What I probably need is a personal shopper. See, I no longer clean my house, do laundry, grocery shop, prepare meals, mow the lawn, weed or water the gardens, run to Target, pay the bills — those chores are done for me. And, it’s actually a bit inconvenient that I have to put gas in my car myself. I wish we would go back to the concept of full-service gas stations.

I utilize almost every waking moment of my day focused on my hobby, er, occupation. I specialize in selling older, classic homes in Land Park, East Sacramento, Curtis Park and Midtown. That alone is enough to eat up 50% of my day. The other 40% is spent on being a Sacramento short sale agent, leaving me 10% to answer email, write blogs and articles.

Because I’m otherwise preoccupied with my real estate business, I don’t always notice things right away when they fall apart around the house. For example, I need a new dresser. I spilled perfume once on top of it and somehow plopped a magazine on that spot, which left a big red square on the surface. The sliders on the bottom of some of the drawers are broken, which means those drawers don’t pull out horizontally. The brass drawer knobs and pulls are weathered. The mirror has a big chip in the corner.

You’d think it would be easy to find a new dresser, right? In between showing property and doing home inspections, I hauled my husband to Macy’s this weekend to pick out a new area rug for our living room. While we were at the Sacramento Downtown Plaza, I looked at dressers, shot a few photos, scribbled down measurements. After I came home and measured the wall space between the windows in our bedroom, I realized none of those dressers would fit in that space, which is shared with our bed.

However, if I bought a new headboard for the bed, one that didn’t extend four inches beyond both sides of the bed, I could buy a bigger dresser. And, of course, that led to the realization that if we had a footboard on the bed, our duvet cover would not slide off onto the floor every night. That is a major irritation. So, I may as well buy a whole new bed. My husband doesn’t understand how this works. He knows only that when I set out to change something in the house, it’s never a minor fix.

Not only do I have space limitations on that wall, but the design and finish of the bed and dresser should coordinate with the rest of the furniture in the bedroom, which is fairly new but, of course, discontinued. Now, my husband would be happy sleeping on a cot in the corner. He doesn’t care if our furniture matches. Utilitarian function is his main concern. If you can sit on it, sleep on it or eat over it, he’s content. To him, it doesn’t matter if the furniture is dinged, gouged, weathered, chipped or standing on its last legs, about to disintegrate beneath him. Thank goodness he has me in his life to improve his quality of existence.

Since I don’t have any time in my day to run all over Sacramento looking at furniture, I am forced to search online. But even that is time consuming. And some websites don’t list dimensions. It’s possible that I may not find a new bed and dresser.

The answer, of course, to many people, is to buy a new house. But I’m never going to sell my husband on that idea, so I guess I’ll continue to live with the fact that my dresser drawers routinely fall off the tracks. Sometimes, it’s simply easier to change your attitude and go with the flow.

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Elizabeth Weintraub is an author, home buying columnist for The New York Times-owned About.com, a Land Park resident, and a Land Park real estate agent who specializes in older, classic homes in Land Park, Curtis Park, Midtown and East Sacramento. Weintraub is also a Sacramento Short Sale agent who lists and successfully sells short sales throughout Sacramento. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put 35 years of real estate experience to work for you. DRE License # 00697006.

The Short Sale Savior, by Elizabeth Weintraub, available through bookstores everywhere and at Amazon.com.

Photo: Unless otherwise noted in this blog, the photo is copyrighted by Big Stock Photo and used with permission.