So yeah.
I came to Austin to be with my fiancee. I’ve been having issues with my back, and have just been in need of emotional support and closeness. I have some business to do in Houston and this looked like the perfect opportunity for us to have some “us time” before we start with the business of getting married.
I love hotels, but since my love already owns a house he recently inherited, it seemed like it was a better idea to go there and stay with him. And we could put the money we saved on doing that in our nest egg.
We were on-again, off-again too many times, and marriage is supposed to be for life — I don’t want to be thinking about changing my mind in ten years, you know? So we’re making an effort to be sure, and part of that is being around each other full time for a while.
When we got to my new home, I actually reconsidered my decision to marry him. The house is painfully cluttered. And I don’t mean like, dirty – there’s no bug problem and rats don’t live in the walls. I just mean there is stuff EVERYWHERE. There’s barely a place to sit down and I’m basically afraid to poke through boxes if I’m in here by myself. It’s not far from this:
Every room is like that. But it’s not like my man is a pig or anything. His car is a bit junky but it’s not like this house. Let me give you a bit of the back story before I move on.
My darling was left this house by his mother, who he had a really close relationship with. Before he actually got the place, relatives came in and ransacked the place, taking whatever they wanted and basically leaving the place cluttered and nearly unlivable. My fiancee has his own company that he is still building and while he sleeps here sometimes, the timing of getting the house was such that he hasn’t been able to get all the stuff out of here. It just wasn’t happening.
Add to that how hard it is to throw out what you have left of your mother?
In fairness, he told me that I was probably going to see the house and want to run away. And he was right. But I just love him so much…. so I stuck it out.
I’m very freaked out about the house, and have started putting the systems that I can in place. It’s a small house, 10 rooms including the bathrooms, but it’s just wall to wall clutter. One of my main goals while I was here was to start a creative project and I just can’t even think. So I thought, hey, I’ve got pretty good cash flow going on right now. What can I do to get someone to help me deal with this?
I searched and searched the internet to see if I could find a service that was a cross between moving out, removing junk, organizing, and house cleaning. I Googled my situation to see if I could find out what other people do when they inherit a house that is full of things they don’t want. But the problem was that every site I went to didn’t have details on whether they could do the job I wanted, and no way for me to ask a question online.
Then I found a gem. In my search, I came across a site called Service Magic.
The way service magic works is that you go to the site, pick the type of work you think you need done, when you’re going to be doing it, and the site hooks you up with contractors who call and/or email you. In addition, their information gets put into a personal area you have on the Service Magic site that tells you whether the business is insured, what other clients had to say, and gives you a way to email them or go to their web site.
The very next day people started calling me. It was the people for the cleaning part of the job so I wasn’t quite ready for them yet. Later the same day an actual real live representative of Service Magic called me to discuss the job. Her name is Erin, great lady. I was able to tell her the work I needed to do specifically and she had a personal recommendation for me in the Austin area, right off the top of her head!
I love people who do their homework. She sent me all her information so that when I get the first part of the job done, I can go back for her advice on who to talk to next.
Did I mention that I haven’t spent a single red cent yet?
The person she suggested was Barry from Arranging It All. He called me the next day, right at the requested time. I told him what I needed help with, he quoted me a VERY reasonable hourly rate, that is really flexible with my budget. I have about a grand to start with and estimated that I’d probably need about five to finish up. Turns out I can probably finish the whole thing for more like three, including the people I will have come and haul stuff away, as well as the people after that who I want to clean the place.
I’ll keep you posted on how it goes from here.