We’ve been tossing around the idea of moving out of this little town for a year or two but never got to the point where we were ready to be actually serious about it…until now. We both work in Sacramento; it would make far more sense for us to actually live there, especially since we both really like our jobs and have no plans for finding new ones for as long as we can possibly manage it. Plus, we were gradually realizing that any time we go anywhere, with few exceptions (Starbucks, the grocery store, that kind of thing) we go to another town. This little farm burb we live in has a lot of plusses for someone who really likes that kind of thing, but it’s been sinking in that we are just not farm town sort of people. Especially farm towns that show no hope of ever getting a bookstore or independent music venue or decent public transportation any time in the near (or even slightly distant) future.

It’s been a hard decision to come to, because when we built this house, we really did want it to be the house we stayed in forever. But as Richard and I have concluded over the past few years, we are not the same people we were when we moved here six years ago, and this just isn’t where we want to be for the rest of our lives.

Tuesday night we met with a realtor, just to get some ideas of what would be involved in selling the house, and in buying a new one. We asked him to be very blunt with us when we did the walkthrough and I think he was worried about insulting us when he mentioned that we would definitely need to tone down the ‘hey, cats live here!’ thing we’ve got going on, but on the contrary, this is exactly what we needed to know. He talked about what all would be involved, and also took ideas for our preferred location in Sacramento, and it was a very informative little chat. And then the next morning he set up some search parameters for us, so not only are we getting notices of houses for sale in Sacramento of the type (and location) we’re interested in, we’re also getting notices of the other houses in our current location that are of similar size and type to ours, so we can see what we’d be up against. It’s all been very sobering, and exciting at the same time.

I am finding it amusingly ironic that after six years, talking to a realtor is what finally is  motivating us to replace the ‘temporary’ paper shades in the breakfast nook with actual curtains, and to start seriously looking at a storage armoire for our television and all its assorted paraphenelia, and to finally make some decisions on what to do with the ugly futon in the living room, and whether or not to buy a daybed for the library.  There are some things we will need to repair – places where the texturing on the walls has cracked due to the house settling over time, and possibly installing a railing around the front and back porches (both of which are several feet off the ground, and something we’d toyed with on and off over the years on our own anyway).

Anyway. Friday afternoon Richard and I went through the list of houses in Sacramento that he’d sent us and picked out six or seven, and then mapped out a route on Google Maps (love!) and then we drove by all of them to see where they are and what kind of neighborhood they’re in. And today the realtor came to get us and we headed back in to Sacramento and spent several hours actually walking through five of those houses, just to start getting a sense of what we will be looking at when we do decide to make this move.

So now we have some big decisions to make.  Turns out April and May are the best times to put a house on the market, and anything after August would be probably the worst. There are feasible options for how to put an offer on a new house while still selling the old one without suddenly ending up with two mortgages and a whole world of debt. It is not a question of whether or not we can do this, or even whether we can afford the kind of house that we are hoping to move to. It is now simply a matter of when.