Staging Our Home
So it is no longer a secret that we semi-recently moved into a new home. And as I mentioned before, we LOVED our previous home, but we outgrew it. We looked at houses for about a year, then we decided to just pull the trigger and put our home on the market. With the way the market was, we expected it to sell fairly quick and that would give us the money we needed for a larger down payment for a bigger house. Well in order to sell quickly, I knew we needed to stage it as best as we could. Our house sold within 4 days when it first went on the market. Those buyers backed out. When we put it back on the market, it literally sold within 10 minutes. No joke. Staging may not have played a part, but it couldn’t hurt! Check out what I did below.
Bedrooms
So in our bedrooms I literally decluttered everywhere I could. In our room I was sure to clean off the nightstands. I even removed alarm clocks each day. I left a few pictures up, but it was not overwhelmed with pictures of us. Obvisouly I made the bed each morning in each room. In Melody’s room I was sure to remove some of her toys to keep it from being so cluttered. Basically if we didn’t need it in the near future, we moved it to a storage unit. I wanted everything to look as neat as possible.
Closets
Clean them out! I didn’t do too much to Melody’s because it is fairly organized. I did remove a few boxes of clothes but that was all. In our guest bedroom, we practically emptied that closet. It was full to the rim with junk. And our closet I removed things on the door and organized it all better. I was sure to get rid of our bulky laundry basket and replaced it with a smaller one. I tried to keep it as empty as possible too.
Bathrooms
So for our bathrooms I bought us each a shower caddy. We filled it with all of our everyday things. Think shampoos, conditioners, soaps, toothbrushes, etc. We then stored that under our cabinets each morning. This kept things off of our counter and looking clean. I replaced our hand towels with new white hand towels. I also removed our garbage can and placed it under the cabinet so it wasn’t out in the open.
Kitchen
I removed as much as I could off of our counters. We don’t keep much on our counters as is, but I reduced it even more. I stored things like knives out of sight too. I didn’t do place settings at our bar to give it an even larger feel. I also removed her toys.
Livingroom
Just as the other rooms, I decluttered. I removed as much as I could off of tables, and kept only the necessities and cute decor. I also removed all of Melody’s toys. I was sure to fluff the couches and blankets each morning too.
Office
We didn’t have to do too much to Brad’s office. We basically just removed most of his action figures and replaced them with other decor and pictures.
Outside
We didn’t have to do too much outside either. We basically removed some of her dirtier toys. And Brad kept the yard well cut.
Overall here are some tips if you don’t want to do too much.
1. Open all of your blinds. The more natural light the better.
2. Turn on all of your lights too. You want it to be as bright as possible. This makes it look more open.
3. Keep things clean. Don’t leave dirty dishes out or wet towels.
4. Put all of your everyday things in a container and hide them under cabinets. While people will open cabinets and see them, it keeps them being an obvious eyesore.
5. Replace hand towels with simple white towels. This few dollar upgrade will make a huge difference.
6. Make beds!
7. Run a vacuum over the floors each morning (or evening if pressed for time).
8. Declutter as much as possible.
9. Add fresh flowers where you can.
10. Remove SOME personal items. We left a lot of our pictures up, but you don’t want them EVERYWHERE.
Basically imagine you are walking in your house to potentially buy it. What do you notice? Fix that!