“All journeys eventually end in the same place, home.” —Chris Geiger
I am 38 years old. And I have lived in 16 different homes.
Now, most of these moves took place when I was young. But since getting married to my wife 15 years ago, we have lived in 5 different homes. Needless to say, moving is something I have become accustomed to. And as a result, I have become familiar with the process of buying and selling houses.
Each time we have sold a home, we have been advised by our realtor to “stage our home for selling.”
So then, in the weeks prior to our house hitting the market, we spent numerous hours “staging our home” for the sale. We did the research describing what makes a home attractive to a potential buyer and put most of their recommendations into place. By the end, our house looked better than it ever had since moving in—and then we sold it to some lucky family.
Each time, I can’t help but be struck by the irony of the situation. We spend countless hours getting our home into its best possible condition, only to leave it? Most of the time while staging our home for sale, I wondered why we had never put in the effort to stage our home for living. You know, so we could have actually enjoyed it more while we called it home.
To not make the same mistake we did, consider setting aside a weekend to stage your house for living. The process will take some time, energy, and money. It will take some intentional effort. But in the end, your home just may look better than the day you bought it. And maybe, just maybe, it could be a little bit of fun too.
A Step-by-Step Process to Stage Your Home for Living.
Remove 1/3 of your possessions. Those who stage a home for sale will tell you to remove roughly 33% of your personal possessions from the property. Less stuff means your rooms/closets have room to breathe and feel more spacious. A decluttered home is calm and inviting.
This may be easier if you were actually moving (natural purging almost always takes place during transition), but if you wouldn’t take it with you when you moved, why let it take up space in your life today?
Grab some cardboard boxes and walk through your home room-by-room, closet-by-closet, and drawer-by-drawer. Collect all the stuff you no longer need or love. Donate it, sell it, or give it away.
If you need some added inspiration in this area, try our e-book, Simplify.
Find a home for everything. Walking again through your home, make note of the items that are stored in your field of vision (think countertops, toys, entertainment units). Why are those items stored out in the open? Are they in the wrong room? Are they too big to be stored out of sight? Is their proper home too crowded? Intentionally identify the visible clutter. Ask questions to identify the problem. And brainstorm a new solution.
Find new places to store these items out of sight. Visible clutter pulls at our attention and distracts us on an ongiong basis. On the other hand, clean, undistracted rooms promote relaxation and intentionality.
Declutter counter tops, cupboards, and drawers. Buyers always open cupboards, drawers, and closets. Unfortunately, storage spaces packed too tightly look small, unsightly, and counter-productive. Remove unneeded items from everyday storage spaces. This won’t be difficult. You have likely collected a number of items over the years that are no longer necessary. At this point, they are only taking up space in your storage areas. Discard them. As an added benefit, you just may realize you have had enough storage space all along.
Personalize your decorations. Realtors and professional home stagers will ask you to remove most of your personal decorations as it subtly communicates “I live here, not you,” to your potential buyer. And that is not a good aura to give the future residents of your home.
However, when staging your home for living, leave the personal decorations. Even better, capitalize on them! Rather than devaluing them, highlight them by removing some of the non-personal decorations in your home. As a result, the ones that make you unique will play a more pronounced role in your home.
Give your bathroom the attention it deserves. Put away personal hygiene products. Scrub bathtubs, toilets, and shower walls. Make clean and bright your goal. It’s not glamorous, but it sure makes getting ready every morning more enjoyable.
Consider curb appeal. Realtors will tell you that you can never spend too much attention on curb appeal. Your potential buyer will likely make their decision on your home within the first few minutes of entering. Therefore, first impressions are the most important. And the very first impression they receive is when they pull into your driveway.
If you have children, clean up their toys. If you have shrubs, prune them. Lay fresh mulch. Put some grass seed on the bare spots in your yard. Paint your foundation. Plant some flowers. After all, you pull into your driveway almost everyday of your life. Don’t you want to pull into something you’d like to purchase all over again?
Clean thoroughly. Clean the surface. Then, clean deeper. Give extra attention to corners and windows and hard-to-reach areas. Just like in the bathroom, make clean and bright your goal. If you’ve successfully removed a good portion of personal possessions, you’ll find this task far easier to complete.
Complete minor repairs. Take a notepad and create a to-do list of minor home repairs such as wall nicks, paint touch-ups, squeaky doors, running toilets, loose pieces, and burnt out light bulbs. Most of the minor repairs can be handled in less than 20 minutes for less than $15 and can be found with a simple Google search.
Eventually, the repairs need to happen. And if they have to be taken care of before you sell your house anyway, why not repair them when you can actually enjoy them too? The investment sure beats walking back into your bathroom to wiggle the handle on a running toilet 3 times a day.
Tackle a major repair. Roof about to go? Replace it. Leaky basement? Research your solutions. Kitchen appliances barely working? Go for it. These major repairs can be costly. And I’d never advise you to go into debt to stage your home for living. But if the time ever comes when your house does indeed need to be sold, an inspector/realtor will ask you to solve the problems. And if it gets to that, you’ll be paying for someone else to enjoy them rather than yourself.
Likely the hardest part of staging your home for living is finding the motivation to get started. I get it. Life gets busy. And without the potential for a future sale on the horizon, it can be difficult to get started. So you just may need to artificially create the momentum to get started in the process. That is, unless the simple fact that you live everyday in this home is motivation enough.
Image: 55Laney69
Adrienne says
Thank you for a fantastic article! I’ve done a couple rounds of decluttering but it’s so easy to get overwhelmed when things get messy. Having read this, I’m excited to go home and make our house look like a place we really want to live in – the decluttering will happen along the way, but the focus is enjoying the house.
