3 Steps to Declutter
Tags:
SELLING YOUR HOME, DEPERSONALIZE, DECLUTTER, MOVING, PREPARING TO SELL
Are you thinking of selling your home in the near future? It is never too early to start decluttering your home to prepare it to get sold. After many years of living in a home, we lose track of all the stuff we have tucked away in our homes. Plus there’s nothing like the idea of moving to make it oh-so-much easier to let go of all that clutter!
One of the first things a realtor will tell you is to clean and declutter before placing your home for sale so that your home looks more spacious and inviting to potential buyers.
Homebuyers want large spacious rooms and decluttering is the fastest and easiest way to achieve that great first impression – no renovations needed!
Here are 3 steps to take if you want to declutter and stage your home for sale.
STEP 1: Remove All Personal Items.
When preparing your home for sale you want to depersonalize your home as much as you possibly can. Buyers want to be able to picture themselves living in your home. It is difficult to do that with all your personalized items throughout your home.
This includes:
• Dramatically decreasing the number of family photos in your home
• Remove large collections on display (think knick-knacks)
• Remove unusual decor you want to neutralize your home as much as possible
When you take our personality out of your home, you leave room for the buyer to imagine herself living there. And that’s what you want!
Decluttering and depersonalizing your home can make all the difference as the potential buyers should not feel like a guest in your home but like they could picture themselves living in your home.
STEP 2: Remove Excess and Worn Furniture
You want to remove any furniture that’s crowding your rooms and anything that’s not in the greatest shape. You ideally want to open up the floor plan so that buyers can freely walk around a room. Less is sometimes more. Any dated or worn furniture should be removed as well.
Removing extra furniture will instantly give the impression that your home looks larger. Buyers will not miss that extra chair in the living room or side tables or coffee table. They won’t want seating for 10 in the family room. Plus if your furniture is showing its age it will not put your home in the best light. And as unfair as it sounds, a buyer may look at the banged-up coffee table and assume that your home itself hasn’t been well taken care of. You certainly do not want to set off any red flags if at all possible!
This may feel like an extreme measure but it’s completely worth it – decluttering your home will help get it sold quickly and for top dollars.
When you take out as much furniture as possible, you might think the room looks empty. But your buyer will look at the same room and think it has tons of possibilities!
STEP 3: Declutter All Your Other Stuff!
You can either declutter the unnecessary stuff NOW or you can spend time, energy, and MONEY to move it and continue NOT to use it. You may have held onto the old worn furniture or that old sports equipment for years. But when you think of packing, loading, and unpacking ALL THAT STUFF, there’s a switch in your head that gets flipped that makes it suddenly seem very attractive to let it go.
And the price of that clutter starts to become a whole lot more obvious. When you declutter your home, it’ll look fresh and clean to your buyer.
Be ruthless! It’s just as easy to declutter something as it is to pack it up (easier, in fact). Switch your thinking from, “I might need this” to “I probably won’t need this.” You want to have clear or almost clear surfaces (tables, counters, etc.) Now’s the time to tackle that mountain of paperwork! Don’t stress if you feel a room is a bit empty. Don’t forget to also clear everything off the fridge! And don’t forget about the garage too and the basement.
Also don’t forget to declutter inside of cupboards, closets, and drawers! Buyers look behind doors, too. And if they see cupboards and closets overflowing with stuff, they’ll conclude that your home doesn’t have enough storage. Not a good impression!
Trust me you will be impressed by how more spacious your home looks once the clutter is cleared and everything is nice and tidy.
