What do ‘N Sync marionette dolls, giant brown spiders and shrines to Vishnu have in common? In reality, nothing…UNLESS you’re shopping for a house. Of six houses Mike and I toured this weekend, three of them had some interesting ‘skeletons’ in their closets.
There was the charming red house with fresh white walls throughout. The homeowner clearly ran a tight ship. There was a place for everything and everything had its place. In fact, I opened up one of the custom closets to discover handwritten Post-it notes adorning each shelf: ‘Long-sleeve T’s’, ‘Short-sleeve T’s’ ‘Gym tops’ and ‘Gym bottoms.’ I could just picture myself on move-in day, ripping out the precious Post-its and gleefully dumping long-sleeve t’s alongside gym tops ON THE SAME SHELF!! Talk about marking one’s territory.
Shelves aside, the real horror awaited me in the next room. Now I’m not too proud to say I didn’t listen to ‘N Sync back in the day. I was just as likely to make the ‘bye bye bye’ motion as the next girl. But one thing I can assure you…I did NOT buy an entire set of ‘N Sync marionette dolls! That’s right, I said MARIONETTE dolls! There was Joey Fatone, staring out at me with a doleful expression on his face, head cocked to one side, just waiting for me to pull on one of the attached strings.
After the creepy marionette experience I couldn’t imagine uncovering anything more surprising. Well, boy, I was wrong. At the home of an Indian family, I was delighted to discover an entire wall of closets in the youngest daughter’s room. Closet space can be hard to come by in many old, Northeastern homes. One double-door closet held all of the girl’s clothes, and another closet held, umm, a shrine (altar?) to Vishnu. That’s not fair. I don’t know who the shrine was for. I know it was a prayer alter/shrine thing, for worshiping an Indian god. Aaaaand, I’ll stop now because this is starting to sound utterly uneducated and I’ve probably offended someone.
The last and final house we saw was rather unremarkable. It was dark, and messy, and would have been, on the whole, unforgettable had we not ventured to the garage. There we discovered an infestation of giant brown spiders! An entire army of them covered both walls of the garage. And the garage door was directly adjacent to the family’s washer and dryer, so I imagine more than clothes end up tangled amidst the dryer sheets.
So what did we learn? When your house is on the market, people learn a lot more about your personal life than you’d probably like for them to know. So for God’s sake, hide your marionette dolls!
