Rant #3,205: Hope

Now, it is real crazy time at this place that I hope to continue to call home.

We are moving out much of the contents of my mother’s portion of the home to the curb—including what is in the basement—for garbage pickup.

We have been doing this for about two weeks now, and it is incredible the mass of stuff than can accumulate in a home over more than 50 years.

Some of it is family-related—meaning pictures, photo albums and the like—and that type of stuff we are keeping.

But there is a lot of other stuff—you name it, my mother had it—that is going on the curb and will continue to be trashed until the house is pretty much cleaned out.

My mother’s house was never dirty or cluttered—everything had its place—and anyone that knew her knew that she cleaned the house each and every day.

But still, the stuff that accumulated is incredible, and most of it has to go.

And what is good about the clutter accumulating on the curb is that the town we live in picks all of it up as a normal trash pickup, meaning that we don’t have to schedule a special pickup to get rid of this stuff.

Everything in the house is not junk--

There are pieces in the house that could be valuable—I won’t go into the specifics here, but they all date from the early 20th century into the 1950s—and we are going to have to have someone to come in and look at this stuff.

And eventually, we will have an estate sale, and if you are interested in buying a nice sofa for $50, we have one that might meet your needs.

And the going through things continues unabated, as we have much more stuff—including clothes—to dispose of.

Also this week, the realtor handing the house is going to come in and start taking photos of the place.

Between my family and my sister and her husband, we have thrown out lots of stuff, and my mother’s portion of the house is pretty bare from what it once was just a week or so ago.

The basement still needs work—lots of potential garbage there—but the realtor will be able to get some really good photos, as there is pretty much only furniture left in my mom’s house.

The plan is for the home to go on the market later this month, and we will also have an open house this month a few days later.

The aim and goal, at least for my family, is for the house to be sold with us remaining as a paying tenant.

If that cannot be accomplished, the house needs to be sold and we need to find a new place to live, and we will once again have to go through the remnants of what we had in the house—our portion--after more than 30 years of living there as the tenant … so more big garbage days might be in order.

Someone asked me the other day what the chances are of us staying on as a paying tenant, and I really believe that they are no better than 25 percent, if even that high.

Newsday had a very opportune story in its pages the other day, where it discussed that housing prices on Long island continue to rise—that is good for us no matter what my famly’ssituation is—but that the number of interested parties has dripped considerably because of interest rates rising.

So where six months ago you had a virtual Battle Royale for homes, with at least 20 and 30 prospective buyers lining up to buy any available home on Long Island, today, you might have maybe two or three, because with interest rates high, people have just backed off right now, waiting for things to simmer down a bit.

That is a negative for us—we need to sell this house within six months, although we would probably get a year to do so.

If not, the house goes into foreclosure, and it becomes anyone’s guess what happens with it—and what happens to us.

Whatever the case, what we are doing now is as dreary an exercise as can be, and I am hoping that the house situation can be resolved ASAP, although I know that will probably not be the case here.

We can only hope at this point in time.