Thursday, April 26, 2007

Another good reason to own your home…

If you own your home, you will never receive this call:

Landlord – Hi. How are you? How’s the house?
DL – Oh hello, how are you doing? The house and I are just fine. (Meanwhile, all I can think is why in the world are you calling?? You never call!)
**Uncomfortable pause in conversation**
Landlord – That’s good to hear….so are you free on Friday afternoon?
DL – Umm…my in-laws are visiting and I work, so not really….why, what’s up?
Landlord – Oh...you know, just wanted to do a house inspection, my sister is here from Toronto and wants to see the house….so does Friday work for you?
DL – Not the best day for me….but I guess she’s only here for a few days, so it will have to work, right?
Landlord – Yeah…so we’ll just let ourselves in and I’ll leave a detailed checklist for you.
DL – Oh…OK…thanks?

Once I hung up, a mini panic attack started. HOUSE INSPECTION??! What’s that all about? And I’m not going to be there for the inspection – that’s horrible! I am being forced to allow some woman that I barely know and her sister to go through my home. They have free reign to look through things like my underwear drawer and medicine cabinet while I am at work. I won’t be able to hide the disorganized room that acts as our basement since we don’t have one, the cluttered storage closet, the missing paint from the molding in the master bedroom or the chip in the wall from my bike – everything is just out there in plain sight for her to view! And to top it all off, just this week my husband brought home scads and scads of paper – 6 FULL BOXES – from his office to sort and go through. I won’t be able to explain why it’s reasonable that we have 17 stacks of papers and laugh about how quirky those Hoffmans are!!

So last night I spent my evening cleaning weird things, things that people don’t clean on a regular basis. I cleaned under my kitchen sink, washed some base boards, swept under the stove, cleaned the tracks of my windows in the kitchen and dining room, rinsed out the crisper drawers in my fridge – you know the unimportant stuff that most people rarely care about, unless you’re a landlord! Then I proceeded to walk into every room and pretend that I was the landlord and her sister. I desperately tried to think like they would and have the same reaction they will have once they begin to ‘inspect’ my home. There is only one good thing in all of this; at least my tub is soap scum free. Thank you Scrubbing Bubbles! They really are as good at the bottle proclaims! I may be somewhat disorganized, but at least I am soap scum free – that’s got to be good for something! Right??!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

OK Donloree, I am still waiting to hear how your house inspection went. I figure it couldn't have been that bad. However, I do remember renting and wondering IF someone had come through while we were gone. Never did like that feeling. Well, hope it worked out OK.

Anonymous said...

What the doodle?! DLH, you posted this at 3:16 on a Thusday. Shouldn't you be working?

Anonymous said...

In fact, most of your posts are during working hours! Hot gracious!