so we will never wear these stupid things out. One of them my DH won in a raffle with a $3 ticket before we were married. They are so annoying, but I just can not, even with great sales and deals, go buy a new one just because I don't like the old ones. None of our furniture (which most of it is previously used) "matches" but apparently it is going to last forever, so I will forever have mismatching furniture. That is the kind of stuff I can't get rid of. I try not to bring too much other clutter into the house, knowing I have a hard time throwing things in the garbage. I even cringe when I have to throw broken toys away, not because I think they aren't garbage, I just think of the space in the landfill a worthless broken toy is going to take and it seems so wasteful. Over the years we have really become way more selective in what the kids can bring into the house too, because of my dislike for things that break easily and have to be thrown out. Dedtired, where do you get stuff that you can put in paint cans to dry them up? Now THOSE I would love to get rid of!

Most of your gardens are further along that ours is at this point. Spring is definitely a 'cooler by the lake' season, so things get off to a slow start usually. I walked around the backyard early this afternoon to check on a few things. The showiest stuff at the moment back there is the marsh marigolds by the shed. They seed around like crazy so are spreading fast! They go dormant after blooming so will soon disappear. Last spring I moved our young Empress Wu hosta down there so eventually that should cover a lot of the bare ground after the marigolds go dormant. I keep experimenting with adding other things to the area. The marsh marigolds appeared there on their own a number of years ago. DH likes them so we've let them stay. Red trilliums in the bed on the left side of the path are starting to bloom. So are the white ones in various areas - it looks like a few seedling ones may bloom this year. The trilliums are about a week ahead of schedule. I have an interesting (to me at least!) experiment going on down near the shed... There was a young holly shrub that never did very well. So, I few years ago I decided to rip it out. But I noticed one stem growing straight up and wondered if I could turn it into a tree! We tied that stem to a wooden stake and cut off the rest at ground level. The stake is rotting and leaning, plus the holly is trying to lean towards the light.... but I'm going to keep the experiment running for a few more years to see what happens! This is what it looks like at the moment: (You may have noticed that clean-up doesn't seem to be happening....! I actually leave most of the oak leaves to breakdown on their own! They will soon mostly disappear under foliage.) And Lalennoxa's picture of his healthy rhubarb make me take this sad picture of rhubarb a little to the right of the shed. When it was planted 17 years or so ago, there was enough sun for it there and we had some nice pies from it :-) It's gradually fading away but it seems to want to stay there because it keeps coming back whenever I move it! Spring is such a fun time of year!

@myira - There is excellent advice above. I wanted to share two stories about my last house. We were moving from out of state with an infant and depended on our realtor and home inspector for a lot of things. Unfortunately the house we purchased was owned by a cheapskate DIYer sort and we spent lots of money fixing plumbing and electrical hazards that should have been caught on the home inspection. We were BFFs with the plumbing and electric companies. Both commented that they perform home inspections and that for a service charge will home out and look over a house someone is considering purchasing. I wished we had hired them to do a walkthrough in addition to the home inspector. It would have alerted us to a lot of problems for just a couple hundred dollars. Eventually we wanted to add on to the house but decided to move to a different place nearby to accommodate our growing family. We sold the house as is to a realtor who was also a house flipper. He made lots of cosmetic changes and we were very up front about issues we were planning to correct prior to moving such as new roof, rotting window, HVAC needing updated to properly service the bedroom wing, etc. None of those important things were improved or fixed when he put the house back on the market a few months later. I’m unsure of what he actually disclosed to the buyer. This is what concerns me about your situation so I’m glad you are seeking opinions and proceeding carefully.