Four bedrooms, one weekend in Mermaid Waters
Peter Thompson · House Cleanout · Mermaid Waters
The story
I'm in Mermaid Waters, and I'll be honest: I put this off for far too long. Mum moved into aged care in March, and the house had to be on the market by May. My brother and I live three hours apart and both work, so every weekend we spent there felt like moving a mountain with a teaspoon.
Every wardrobe was full. The linen press had sheets from the eighties. The rumpus room had a pool table nobody had played on in a decade, a treadmill used as a clothes rack, and boxes of school projects we couldn't throw out but didn't want to keep either.
Mermaid Waters is family-friendly canal and lake streets close to shopping centres, and getting things out isn't always simple. Straightforward suburban access all week.
They offered a time the next morning. I asked if they needed me to move anything to the kerb first, and they said no, they'd take it from where it was.
They arrived a few minutes early, introduced themselves and did a quick walk-around. The price they gave me was a bit under what I'd budgeted, which was a pleasant surprise.
Halfway through, we found Dad's old letters in a shoebox under the stairs. Chris stopped the job, handed me the box and said to take as long as I needed. They kept working around me without making a thing of it.
The space is unrecognisable. I keep walking past it just to look. I'd use them again without thinking about it, and I've already passed the number on to my sister.
If I'm honest, the hardest part was deciding to do it. Once that was done, it was easy.