De-cluttering your home is not easy, but it is crucial when selling your home. It is one of the most cost-effective ways to prepare your home for the sale because it makes the house look larger, so you gain more square footage (visually at least). By clearing out the clutter you also showcase the positive features in the home. No one wants to look at the large windows with beautiful views when there is a pile of clothes on the floor and toys scattered about when they walk into the room. It’s distracting and pulls the focus of the buyer. If you want your home to sell quickly (and you do to get the best price) you will also need to allow the buyer’s to visualize living in the space. That’s hard to do with your items claiming the area. Follow these steps to tackle that clutter before your home gets listed for the best results.
- Schedule Your Time – You’re busy with family, work, and the myriad of tasks and responsibilities that combine to form your life. When that’s through, you’re lucky if you get a chance to relax, but the cleaning is not going to get started until you start it. Set aside 2-4 hours at a time to start tackling the project and stick to it. You have to make it a priority and work it into your schedule. If you can only afford 15 minutes a day, book those 15 minutes so it can get done.
- Start Small – Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was your clutter. It is ambitious to think that you can get through it all in one sitting. Organizing is an evolving process that changes as the needs of a home owner change. Pick an area – one room, one closet, one corner. Schedule the area along with the time you have allowed to create a plan. For an easy way to think about it, start with what a buyer is going to see first when they walk into the home and move on from there. With a solid plan in place, there’s nothing stopping you from succeeding.
- Make A Home – The reason most clutter starts is because there’s no where to put it. The best organizers will tell you, “A place for everything and everything in it’s place.” Find the place that each item belongs in and put it there. If you don’t have a spot for it, then it may be time to purge. You really don’t want to take things with you to your new home that you don’t need anyway.
- 10 Minute Corrections – Before you go to bed each night, take 10 minutes to walk through the house (or at least the areas you have finished) and make sure that everything is back in it’s home. That way the clutter won’t re-build so you won’t have to keep spending your scheduled time fixing what you’ve already done. You’ll be thankful to start this good habit when it comes times for showings and you are ready first thing in the morning.
Remember, you can tackle that clutter and make your home show ready to get the most money in the shortest amount of time. For more tips and tricks or a personal review of your home’s readiness to list, call Helen today at 847.967.0022 or email [email protected].