Well I’ve heard about how housing moves quickly in San Francisco, but this was almost a little silly how fast the house sold. I’ve been busy cleaning out the house, but the house literally was listed off market so there were no bidding wars [which means you ask a bit more so people don’t have to go through the bidding war hassle] and it turns out the first people who came to one of the private showings chose to buy the house. I won’t say what the house sold for, but let’s just say that houses in Western Massachusetts are asking about ¼ of what we were and they tend to sit for six to eight months there. Not six to eight days like here.
There are things that you don’t really think about when you have a long move like that and have sold a house that has had four generations of your family living in it…like anything that isn’t nailed down has to go. Much of what wasn’t nailed down was stuff like old pots in the back yard and some broken down tools that my Dad had apparently just stuffed under the desk to get it out of the way until he figured what to do with it. My Dad died in 1999 and I hadn’t even seen some of the stuff we found. Luckily we found Junk King who came and literally anything we pointed out went. I have to admit, it did kind of hurt watching them take some of the stuff. I had looked at some of the furniture and just accepted it’s place in the house since some hadn’t been moved since I was alive…to me it was nailed down. But we sold the house and those are the rules and something like an old rusting workbench in the garage that folded up [I never even knew it folded up] had to go.
It’s a bit odd walking around the house you grew up in and hearing the walls echo because it’s so empty and thinking things like, gee, there’s enough room to put X here. Well, maybe we should have gotten rid of some of that stuff early and figured it out, but in many ways it’s very, very good to purge. I have developed a new found freedom in separating stuff in my life that was just there, but not adding to it that it feels good.
I realized something yesterday when I saw friends who are following my story on FaceBook who have been saying roughly the same thing, I feel like a part of my childhood is gone now. Some of these friends I haven’t seen in years, but this house because it was still there and I was still there represented a connection to the misspent days of our youths out here. I thought for a bit and of all my friends I am the only one who’s still living in the same house as when I was a kid. In some ways it’s kind of like I need to move on. Sure I’ve lived in other houses I’ve rented in San Francisco, but there was always this house as my rock to come back to at any time.
In two weeks time I’ll be in Western Massachusetts now, completely out of debt and with money in my pocket. Something I haven’t been able to say in a good many years. We’ve got almost everything booked that we’ll need to get out and get there so next time you hear from me will probably be from the hotel suite by SFO that we’ll be spending a few days at before we’re out of here.
So I’ll end this story with a little video so you can see what I was going through. Big thanks to the guys from Junk Kings in the video for helping us out. It turned out to be much cheaper than renting a couple of dumpsters and I didn’t have to carry the stuff out. If you see anything that you don’t think we should have tossed…would you have come and gotten it? I put the word out months ago about a lot of it, but no one came for these vintage, antique, artisanal, handmade, gourmet pieces of furniture. I’m writing this article and shot the video on my new iPad Pro [yes, I got the fully tricked out 12.9” one with a keyboard case and Apple Pencil.] which is the first new thing I’ve been able to buy since the sale went through.
