It happens to all of us over time when we live in the same house for many years…..stuff starts to collect and pile up. Not only that but we add things to rooms, new pillows, artwork, knick knacks, and we don’t always take things out of a room. So our rooms get fuller and fuller with things we love. Of course, we love this! We love living with things that make us happy. This isn’t good news when trying to sell a home. Potential buyers do NOT have the love that we have for our things- they just see packed, full rooms and that makes it harder to them to envision our rooms as their rooms with their things.
This is a very important tip for home staging: REMOVE AT LEAST HALF OF WHAT IS IN EVERY ROOM (this is usally a good rule of thumb).
I know first hand how especially challenging this can be when living in a small house. We didn’t have a place to put all of our stuff we wanted to hide. We didn’t want to spend the money to rent a storage unit to house all of our “extra stuff”. So we had to get creative and organize our attic. Thank goodness we have an attic (it’s has pull down stairs so potential buyers wouldn’t be likely to be venturing up there). I went through every room in our house over about a month and I took things out (furniture, toys, knick knacks, etc) which I CRAMMED into the attic. Then I walked through each of the rooms in our house and re-evaluated how each room looked through the eyes of a buyer. I wanted buyers to see the strengths of each room, I didn’t want them to see all of our stuff. I took photos of the rooms and looked at them on my computer- sometimes looking at a picture helps you to really see what others would see (I found this very useful!).
Caution: This process of decluttering your stuff and removing at least half of what is in every room takes time. Don’t expect yourself to do this in a day, give yourself some time to get this done. This is where lists really helped me (hint: this will be my next tip!).
Good luck! Happy staging!!!!
Be well-
Megan
P.S. Potential buyers DO open up and look inside each and every closet so don’t think you can hide your things in there. You want your closets to be decluttered too. If closets are packed full, buyers think that there must not be enough space in the house and you don’t want them to think that, even if it’s true. Take clothes and items out of each closet to make it look larger.
Filed under: Home Staging
