Did you let go of a big piece of furniture? Still thinking about it?
One of the bigger lessons I learned about stuff and clutter came a year before I heard about minimalism. I was very pregnant with my first son and we were selling our 598 square foot condo to move into something bigger. Side note: now I know we could have survived, even thrived, in that small home with a baby but at that time we thought getting more space was the wise thing to do.
Our realtor gave us some advice to prepare our home for showings and the biggest one was this: take out as much stuff as you can.
So we moved all of our little things, books we had wedged into corners, kitchen items that usually lived on the counter, into our storage space. We tucked the guitar away, hid the side table and made as much floor space visible as possible.
Our home looked fresh, spacious and inviting at the end of our purge. It also sold quickly and at above asking price.
One way to declutter the bigger things: Prepare Your Home as If You Were Selling It.
The “trick” to this strategy is that it gives you new eyes.
The goal of creating a spacious clean and sell-able home can help you get past some of your stumbling blocks or problem areas. The table you wedged into the kitchen to eat breakfast at can be put away and you family can test out eating breakfast at the dining room table. Don’t think too far down the road or get stuck on “what if” scenarios. If you’re scared to let some furniture go permanently loan it out or store it in another room temporarily. This is a great way to test run alternative furniture placement and change how you use the space in your home.
True “staging” to sell your home means depersonalizing it. Take out the family photos, move the treadmill from the living room to the basement, change the quirky layout of your furniture, the one that blocks your toddler from chewing on computer cables, to a more pleasant and widely appealing aesthetic. For this part of the Clutter Cleanse you may want to strip your rooms bare and then slowly add pieces back in to find the right mix of keeping your home “you” – personalized to your taste and needs – while still getting the benefits of staging.
If you have a small home try to stage most of it. Get that clean and easy to live in look and then add back in the memorabilia, photos and art elements that suit your taste.
If you have a big home the goal should be to prepare one or two rooms as if you were putting your house on the market. If you’ve followed along with 2016 Clutter Cleanse your wardrobe should be in good shape so your bedroom may be a natural place to start. If you can tackle your living room as well you’ll have a strong start.
Here’s a walk down memory lane for my big furniture purge:
This is EXCELLENT advice! I had been moving toward minimalism for several years but it wasn’t until I started prepping my home to sell last year that it all clicked for me. I slowly began giving away and selling things and realized that every time I did, I liked the cleaner, simpler feel of my home so much more!
I’m so with the program Rachel. I also found new ways to use furniture items. The small kitchen table became the much needed desk in another room and the two open tv stand type units have been placed one on top of the other to make the also much needed bookcase and toy storage unit in my daughter’s bedroom. (NB: You need to secure d-i-y furniture like this properly.) So two items out of the living room (one tv stand was already in the bedroom) and saved money on the desk and bookcase. I did buy a 2nd hand dining table and chairs but this enhances our lives as it’s perfect for the space and what we use it for.
I love that you got creative to use your existing furniture to solve new needs 🙂