House Staging Tips
May 19, 2007 by Julie Bonner
Filed under Home & Living
School’s out for us! Friday was their last day and our summer has officially begun. Summer means a lot of things – vacations, pool parties, working in the yard and also moving. A lot of families wait until the summer to move. That’s what we have done and the count down to our move has really begun. We leave in 3 weeks today.
We have been busy today going through toys. Tomorrow we will go through our two storage sheds and then work our way through the rest of the house. We do not like moving with junk, so every move we have made has been a huge decluttering moment. Moving is a great way to help you not hold on to stuff, but I wouldn’t recommend it. 
My husband isn’t coming to Texas until August, so he has the lucky job of getting our house ready. We haven’t decided 100% yet if we are going to sell or rent. Either way though, we need to have our house ready for people to come look at.
I have a couple of other friends and my sister who are also trying to sell their houses. One of the best ways to get people to walk into your house and say “This might just be the one” is to stage it.
I thought I would give you a few staging tips, just in case you are planning to sell your house in the near future. I’ll start with the bedrooms today and then go over a couple of other room in the next few days. Here are a few tips to help you stage your bedrooms:
- Organize closets
- Store away excess furniture and clutter
- Put as many of the children’s toys put away and out of sight
- Add some greenery and some fresh flowers
- Take as many things off the dressers as possible, leave 1 to 3 decorative items out
- If the bedspreads are really worn, possibly purchase some new ones, you can always use them at the new house
- Take down any frilly, fancy, over-the-top window coverings and replace with simplified ones
- Replace an old, out dated lights and ceiling fans withnew ones
- In the kids’ rooms take down tacked up posters, trophies and anything that makes the walls look cluttered
Those tips should help make the space look less cluttered and visitor friendly. You want whoever is coming to see your house to be able to picture themselves and their family living there.
I hope everyone is having a great weekend!
Welcome to Texas! I too am preparing for a move, and attempting to get my house ready for sale. Staging is really the way to go. The children’s rooms seem the hardest to stage–you feel like you’re depriving them if you pack up some of their toys! Closets are hard, too. My post today is actually on staging closets–really hard for me to do!
You are totally right! The children’s rooms are the hardest. Preparing for a move is hard enough on them.
Our stuff is going to be in storage for awhile until we find a house and I feel so bad that I’m having to tell them to pick a few of their favorite toys, and the rest they won’t see for awhile. But then, when I really look at what they play with on a daily basis, it’s probably about 10% of what they own.
I’ll go take a look at your staging tips. Thanks for stopping by!