Getting the House Ready

I've been struggling for post ideas lately with everything that is going on but, I thought this would be a good one. When selling your house, obviously appearance is the most important thing to the potential buyer... is it in good condition? is it clean? is there enough space? There are plenty of ways to stage your house without breaking the bank. Why spend an exorbitant amount of money on a house you're not going to live in?

So, the cheapest and easiest thing for you to do is to clean. Clean every nook and cranny you can. You want your house sparkling. Remember what it looked like when you moved in, before babies, dogs, in-laws?? That's what you want it to look like. Along with cleaning comes de-cluttering. Remove all of those baby pictures from the fridge, the five extra tv trays from the living room, all the extra toys that aren't being played with. This will make your home look more spacious and less cluttered. Hubby and I are planning a garage sale for next weekend to get rid of all of our extra clutter... really, I don't want to move that little statue that we've been holding on to for the last 3 moves again!

After you get the extra clutter out and you've cleaned like you've never cleaned before... you can look at changing your furniture around. Instead of going out and buying new furniture, you can stage your furniture differently. We moved one of our sofas into our back family room and moved a sitting chair into our front living room. This opened up a lot of space up front and gave the back a more homey feeling.

So, the first three tips...Clean, De-clutter, and work with the furniture you already have. This should cost you only the cost of your cleaning products and you may make some money if you have a garage sale. If you don't want to do that, you can call your local charity to come pick up your clutter as well. We have taken a lot of our stuff to Goodwill over the years.

Next time...DIY repairs, what really needs to be done, looking for an agent.