Phew!
I've just spent Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon running around the southern part of the state looking at other people's dwellings with an eye to moving into them. I don't remember my former attempts at finding a place to live being so fraught, but I've always looked at already vacated places before. This time I have seen several still inhabited places, and I'm finding it a very tense experience. And this is just the beginning of the process.
The vacant places are featureless, regardless of the former owner's taste in paint color, wallpaper and carpeting. They have been vacated by their owners and former owners, and while not inviting anyone's presence, are indifferent to your opinion of their appearance. They are a little worn, regardless of their price, and stripped of personality.
The inhabited places, though, seem to resist your inspection and your judgment. Put away that measuring tape! My pink and purple bedroom is just fine. So what if my owner lives with the cat litter tray under the kitchen table? You notice I don't stink of cat pee! What do you mean my bedrooms are too small? So you don't like the border of pigs in chef's hats running around the wainscoting in the kitchen. So you wonder what goes on in my bathroom because of the mirrors mounted above the tub on two sides. So you think I'm insufficiently clean. So I'm so stuffed with stuff you you can't tell if I'm sufficiently clean. So what! What kind of a snob actually uses a word like sufficiently anyway?
It bothers me, really, because I'm not there in the role of a guest. As a guest and a fairly mannerly person there are certain obvious rules that act as a check on your behavior. I know I have to inquire about the state of the plumbing, the age of the roof and so forth, but I can't shrug off the idea that I am unconscionably prying.
Ma's been appeased by the fact that we didn't instantly find something. However, she wants to start packing! We are going to stuff as many boxes of temporarily extraneous things in my storage space as possible, though Jim doesn't think the condo needs a formal intervention staging. The rooms are large, and we do want to play up the amount of storage space the place has, hence the need to hide away as many things as we can. I would think leaving it all where it is would as amply demonstrate that, but apparently the Mind of the Buyer can not extrapolate. Being now a Buyer myself, I tend to have a higher opinion of a Buyer's reasoning power than that.
Since I've uncovered this reluctance to peep into people's privacy or judge their taste in knickknacks, I've decided I need a reward, preferably not a food reward. Earlier this evening I rewarded myself with a Blackadder orgy courtesy of YouTube, and now with a look at my Live Journal. Knowing you're there cheers me more than you can know.