The world is a stage . . .

Or at least our house is! As we get ready to sell our house (so that we can start building our new one), our realtor did the courtesy of sending a Professional Stager. Now, me being the naive person that I am, I had never even heard of such a profession, let alone used one. It turns out, a Stager is a lady who comes over to your house, tells you everything that's wrong with it, and tells you to get rid of everything you use and replace it with unnecessary, useless items! She also tells you to replace anything meaningful (ie family photos) with expensive impersonal objects (ie "Do you have any framed art you could put here?" "Oh of course, let me just run out to the garage and grab my Monet.") For a very practical and frugal person like me, this is torture! Thankfully, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law have items they're letting us borrow to meet these stringent decorating rules. So I've just been working on the decluttering. Thankfully, my brother-in-law is also a generous person and is letting us store things at his house. I've actually had a great time going through all the boxes in the attic, reminiscing over all the things Heath thinks I should get rid of, and clearing out lots of space. I've also had the perfect excuse to get rid of some extra toys, and Heath has even put up some trim that has been missing (and plaguing me) since we built the place--commenting that "the carpenter" should've just taken the extra 10 minutes to do that job when he first built it! (His words, not mine.) So it's been good for us. And, as hard as it is for me to admit, when we get done with Stager-Lady's 3-page list, our house will probably look quite a bit better. I'll never admit it though! =)