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: today 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.
You don’t worry about having that extra desk in the dining room as a homework spot because you know it’s not attractive to a potential buyer to see it there. 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’ve wedged into your kitchen to eat breakfast at can be sent away and your family can start 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 this week should be to prepare one or two rooms as if you were putting your house on the market. If you’ve followed along with 2014 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 it will give you a strong start.
More resources for staging and decluttering your home:
- Following a Stager’s Advice to Sell Your Home
- Tips from a couple that live in a 250 square foot apartment With a baby on the way!
How is your 2014 Clutter Cleanse going? We’re almost at the half-way mark. This is the challenging time when resolutions and goals start fading away and we think, maybe I’ll take a short break, and end up never getting back to it. Recommit to your decluttering this week and carve out thirty minutes a day to work on your home.
If you’ve fallen off the wagon get back on it. I just restarted my Whole30 after a little tumble. Not ideal but the bigger failure would have been just giving up completely.
We’re just waiting for my husband’s visa to come through to move, with our two kids, to the Isle of Man. After living in a 4000 square foot house for 15 years I am suddenly confronted with clearing out. As I step back and take a look at what we have accumulated and stored for so long, I realize we haven’t used or needed so much. I am excited (and I confess sometimes overwhelmed) by the prospect of a good clear out. We will probably rent out our home here so need to stage it for showings as well. That should do the trick! Looking forward to our next adventure on the Isle of Man and appreciate reading your insights on living there.
This is a really good idea and has come just at the right time for me, I have been getting seriously stressed about the amount of stuff in my house but feeling like it is the house that’s the problem not the stuff (as in it’s too small for a family of four) Just yesterday my husband suggested stashing all the stuff we don’t use on a daily basis but can’t bear to get rid of just yet in the loft, hadn’t thought much about it till I read this post, it’s a great idea, I am totally going to do it, and fantasising about having lots of clear space already.
Do it! And make a list of what you have stored and keep it handy for reference (feels bad when you have things stored and then buy a duplicate).
Good luck 🙂
For us, trying to de-clutter a household of five (kids 8,4 and 1.5 years old) plus an in-home daycare ran by my wife is a tremendous challenge, indeed!
I honestly did not think I had a clutter problem, but now I will be moving soon from a 4 bedroom house in the country to a 2 bedroom apartment in the city. My garage sale will literally be a garage sale! I have bagged up so much kitchen stuff I do not use, decorations that I will not have room for, and clothing I will never wear again.
One thing I did that I might advise: I do have a copy of the room dimensions and lay out. When I visited the apartment, I counted the cabinets and storage shelves. I figured exactly what I have room for and what I do not. I have been through my house, and I can honestly say that I am bringing the bare minimum with me. I will never have to buy any more furniture (unless there is a break-down), dishes, pots &pans, and books as I plan to buy a Kindle.
If you plan to move, this is a very good start on what to get rid of and what will fit into the new digs.
Both me and my husband loved to live in a home that was staged for sale, maybe that´ll make it easier for us to declutter. I´m currently in our kitchen, trying REALLY hard to keep our countertops clear of clutter, it seems impossible but some day it will stay clean!
Whole30! We’re ten days away from finishing our first one! Way to go- getting back on the wagon.
I’ve had a friend come over to help me with this idea before. She saw our home with new eyes and advised me as to what stuff to get rid of, get out of sight, etc. I was so used to things as they were that I needed someone else’s input.
This is a wonderful concept.
As a child my dad built the houses we lived in, so we would build, live in, sell, move, repeat. Every few years we were in a new house so I learned to not hold onto things tightly – we had built in purge time every few years.
After getting married my husband and I moved a couple of times too, but we have now been in the same house for 5 years without the prospect of moving. It’s not huge, but the biggest space we’ve had, and when you’ve got more space it tends to fill up. Sometimes I wish we’d move just so I would be motivated to get rid of stuff 🙂
Your idea of staging to sell to myself is something I’ve thought about a lot before, but this is a great encouragement to actually do it!