What do you think about changing your neighbors? Or would you just change neighbors?

I read an essay today that deals with clutter and your home and then ultimately your neighbors. It's main theory was that if your house has clutter on the inside, it will inevitably have it on the outside. This in turn will allow your neighbors to be more relaxed about the state of their own home and yard and can then in turn affect the entire neighborhood.

First off, what are your thoughts on this? Can one house turn an entire neighborhood into destruction?

Now where am I going with this?

For some history, the hubs and I have been talking for about 3 years now about selling our house and moving. In 2016 we did put our house up for sale and after many, many showings it never sold. We have a beautiful home, it's a decent size of 2100 sq ft, three bedroom, office, three bathroom home. We were told by every realtor that showed the house to their customer, that our house was "so well presented".

Many, many people made comments on the realtor website and commented to their own realtor about how beautiful the house was and how homey it made them feel when walking into it. And I am not going to lie, I LOVE my home. I have created a house that is comfortable, inviting and easy to live in. It's color pallet in the main living areas are colorful but relaxing at the same time, our master bedroom is elegant and Caleb's room is fun and cheerful.

Mainly, our home is loved and lived in and you can see that from my living room photo below....I have my coffee and tablet on on the end table and my planner on the couch....and I'm pretty sure Scooby has some toys on the floor that didn't make the photo. It's not Better Homes and Gardens perfect, but it's perfect for 523. :)

This is more of the living room and my makeup room.

Caleb's Lego room and our master bedroom. Don't I have the best husband? He let me decorate our master bedroom in pink!!

But why could we not sell the house?

When you look out our front window across the street, you will see this.....

and this....

on a side note, this photo was taken in April and yes those are Christmas lights on the house...they have yet to be taken down from the previous two years.

Why can't the city do anything about this? I can't answer that question. It has been said that the neighbor has been issued many tickets for the mess and still nothing has been done. There has been rumors that the neighbor has "friends" in the city council, some have said that the city ordinance officer has been told that she's discriminating to the neighbor and is not allowed to ticket him anymore. I don't know what to believe with that situation. But the city is null on this neighbor.

Why don't we go to the local newspaper? We have thought about that. Our little town only has about 3000 people in it, so the newspaper would show off the home and nearly everyone in the town would know exactly where this house is and who resides in it. It might be effective, but here's the thing, this neighbor has two pre-teen boys who live there and do not deserve the wrath of what this could cause. They are sweet boys and cannot help the state of how their father does things. So I don't want to put these kids in an embarrassing situation. (Bleeding heart? yes I know) AANNND to top that, we are pretty sure their mom left this past year because of the state of how the "man of the house" keeps things.

I have been told I can go to the county court house and issue a law suit against our actual town for the depreciation of our property because they cannot get this resident to clean up his mess. In all reality that sounds pretty good being that our home has depreciated so much in selling value. Now, I was just told that last night, so I'm not sure what I think about suing the actual town we live in. We might get run out with pitchforks from the rest of the town. (My shot at humor for this post). Although I actually do fear the town turning against us.

Where does that leave us? If we sold we would be losing right at $50,000 for the value of the house. Our city is either crying wolf or discriminating but either way doing nothing, and I really have no clue if suing the city is EVEN possible and if so, would I have the courage to do that.

Well, that's where this essay came in today that I read. It said "a place defines it natives". When you go to a restaurant that is elegant and nice, people are more apt to dressing their best. If you go to a very casual dining with casual decor then people are more likely to dress for the surroundings, which would be more laid back.

Being that when you have clutter, it just attracts more clutter. When you start moving the junk cars and fixing the broken fences, it changes people to want to have the same and more...clutter free to then beautifully decorated and finally a proud home owner and eventually a beautiful neighborhood to live in. I take this essay as us being the example of what you can have by just releasing all of the trash, clutter and cleaning it up.

But, are we THAT example? Well yes and no. Our inside is beautiful and clean and our outside, well it's just clean. But there's not too much beauty in the outside of our home. While we keep the yard trimmed and neat and there is no trash or clutter, we don't have beautiful landscape or charming decor. We could put forth more effort and money and make the front yard become Better Homes and Gardens appealing for sure. But should we?

So I guess my question is, "should we try to be an example of what can be had with a bit of effort"? Or do we throw in the towel, cut the loss of what could sell our house, accept any offer and move?

So, do we change neighbors or change OUR neighbors? What would you do?

If you have any insight to this at all, please let me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear them.

I think I'm off my soapbox and will continue our makeup talks tomorrow. Thanks for listening, I really appreciate it.

-Kim