Moving Out.

In Belgium, when you move out of a rental property, you have to leave it in pristine condition. And by pristine, I mean sparkling. The good news, is that the designated life of a paint job is six years (which we were short of by just a few months.) So we already knew they wouldn't be able to charge us for all the places that Miss B wrote her name in crayon. (As long as it was on a wall.)

Over the years, we had heard plenty of stories from neighbors that had moved on, to know that our landlords are very, very difficult at the final walk-through. Their goal is to try to keep your entire deposit (which is double, if not triple a standard deposit in the U.S.) We already had a relocation agent to assist us with all things required to leave the country, but we were also advised to hire an expert to attend the walk-through, as well as hire a professional cleaning company that specialized in a move.

We had quotes from cleaning companies. Jeesh. I could think of a lot of other ways to spend that kind of money in Europe before moving, but we also knew that we didn't want to spend our last weekend in Belgium scrubbing sinks to make them "shine like the top of the Chrysler building" (to quote Ms. Hannigan.)

So I saved. And I saved, and I saved. We had to sell a lot of stuff. Lamps, appliances, a washer and dryer, all kinds of stuff that plugged into a wall there, that wouldn't be able to plug into a wall here. It was also a good time to get rid of any furniture we knew we didn't want to move back across the ocean. Fortunately, the expat community is efficient. I knew all of the sites to post everything. I negotiated. I "bundled" items together to get rid of more and give someone a deal. I sold it all - from the espresso machine to the iron. From the toaster to the television. And I sort of enjoyed it. John called me "his own personal Turkish trader." And he's been to Turkey several times over. I guess he would know.

Every euro I earned by pawning off all of our stuff went into the "cleaning fund" envelope that I had squirreled away. And on Saturday morning, when John stopped by the house to let them in, and I instead made a cup of coffee and scrolled through my Twitter feed, I knew it was worth every single cent.

So when the walk-through came around on Tuesday, we were feeling pretty confident. It was one of the strangest moving experiences I've ever had. We sat in the kitchen with the landlord, while our expert walked through the entire house with their expert. They bickered back and forth about every little knick, dent and beautifully colored surface (thanks again Miss B) in the entire four-stories (counting the basement.)  And then, they went in a room, shut the door and negotiated how much each knick, dent and scratch was worth as subtracted from our damage deposit.

In other words, had we not had our cleaners, our relocation agent and our expert we would have been utterly and royally screwed.

But in the end, we got enough of our damage deposit back....(drum roll please)....to pay our boys' catholic school tuition for the rest of the year.

Cue the big sigh of relief.