How to De-Clutter and Get Your Home Ready for Sale: Expert Guide

How to De-Clutter and Get Your Home Ready for Sale: Expert Guide

The one thing I tell to any seller at any price point or home size is de-clutter. Get rid of the personal items and stuff that makes your place look even smaller. Decluttering is one of the easiest and cheapest thing you can do to get your home ready to sell. It is one of the most important things you can do to get your home ready to list.

What You Need to Know

De-clutter according to the date of your home’s most recent listing. Put your personal belongings, like clothes, toys, dishes, and other things, in a storage facility. Leave your place tidy. Do not allow your place to look like a disaster. You do not want any potential buyers to walk into your home and say to themselves, “Wow, what a mess!” If you have items left out that you want to list for sale, place them into baskets or boxes, and place them in the “sellable” or “not-so-sellable” boxes or bags. Make sure you label each item with the date of purchase.

What To Get Rid of

I recommend buying the book Organizing from the Inside Out to help you get rid of the clutter. The book outlines different ways to de-clutter your house. My favorite strategy is where you have an area or room designated for each member of your family (so they each know where to put their stuff). For instance, you may decide that everyone in the house has to put away their own clothes, shoes, accessories, etc. It doesn’t matter if there’s anything in the house and if your house is over a thousand square feet or one hundred fifty. You can designate specific places in the house for each family member to put away their own belongings. You may want to do it differently for different ages.

Declutter Your Home

How to Declutter

If you want to de-clutter, you have a few options. You can hire a professional organizer or use simple tips from a few popular sites such as The House Game, The Home Guru, and De-Clutter My Home. Decluttering Tips 1. Declutter – Don’t throw anything away. Go through your stuff and decide what you will keep. When you have a limited amount of space, you want to put your money towards the items you are going to sell. Toss or donate what you won’t need. 2. Remove Clutter – Removing things from your space like decorative pieces and furniture can give the room a bigger sense of space. 3. Organize – When you organize your space, it makes it look more polished and when you have items that are arranged and accessible, it can make it easier for you to find items. 4.

Hanging Clothes

Hanging Clothes will clutter your closet, your home, and even your life. By taking 30 minutes every few months to get rid of unneeded or unwanted items, you’ll make your home more inviting and appealing to buyers. Tossing Clutter In Your Home A seller’s nightmare is a cluttered house. Empty all drawers, closets, and cupboards. If possible, take boxes to the dump and store all your non-cluttery items in one place. If you don’t have room for the items, donate them. Cardboard As much as you love paper, cardboard is not. When your home is listed, you’ll have to buy large amounts of paper for marketing purposes. Cardboard is the cheapest way to store and display your ads and fliers. Other Uses For Cardboard Cleaning out cabinets and drawers. A home should be easy to clean and tidy.

Tossing Extra Stuff

One of the easiest ways to de-clutter is to do a ruthless toss. This means all the stuff in your home that you do not really need or use. The junk drawer, garage, basement and attic all have room for extra stuff. Look for large furniture you no longer want to sell. There will also be extra kitchen items that are taking up space in your cabinets or pantry. Donate and Recycle Tossing old furniture and household items that are not being used. They have a better place than in your home. You can also sell these items to a consignment store. For furniture, always look for the above and below market value. One reason to sell your furniture is to give your extra room for an addition or use the money to pay off your debts.

Cleaning Your Home

My second tip is to clean everything. Dirty counters, toilets, walls, and everything else. I realize some sellers may not like to get up in the middle of the night and clean their house, but you should be ready. Everything in your house should be clean. You want to make sure potential buyers don’t walk into something that will scare them away. Planning a Vacation Vacation can be a stressful time as well as an expensive one. For example, if you’re looking for a vacation home and know the cost will be pretty high, try to plan a vacation while the home is on the market. Going on a trip for several weeks can be a great distraction for you and for your realtor and even the next house. If you need a push, watch a few HGTV shows about vacations and get inspired!

Flooring

Walls and Cabinets Organize your clutter into drawers, cabinets, etc. Clean! Clean! Clean! Open all cabinets, shelves, closets, garages, basements and your home. Look around and clean any clutter that’s making you feel claustrophobic. You should vacuum the floors, dust your whole house, sweep the floors, clean the floors inside and out, wipe down all the mirrors, clean out the corners of the cabinets, clean behind the refrigerator, wipe down the toilet, get rid of expired food and dog hair, etc. Lighting Lighting. Lights. Lights. Install at least one new light fixture in your home that is light, bright and open. Especially in a kitchen or bathroom, light is the best way to feel cozy. Mold and Pests Make your home a stress-free place. Keep the pests out!

Walls

Almost every seller I know will tell you to get rid of all those large flat-panel TVs and flat-screen monitors. If you have an investment, a first floor tenant or a work-from-home homeowner it might be fine. But for those renting or those who rent with kids, have kids, are trying to sell, or simply want to make sure their kids can’t destroy the place when they go home, it’s probably a wise idea to eliminate them. Furniture If you want to sell your home fast, you’re going to have to cut costs and this includes furniture. While you can always take them to your favorite second hand shop, renting storage space is a much better option. The cheapest furniture you can rent is about $10 a month and there is a lot you can save by doing so.

Windows

Decide how many windows you want on your home, the number that best fits your needs. You may have a double hung on one side, single hung on the other, or a mix of both. The most important thing is to make sure that your windows have at least one pane of glass in them. No window is complete without having at least one window pane of glass. Take note of the height and depth of the windows. You need to plan around the fact that you will have doorways/interior stairs that will go from the main living level of your home to the second floor. Make sure that these doors and stairs are accessible, and that you won’t have to struggle to get into your home through an upstairs window or door. I also suggest that you take a look at your ceiling fan.

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2021-09-28

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