My Cardamom is Mine...or, Not Without My Spice Rack

My husband and I stopped being excited about second requests for showings of our house over a week ago, because although there was lots of interest we were still without an offer.

We had our third open house last Sunday and one of the couples who went through asked to see it again Monday night, this time with their agent. We dutifully but unenthusiastically polished the faucets, hid the humidifier, stuffed the bean bag chair in a closet, removed all the crap from the front of the fridge and basically made the house look like no one actually lives here.

My husband had band practice later that evening and needed to gather his equipment before he left, but we were sure these people would be out by then. So we drove to the local custard place for dinner and back, only to find their cars still parked outside our house.

We proceeded to drive around for the next hour, making ever-widening circles to check back on their status. Finally, just as my husband was calling our agent to have him tell them to get the hell out of our house, we saw them walk out.

We were crabby, to say the least.

The very next day an offer came in from The Couple Who Would Not Leave. They offered full asking price, but they also wanted our stove and refrigerator (which we were planning on taking with us), the coat hooks in the front hallway, the towel hooks in the bathroom, and the shelves in the kitchen.

And my spice rack.


It was a lot more difficult than you'd expect to find just exactly the kind of spice rack I wanted: stainless steel, wall-mounted, clean lines, room for lots of spices (I actually bought two racks and hung one right above the other). I finally found it in the Hold Everything catalog, and since I buy my spices in bulk I also bought the coordinating clear glass bottles to store them in. I made the labels myself.


Admit it: you're impressed.

My stepsons' friends find my spice rack greatly amusing for reasons that, no matter how often are explained to me, I will never understand. I'm told that it's funny because my spices are labeled and in alphabetical order.

But why exactly is that funny? Would it not be funnier for them to be unlabeled and in a jumble?

My personal opinion is that, living in Redneckville, USA, none of the kids have ever seen their parents cook with anything but seasoning salt. And you always mock that which you do not understand.

So it was extremely ironic, and personally horrifying, that the potential buyers wanted my spice rack. At first my husband told our agent that we would do whatever we needed to do to make the deal go down. But after spending about fifteen minutes online searching for a replacement spice rack, only to find that Hold Everything had closed and no one else seemed to be selling anything like it, I stood my ground.

They could have the stove, they could have the fridge, but I wasn't moving without my spice rack.

Luckily another offer, also at asking price but with no such requests, came in right after the first one. And when the first couple found out another potential buyer was moving in on their territory, they voluntarily re-wrote their offer, bumping the price by a thousand dollars, giving us a week post-occupancy for free and dropping all previous requests.

The second couple also re-wrote their offer, but although they included a heart-warming letter about how much they loved the house, they didn't raise the price. And as my 16-year old stepson said, money talks.

Just between you and me, though, the first couple had me at "you can keep the spice rack."