How to stage for free when selling your home

“You need to stage your home!”  Often the first words out of many people’s mouths when they find out you are selling your home.  What is staging?  Staging is simply arranging your home so that people looking to buy it can see it for what it is.  When it comes to staging, you have 2 options:  Staging your home yourself or hiring a Staging Company.  Staging companies come in many shapes and sizes.  The thing they all have in common is that they cost money.  So, if you have extra money lying around the house, feel free to hire a staging company.  If not, below are some easy ways to stage your home by yourself.

The first thing to do :  Remove any and all family pictures from your walls, shelves, and everywhere else.  There are two reasons for this.  The first reason is it disrupts the flow of a showing.  When someone is looking to buy your house, you want them focusing on where they would place their furniture, how nice the granite is in the kitchen, whether or not their mother-in-law can sleep in the shop in the back, etc.  Pictures distract people.  The last thing you want is a buyer with cash in hand, stopping to see why you like poodles instead of labs.  The second reason to remove family pictures is because they make rooms and hallways feel smaller.  I am not sure when hallways became the “art walks” for the family tree, but they did.  Art galleries are open with high ceilings and very few walls.  There is a reason for this.  Make your hallways and rooms feel like empty “art walks” so the next owner knows where to hang their art.

The next thing to do is remove any animal trophies (even the pictures).  I cannot express how important this is. Unless you are selling a hunting ranch in Wyoming or New Mexico, it can cost you a sale.  Enough said.

As for the rest of the house, here is the secret to staging: Take 1/3 of the stuff out of every room, literally.  There are very few times you should break this rule.  If you have 3 pieces of furniture in your living room, take one of them out and put it in the garage.  If you have 3 lamps in an office, take one (you guessed it) and put it in the garage.  If you do not have a garage, use one of the rooms in your house for storage.  If you have 6 chairs at your kitchen table, take 2 out.  This will leave your house less cluttered, but not empty.

Bookshelves and closets.  Same rules.  If your closet is like mine, 1/3 is very difficult to estimate.  For clothes that are hanging on hangers, just make sure the clothes are hanging freely and not bunching together.  The easiest way to decide what to remove, is take all the clothes you aren’t going to wear in the next 6 months out of your closet and store them.

Staging your home yourself helps you sell your house, helps you pack, and is free.  When in doubt, take more out.