31 Days to a Staged Home :: Day 9, Decluttering

Hi!

Welcome back!

If it's your first time here, I highly recommend
that you start at beginning of this series

(as each principle builds upon the next),

entitled 31 Days to a Staged Home: HERE.

Today is a fun day!

Right?

Decluttering sounds so labor-intensive and menial,

and if you have never staged a home before, 

you are probably not quite sure

what you are supposed to be decluttering.

You aren't sure what you might need to keep 

while your house is on the market

(which won't be very long if you've staged it well).

You aren't sure which items

you'll need to turn your house into a home for buyers.

Yesterday, I encouraged you to set up A Staging Area, 

and to acquire a storage area (if necessary)

and, if those spaces are ready,

today's assignment will be a breeze.

Decluttering is actually one of my favorite parts of staging!

Why? 

For several reasons:

All of this upfront work 

makes the final move so much easier 

because most of your items 

will already be packed and ready to move.

You'll be living with less 

which equals less time to get the house ready for showings.

Pre-planning and purging makes your unpacking process

proceed much more smoothly.

If you are selling items that are not needed, 

this oftentimes off-sets the cost of other improvements or repairs.

So let's get started.

There are at least three steps to this process:

Set up some boxes, bins, bags, whatever you've got,

and download/print/cut-out these helpful tags from 

Geralin over at Metropolitan Organizing

(also read the awesome post with these tags):

Tape the tags to your boxes/bins/bags/whatever and start purging.

Here is the list of the items I always remove from around the house, from the start:

(I suggest that you remove all of these from your own house.)

...

This is a majority of the list. 

As we start with Day 12 :: Art & Accessories,

there will probably be more that you'll need to get packed

or get to the staging area (that we discussed yesterday).

You will also learn what to do with what's left.

This post I wrote about Redundabundance 

will help you declutter without guilt.

Tomorrow's popular topic?

Cleaning.

Day 31 is Q & A Day,

so if you have any questions, please ask them below in the comments.

Thank you and have a blessed day!