Say Goodbye to Clutter: Setting the Stage to Sell Your Home

A fundamental aspect of staging is editing a home’s furnishings. The process of paring back to only those furnishings that enhance the livability of a given space opens up your home to a buyer’s imagination. It literally “makes room” for an individual to see themselves living there.

That means that you might have to remove the second overstuffed sofa, or replace the dining sized coffee table. If you have two dressers and a king sized bed in a room that would better suit a queen sized bed with two night stands and an armchair, then it is time to pair down. Similarly, unless your dining room is quite large, a dining table, chairs, and a gorgeous piece of art are easier on a potential buyer’s spatial awareness than a looming china cabinet filled with your favorite things. That is too personalized and way too much visual stimulation. If the china cabinet has to stay then turn it into a curated collector’s cabinet. Keep items of a similar style neatly displayed and pack the rest away.

Admittedly, this sort of editing is difficult for the seller who is keeping their own furnishings in the home while selling. That is why, if it is at all possible, I recommend an early half move. Start packing up before you put the house on the market. You want to very neatly organize, or more ideally, store all extraneous items. Pack up anything that you do not always use. I am talking about clothing in closets as well. Get matching hangers, pack away or donate what you aren’t going to wear, and treat that closet like a clothing boutique.  Store everything that you want to keep, clearly labelled, in a garage or storage room. Even better, move it off premises into a moving Pod, storage unit, or friend’s garage for the duration of the sales period. If there are pieces of furniture that are not making the transition to your new home and are not ideal in the staging scheme then now is the time to sell or donate them.

Whatever time, effort, and forethought you put into paring back, seriously organizing, or storing your belongings before the house hits the market will pay you back in multiple ways. The first is money, as in more money. In order to maximize profit you need to minimize clutter. Second, a staged home sells faster. It greatly increases the number of buyers who can envision themselves living in the home. The next reason is that it makes your own move easier. From personal experience I can tell you that a calculated early half move makes your true move seem a hundred times easier. It doesn’t just prepare you logistically for your own move it prepares you psychologically for that major transition. By initiating the move it begins to depersonalize the home for you as you prepare the home for its new owners. The end result is that once you move into your new home with all of your belongings they will have already been sorted, labelled, and possibly reduced in quantity, leaving you with more time and energy to enjoy the settling in process.