We're taking one more baby step towards selling our house. We spent the weekend staging the house.

In order to get top dollar for one's house, it is necessary to purge the house of the normal crap that infests our homes — all the baseball trophies, models of battleships with oozing glue, curling Christmas photos perched on bookshelves — it's all got to go. In its place have to go pillow and throws that make the room pop. You want to create a imaginary lifestyle that others will want to emulate.

As my real estate agent says, "Laura, people are stupid." 

So, we spent the weekend packing framed photos of the kids in a box. We took apart the kids' bunk beds and gave the kids their own rooms. Ian was moved into a smaller room that we used as a book room/playroom/guest room, although he moaned about being "lonely in his lame room."  I spent two hours peeling all the pictures off the wall that Jonah, my little nester, had taped around his top bunk. Steve finally hauled all the crap in the garage to the street for garbage pick-up. The attic has been arranged, so that people can imagine it as a master suite.

Moving is still a maybe. We have to be able to sell this house for a price that won't cause me to self-mutilate. And we have to find something else suitable. We told the neighbors and signed papers with the agent.

I was a little tearful about moving a few weeks ago. We completely revamped this place ourselves. And in the past few months, we've cleaned up the lingering projects. The place really does look fabulous.  I looked around wistfully at the door that we refinished by hand and grew a little sad, but then I recovered. It's just stuff. It feels good to not be tied down by a house and to have a million different futures before us.