More House Info--Some Useful, Some...Not So Much

First, for the not so useful tidbits:

• We have had a half dozen showings of our house and hope to have an offer soon. The $8000 tax credit will expire at the end of the month and our realtor is practically positive it will sell by then. Yeah!
• However, if we don't get an offer by the beginning of next week, I'm going to go find a St Joseph and plant him in the front yard!
• Our house has never been so clean. When you have the possibility of people popping in on very short notice, you have to keep the place spotless. No dirty socks on the floor, no dirty dishes in the sink. It's kinda nice actually.

And now the useful stuff:

• I came across this article, 12 Hidden Costs of Home Ownership, which provided a good reminder of some of the costs associated with buying a new house, some of which I forgot and will no doubt be paying in the near future.
• eBay and Craigslist are my friend. The plan is that we will be selling our home then buying a new place, all of which should be completed within the next couple of months. That means we need to reduce all of our stuff that currently fits into a big house to an amount that will comfortably fit into a small condo. Needless to say, I have been eBaying and Craiglisting religiously over the past couple of weeks. A big garage sale (or two or three) is also in the works.
• We have taken a look at the PODS system and may consider this as an option to transition us through the move. I'm still a little fuzzy about how all of this works because the last time we moved, we kept our older house as a rental so we simply moved into our new house at our leisure then rented the old house after we were completely moved. This time around it looks like our house sale will close before out new condo sale will close so we will have a week or so during which we need to be out of our current house but not yet moved into our new place. In addition, I plan to do major work on the new place (painting, flooring, new appliances and cabinets, etc) which may take a few weeks to complete. A friend of mine had good luck with renting a "POD". She simply packed up all of her stuff into the POD which was delivered to her home, had the company move it to her new city, then store it for the few months until her new house was finished, then they drop the POD off at her new place and she unpacked it. Simple.