Real Estate Investor Etiquette

My apartment is up for sale. This means that my apartment is shown daily.

I'm not a neat person, never have been. My roommates are also untidy, and quite honestly right now we're living in a den of filth. It's not like we don't notice, or care. It's just that we've all have so many other things going on in our lives we're just completely unmotivated to clean when we're home.

Today, I was especially not in the mood for cleaning because I'm still sick. I felt ridiculously out-of-it and lethargic this morning. I tried to get ready for work and ended up in the fetal position, shivering on my couch - so I stayed home and slept on the couch for most of the day.

Around 5 o'clock I was sitting up and feeling a little better. My landlord's father then knocks on my door.

"We have guests, eh, see place. Five Minute."

Awesome.

I try to clean up two days of take out carnage off the table, round up the beer bottles, put a fresh batch of cleanser on the pile of dishes.

I then slump upstairs and back to the couch. The people come through and I'm quiet and watch TV.

I can still hear the perspective buyers voices, "These people certainly have low standards of living. They keep a disgusting household."

I retold my neighbors this story, and by that time had my rebuttle, "It's not like I'd go through their house and be like, 'Man look at these pricks with their overly clean house. What total anal retentive psychos.' "

Yeah! Take THAT!

I'm a Sloppy Girl

About two weeks ago I was sitting in a bar discussing woes,
as one does at a bar

-and no, I wasn't at The Four Faced Liar,
I was at a different bar,

and I told my friends that I needed a maid,
because I was just too darn messy to keep up the place

And they said,
"You can't be that bad. We'll help!"

Well, those brave souls, Van and Jen came over
and they saw a sight they never imagined they'd see.

"Oh my God, Sue. How can you live like this?" Van said in utter shock.

Jen pokes her head into my room, "It's been worse."

I nod my head in agreement.

Van just stood back in utter horror for a moment,
unsure whether to flee
or just douse the piles of clothing, paper, and water bottles strewn about the room in Lysol and throw a match at it and call it a day.

Then, she took a deep breath and jumped in.
"Where does this go?
What's this?
Do you need this?
Do you even still have the device that this was once a part of?"
Van had patience, I had piles to sort,
and Jen - bless her heart, had a bathroom to scrub.

These ladies saved my already constantly nauseous ever thinning ass.

Will I keep it clean?
Probably not.
Already, I'm looking around my room like I'm a visitor,
trying to find a way to mess it up
so it feels like home.

The moral of the story: Never make promises in bars
And I have the best most wonderfully helpful friends in the world
who tolerate my messy self.

Next Up: Elana, my other organizational friend, wants to try to organize my closet.
I've become a TLC challenge.

Funke Security System

I live alone.
I not only live alone, I also live about a half hour away from anyone I really know and an hour alone from the nearest relative or best friend. The thought has crossed my mind that there’s a good chance that I may die a Law & Order type death.

And I don’t necessarily mean a homicide. I’m talking more of a neighbor being like “what is that stench?”- discovery kind of death.

Not to say my building isn’t safe, but you never know what kind of nutty people are out there waiting to get in here.

So sometimes, when I’m laying in bed trying to fall asleep and I hear a noise, I get a little nervous that someone is climbing in my kitchen window from the fire escape making his way into my bed room to kill me because I didn’t say God Bless you to him on the subway ride home.
I go through panic mode, a mode I easily slip into, and am highly functional in.
How close am I to my cell phone?
I can get to the phone but he’ll see me, what do I have to hit him with?
…and then I visualize my living room (which he’d have to walk through from the kitchen to get to my bedroom.
Well, there are shoes in the hallway, the big DVR box that I still haven’t parted with and hop over, oh and the blue pillow that fell off the couch that you can’t really see in the dark, oh and I think I dropped some of the mail on the floor today too…

And then I snuggled into my comfy bed and I feel all better because I know that any rapist, murderer, or burglar would most likely trip and break his neck before reaching my bedroom.
This epiphany not only helps me sleep at night, and helps me realize that I’m not a slob, I’m a protective paranoid who is secure alone in her apartment with all the possessions she is smart enough never to throw out.
This is way is also cheaper than any fancy system with buttons and back up.

***New Edition***
I found out that my version of security is not the only Funke Security brand out there.