Projects

Now that Jeff was working overseas in Dubai and both kids had resumed their normal school schedule, it was time for me to get to work on several projects to prepare for our upcoming move to Dubai. We were still tentative about the permanent move, but there were several things I could start working on to make sure we were ready, if and when we made the final decision to move.

The first project I tackled was to begin cleaning out our home. Goodness, it just overwhelms me how much STUFF we can accumulate in such a short time. We had only lived in our Katy house for 5 years, but the closets were overflowing with so much unnecessary junk that I couldn't wait to clean out. I started upstairs with the kids' bedrooms and closets and then moved on to the harder areas downstairs. I worked methodically room by room, closet by closet. Some things I sold online or saved for a garage sale, but mostly I ended up bagging up everything to take to Goodwill. I can't even begin to describe how much stuff we sold or gave away. It made me feel so ashamed at all of the material things we had accumulated that we simply did not need.

It took several weeks to work through the entire house, but it felt SO GOOD to purge and clean out the entire house. I had to save the garage and attic areas for Jeff, but the rest of the house was starting to shape up nicely for our potential move.

Another project I had to take on right away was our rental home in northwest Houston. It was our very first house together, and we have been leasing it for the last 10 years or so. We had the most awesome tenants for the last 6 years, and then suddenly they decided to move out in August. It felt like a sign, that it was time for us to finally sell this house as it had become difficult to manage the property from afar. Before we could sell, we were going to fix it up so that it would be more appealing on the market.

The interior needed a lot of work to be ready to put on the market, including all new paint on the walls and cabinets, new carpet in the bedrooms, and several little maintenance projects so that the home was in top condition. Luckily our realtor was willing to do some of the heavy lifting and he turned out to be a huge help. We lined up the contractors for the work and got started in mid-August. We were on a tight schedule to get the house ready and on the market. Little did we know that our timeline would be dramatically impacted in the weeks to come.