By Troy Coleman

My wife and I recently decided to put our home on the market. That decision was the catalyst for an entire process that transformed our home into a ready for the public type exhibit. Through experience, we have learned the tremendous benefit of having a staging consultant come take a look at our home. The value of an impartial eye as to what a potential buyer will see can mean the difference of days on the market or months. Once our place was staged and photographed, it was ready to go on the market. This step meant it would soon be open for showings and those showings needed to look as much like the pictures as was reasonable. After all, the staging and photos were intended to allow potential buyers the easiest ability to imagine themselves living in our home. The most consistent suggestions in our staging consultation were to eliminate clutter and remove all personal items.

Here are a few tips we discovered through the process that helped us survive constantly preparing our home to look as if we did not actually live there.

Make Some Cabinet Space:

When clearing counters in the kitchen, pack up and clear a couple closed cabinets for items you will need to put away (sometimes quickly) when a showing is scheduled. We emptied a cabinet next to the sink to stash a dish drying rack when needed. Most of our appliances that had lived on the counter, like our toaster, were able to fit in cabinets once some space had been created. This also helped in the bathroom where we cleared everything off the counter except the hand soap. Having a couple empty cabinets helped for quick turn-around and we were able to pre-pack a few of our lesser used items.

Keep Cleaning Items Handy:  

Having a broom, a duster, and bottle of all-purpose cleaner on the ready-made quick touch-ups easy. Our home hit the market at the height of fall and there was a constant trail of leaves after every showing. We would do a quick sweep before and after every showing to keep the task from getting to cumbersome. Having a duster ready for surfaces that attract the most attention like the coffee table or dining room table was handy as was the all-purpose cleaner for bath and kitchen counter tops.

Remove the Unnoticed Odors:  

We took steps to keep our home smelling as nice as possible. While this seems easy enough, we knew from visiting friend’s homes there were likely smells we did not notice, like our dogs. For people just seeing our home for the first time, some of these subtle scents might be all they could notice.  We avoided heavily scented air fresheners as they fade and really don’t fight an odor but add another overwhelming scent. To battle even subtle odors we might not catch, we took the trash out often, burned candles (look for mild scents that will not overwhelm) when home, placed small floral arrangements on the table and in the bathroom. We used a spray fabric softener from  Method  on our bath mats and small rugs before running them through a quick, air cycle in the dryer prior to showings. The result was a scent of fresh laundry that made the home feel even cleaner.

While many of these tasks felt tedious, we kept reminding ourselves that with a little work our home would have a better chance of selling faster. The faster the home sold the faster we could get back to living in our home and better yet, get ready for our new one.

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