Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - ”Stage” your home just for YOU!!! | Clutterbug Podcast # 7

Episode Date: April 14, 2016

Take some time this weekend to "stage" your home just for you and your family! Why wait until you are selling to make your home fresh, bright and inviting?  Minimize surface and wall clutter and make a huge impact on your home!! Check out my Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, welcome back to another clutterbug podcast. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about home staging and a fun game that I like to play sometimes, which is pretending that I'm selling my house when I'm really not. A few years ago, actually it's quite a few years ago. My neighbor at an old house was selling her house, and it wasn't selling. And it wasn't even that they weren't asking for too much. And it was actually listed quite well. but the house was kind of a disaster inside.

It was neat, but it was really cluttered. It wasn't dirty, but there was just way too much stuff, and it was for sale for probably a year, and she kept lowering the price, and I was terrified that it was going to, like, lower the price of our home, and I really wanted to move at that point. So I was like, Joe, she's totally, like, dropping the prices of the entire neighborhood.

So what I did is I walked over there, and I offered to stage her home for, free. I had never staged a home before, but just been looking at the pictures, because I'm so nosy like that. I was looking at the pictures of the house on MLS, which is the online house sale listing thing here. I could tell why it wasn't selling. I could tell why people weren't going in. And it really had everything to do with just how much stuff she had and where she was putting her furniture and things like that. So she reluctantly allowed me to come in and see. stage her home and I didn't spend a dime. I got boxes and totes and packed up her things. She had a lot

of knick-knacks. They all went. She had really large artwork on her walls, which is great if you love your artwork and you want to display it. But when you're selling a house, what it was doing was making that the space look a lot smaller because so much of our wall space was taken up by busy pictures and artwork. So we really minimized the amount of things on her walls and, you know, just had a few pieces instead of most of her wall space being covered by stuff. In the kitchen, I packed up every single one of her appliances that she wasn't using all the time, which freed up room for the toaster and her blender and, you know, her mixer and all the things that were on her counter. and I gave her, you know, kitchen coverage. She had all these things like taped on them,

reminders of messages in her fridge. You couldn't even see her fridge. It was covered with notes and pictures and all of that stuff. So all of that came off. And I spent two days there just decluttering, decluttering the bedrooms, removing, you know, busy area rugs that she had, just really making everything neutral and didn't spend a dime. And believe it or not, that weekend, the 8th, agent came and had an open house and she had multiple offers and she sold the house. And afterwards, when I was talking to her, she said she liked the house so much more with less stuff in it. She couldn't believe how much bigger it felt and brighter and she just went home and thought, oh, I love this house for the first time ever. And here she is. Now it's sold and she's selling it.

And I think after that the agent asked me to stage some other houses, and it was the same thing. It was just going to people's homes and reducing clutter, and every single one of my clients had the same reaction. They liked their house more with less stuff in it. So I took the same approach to my own home, just trying to reduce as much clutter as possible. And you have these personal items, and you think, you know, displaying them makes you happy because you see them all the time and in this artwork you bought or your picture. your family and you're like, oh, I just love having everything. And I'm not suggesting having a, being a total minimalist and having nothing out. But by reducing it, it really does make your space feel bigger, cleaner, brighter, and it makes you like it more. That's just

the way it goes. So I really want to challenge you guys, if you're listening, to do some major like pretending you're staging your home to take a look at your space, take pictures, if that helps. and then really think what can I get rid of? What can I eliminate from this space that's not necessary? And a fun thing to do too is, you know, remove everything, pack it up in a box, and then take a look at your space and put one or two things back at a time and stand back and look and say, how does it feel now? How does it look now?

And you'd be surprised you're probably going to find that you're not going to want to put back the majority of that stuff that you've boxed up. I know a lot of you might be thinking, I just don't have the space to store all the stuff that's taken away. But you'd be surprised, you know, just how much you can fit inside a tote. So I like to rotate a lot of my accessories because I don't want to get rid of them per se. And so the things that are darker, like black and dark brown, I bring out in fall and winter.

And the accessories I have that are light and bright and white, I bring those out in spring and summer. So I just store one little tote under my stairs and it's filled with different accessories. and I switch them out from time to time. I also do the same thing with pictures. I love displaying family photos, but I don't want them on every wall and every surface all over my entire house. So I swapped them out. I've got this great picture that I love of us all riding a roller coaster.

And, you know, spring and summer, the roller coaster pictures out. And in the winter, I have our family picture of us outside. I'll bundle up. So you can still have the things you love. It's just going to make your space feel so much more inviting. and, you know, great for you and your family with less of it, with less of the things you love, out and being displayed. So play, pretend, pretend you're selling your house, pack it up,

and you'd be surprised. I have a feeling you might just fall in love with your space all over again. I just made a video that's going to be posted tomorrow, and it's 10 ways to refresh your home on a budget, and basically it's just stuff from the dollar store, little things that can really make your space feel brighter, and lighter. And so definitely check out that video. It's on my YouTube channel, which is Clutterbug on YouTube. If you haven't watched it already, you can just search Clutterbug on YouTube and you'll

find me. And the video is called 10 Ways to Refresh Your Home. So definitely check that out. And again, thanks for watching and have fun playing, you know, stager in your house. And if you do, you know, remove a lot of stuff, I'd love to see before and after pictures. That would be amazing. I'm going to put a link to my Facebook page. I would love, love, love if you posted some before and after pictures of some decluttering that you did, or you can send it to my personal email at Cass at clutterbug. That's Cass at C-L-U-T-T-E-R-B-U-G dot M-E. I love, love, love, seeing before and after clutter pictures, photos, videos. I find it really motivating for me, too, to go that extra little mile to

really get rid of some things that I'm not using and loving. So thanks to you guys so much for listening and I will see you tomorrow.