Just this week I decided to set a timer when I get home and spend five minutes each on our bedroom, kitchen, and living room… just making sure things are in their homes, tossing piles of recycling, putting away clean laundry… and I have to say that I’m surprised how much of a difference just five minutes can make. I might decide to spend the total 15 minutes on one room and rotate rooms each evening – but even so, 15 minutes isn’t that long. It’s doable and – fortunately – it really does seem like that’s all the time it takes per day to keep things comfortable and staged for living. It’s way better than going crazy trying to pick up and clean a week’s worth (or more…) of mess on Saturday!
I would combine this with the idea of an Outbox for “stuff” to get rid of (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/apartment-therapy-january-cure—day-2-181661) and occasionally use some of my freed-up weekend time to empty the Outbox via donations, posting to Craigslist, etc.
Andrea says
Steph – i am in Canada and while i would *never* look in someone’s dresser, etc, we are in the process of house-hunting, and i do open closet doors, and kitchen drawers, etc, if we are actually seriously considering a house (i have done it, literally, once.) If i am buying a house, i need to know how big that closet is, and whether the drawers are in good condition, etc. Side note – the one time we were serious about a house, and we decided to check closet sizes etc, I am glad we did. One ‘closet’ actually had a giant pipe running floor to ceiling in it and was pretty much unusable! :)
Steph says
I can’t believe what you wrote about buyers always looking in cupboards and drawers – does that really happen in America? I’m English and have moved a fair amount of times, including one house sale that took five years for the right buyers to come along (that’s the credit crunch and rural areas for you) – and through all that experience selling and looking round new places myself, I can safely say that nobody EVER does that in the UK! It would be considered very bad form – really very rude. After all, you might open a cupboard and find somebody’s personal hygiene stuff or medicines – or all manner of private things. Call it our national straight-laced attitude but I just can’t imagine barging through someone’s house rifling in their personal things.
April says
I open drawers and cupboard doors to see how the cabinetry is made, to make sure the drawers open smoothly, to see if it’s sturdy, not to be nosy or look at other people’s private things. If I’m going to pay thousands of dollars for a house I’m for sure checking out the cabinets. I have moved 21 times in my 46 years, when I declutter and put away personal items, I put them in the storage furniture I own, Americans usually don’t ‘snoop’ through anything not fixed with the house. I guess we don’t think it’s snooping if you are buying it. That would be like buying a car and not opening the trunk.
Bethany @ Journey to Ithaca says
Moving certainly does help one to declutter, more than anything else!
I remember the last days in our house, how nice it looked. And we thought, why didn’t it ever look this nice while we lived here? Definitely a bittersweet affair. We don’t plan on owning a home again (or even living in a house) anytime in the near (or far) future, but we are definitely taking the time to periodically declutter our living space and keep it looking nice while we’re living here!
Marina says
I’m not sure what I’ve done to my kids (4 of them) and most people think I am mad, but I love moving. I love the opportunity to sort through and remember things. I have a system which means my home can be packed up in a day and we will be left with the basics to function with. We have a purge about every 2 months, which makes sure items get returned to people and we make room for new things in our lives. My teenage daughter must be destined to be an interior decorator as she moves furniture around all the time and gives the house a fresh feeling. Having to share the house with 4 kids and a hubby who arrives spontaneously (he works away from home) we end up with chaos in some areas of the house. Lego creations half made, homework projects in the making etc. So I have places my eyes land on that I love and ignore the rest. A bookcase with flowers and nothing else on top (I ignore the books not put away properly until I have time to do it) etc. Little nooks and crannies, or even just a favourite picture in a place I pass frequently lets me indulge in a fantasy that I live in a Home Beautiful photo shoot ;)
Candi @ min hus says
Great post. I felt the same way when I was shopping for my first house. I vowed to make all repairs necessary and keep my house in tip-top condition while I lived in it. It seemed crazy to do otherwise. Then I became a home owner and realized that due to lack of time, funds, energy or all of the above its easy to let things slide, especially in an older home. I shudder to think of all the things that would need to be done around here before this home could go on the market. It seems that by the time I check one thing off my mental to-do list, two more new ones are added. I now have major DIY fatigue to boot.
So yes, I think this is a wonderful thing to strive for, but I understand why few people accomplish it.
Krystal @ Simple Like Celebrations says
Most definitely! Thanks for the reminders. I am constantly striving to get rid of things that I don’t need or love to make room for what matters. Being the home body that I am, I really want my house to feel like home. And I surely do not want to spend all of my time cleaning up the clutter!
Regina says
This is a great post! I have been in the process of owning less over the past 2 years. It takes time but the time is well spent. I have reduced my bedroom furniture down to just my bed, 2 nightstands and 3 neatly stacked old suitcases I use instead of a dresser. The rest of my clothes and shes are uncluttered in the closet.
It has created a peaceful sleep environment without the clutter distractions.
I am still working through the rest of the house by not putting away my boxes of decorations after moving but rather sorting them into donation, trash and sell piles unless I really cherish the item..
Ragnar says
“If you wouldn’t take it with you when you moved, why let it take up space in your life today?”
This is the exact reason why I started getting into minimalism in the first place. It just appealed through solid logic… especially considering I don’t even own my own place yet. Why should I amass mountains of possessions only to be forced to bring it with me every time I move/sell for less than I bought for?
Randall says
Cool post! I always thought the same thing about staging when watching “Get It Sold” on HGTV. These are some great tips.