Next year if I plant more seeds I'll start them outside directly and just see how they do. We had such a very weird Spring this year for our area that I couldn't move anything outside til almost mid June. I did have several false starts, but we were a lot chillier than I can remember for a long time. I'm hoping for a longer growing season next year!

Not very. It SEEMED to be clean and looked clean if you didn't look to closely, but.... the closer we looked the worse it was. I mean, it had been swept and mostly dusted, but not mopped, fixtures were clean. I guess the previous owners kinda just took their stuff and left right after putting the house on the market. But the stove... oh my god the stove. They'd cleaned the top, but not the knob panel (which was black and hid the dirtiness). You literally had to go wash your hands every time you touched a knob they were so greasy and gross. I ended up accodentally scrubbing off all the labels trying to get it clean. In retrospect, I wish we'd had time to clean it super well before we moved in, but we were ungodly busy (planning our wedding and trying to do some restoration on the house), and not only didn't get to deep clean but moved in in a rush and messed everything up.

Bought our first house the first year we were married, it was going to our forever house. Loved our home, we were there 23 years. Unfortunately our neighborhood gradually changed over time and I was not feeling comfortable there anymore. The timing for a move worked for our family. my youngest just graduated high school. The timing for finding a new home for us was not as good, few homes on the market and lots of competition. We ended up in an area we liked, but spent more on the house than we wanted and still did not really get what we were looking to buy. But we had sold our house and had been living with my in-laws for 6 months, it was time to compromise. While this home is very nice and I think some of my friends think I am crazy for wanting to move, I do not view this house as my long term house. It is in a good location. Love the back patio, the big windows, my closet and all the birds. We back up to a ravine with a view of trees and a bit of the city. It is a great home for entertaining. Otherwise it is okay and really I dislike the kitchen, probably half the reason I do not want to stay. Unfortunately this is not correctable without moving the kitchen and I do not love the rest of the house enough to go down that path. Also, not really affordable. But my husband absolutely loves it here, so we are still here. That said we are currently trying to decide if we are going to downsize. This will allow us to buy a bigger home in the desert while keeping a smaller home in our neighborhood. Otherwise we will buy a smaller place in the desert and stay in this house. The third option is the I continue working part-time until we downsize our current home, then we could do both until I decide to retire. My plan had been to retire next year at 62. We were hoping to do a lot of traveling but that is out for the foreseeable future anyway, so continuing to work is not such a bad option for the next few years.

We’ve bought our past three houses with bridge loans, so we’ve moved into the new house before listing the old. We have a child with special health needs, so house-buying and moving has always had additional considerations to factor in. Said kiddo is now off at college and doing really well, and we’re just about to launch into the house buying/selling process (hopefully for the last time for a really long time). Our current house is 100 years old and quirky, and we’re not entirely convinced that it will sell quickly even in a relatively hot market. We’ve got a storage unit that we’ve been slowly moving unneeded stuff into and we’re considering listing the house and moving into an Air BnB until it sells. We have a small dog, which might complicate that plan, but so far it’s the best we’ve come up with. I just don’t want to be left with two mortgage payments for a long time if our current house takes a while to sell. The plan as it stands now is that we completely move out and have the house stage. List it on a Thursday and have open houses on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (our realtor suggested this). I’m hoping, of course, for multiple offers by Monday, but I’m not counting on it. Good luck to you! This stuff is stressful.