Selling and Decluttering – The Linen Closet

A Buyer for your home will open every closet door, including your linen closet.  If you have things that you would rather people not see, put them in a box.  Buyers open doors but should never be opening boxes or drawers in your furniture. Now that you know that your linen closet will be on display, declutter it before your house is on the market. 

Start by removing everything in the closet. 

1.     Wash the shelves, walls and door.

2.     Sort through your towels.  Keep one or two spare sets in the closet and pack or give away the others. If you have the room, roll some of your towels and put them in a basket in the bathroom near the tub. 

3.     Look at all your bed linen.  If you need to make space in the closet choose two sets per bed in the house.  One set is on the bed; the other is neatly folded and kept in the bedroom that contains the bed.  A neat trick is to fold the sheets and the pillow cases but keep one pillow case to be used as a bag to put the matching set inside.  This way, all you have to do is find the one bag for the bed.

4.     Look at your toiletries.  Are any stale dated?  Toss.  What about the cleaning products?  Sort through these in the same way.  Keep only what you will be using for the next few weeks and store the others in boxes in the basement/garage/storage locker.  Watch out when packing liquids.  Most movers will not allow liquids.  You might want to give your products to friends or relatives. 

5.     Have you got photographs, games, wrapping paper and ribbons and a myriad of other things in the linen closet?  Consider putting these away in boxes for the move.  The less you have in the closet the bigger it will look.  Stage it so that Buyers can imagine their own things in the closet.

6.     When everything is sorted, stack what you will keep in the closet. 

7.     Don’t be tempted to put an air freshener in the closet.  If you must, buy some lavender sachets and put them between the bed sheets. It will give a faint smell and is good aromatherapy for sleeping.

 

Please your Buyer with an organized and clean linen closet.

Photo credit:  118/365: Towels, Again @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/playfullibrarian/3498846572/

Photo credit:  Lavender square @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/dichohecho/3800608793/

 

Zingers #106 - Seven years of bad luck

If you are going to remove mirrors that have been glued to the wall, make sure that you are standing at or above the top of the mirrors.  Criss cross the mirror with tape and put a drop cloth below the mirror.  Of course the mirror is likely to break, especially if the bonding agent is really strong.  Be careful.

Avoid having to see double.

Zingers #105 - Feature this

 Does your living, dining or bedroom need a little boost?  If the paint job still relatively fresh but the room looks a little tired and maybe it looks small, then consider painting a feature wall.  To choose the wall, walk into a room and determine where your eyes go first.  This is likely the wall that will benefit from being a different hue or colour.

Pop with paint.

Zingers #104 - Mirror, mirror on the wall

Have you got a wall of mirrors?  Think about removing them before putting your house on the market.  A wall of mirrors is like being in the fun house, it makes you disoriented.  Covering a wall with mirrors was a decorating fad that is now past its due date.   

Make your house the fairest of them all.

Things Ottawa Home Buyers May Notice #35 - Missing Pictures

Everything you read about staging says to take down personal photos and unusual pictures from the walls.  What some advisers fail to say is - take out the hooks, the nails, the thumbtacks and any other type of hanger and fix the wall. 

Buyers and I were looking at a wonderful bungelow.  The layout, while a bit unusual, was appealing.  However, everywhere you looked there were hooks and nails in the walls where the owners had previously hung their ‘art’.   These were owners who hung stuff over the doors, low on the walls (probably for the children) in collages, above cupboards, etc.  When we finally made it to the basement, there was the ‘art’, stacked along the walls ready for packing. 

It would have been advisable to patch the holes and touch up the paint. 

This house became unhooked from the Buyers’ list.

 Photo credit: Uninspired 46/365 @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/skyfire/4359853973/

Things Buyers May Notice #35 - Country Kitsch Gone Mad

A few weeks ago I was out with Buyers looking at homes.  Of course we had done our homework by looking at the listings on the Internet and evaluating the worthiness of viewing the homes based on the pictures.  One set of home pictures stood out for two reasons  It seemed that the Seller was overly fond of dark maroon paint - it was on the walls inside the home and on the exterior bricks.  Rooms were too dark and depressing because the paint was a no-no.  Secondly, it seemed the Seller was running a craft / country store of kitsch from her home.  Every bit of wall space and every horizontal surface was covered in craft-like items.  It was difficult to see the rooms beyond the stuff.  It was on our “not to see” list.  However, the Listing Agent asked us to give it a chance and take a look.

OMG - we were in the house for 1 minute and one of the Buyers wanted out.  Our eyes were spinning.  There was nowhere to look without being attacked by stuff.  The other Buyer recognized that all of the clutter was, in fact, expensive pieces and probably lovingly collected over time.  Sadly, everything was on display but nothing was a focal point.   The house was lost in the stuff.

How would the Agent tell this client to start to pack up a lifetime of collecting and start painting in beige?  Good luck.

Photo credit:  Kitsch-cow @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/itnomad/11340853/

Zingers #102 - Less is more

Do you have the most wonderful Christmas / Easter/ Hannuka /Valentine’s Day / Halloween collection of decorations?  I bet your friends comment on your collections every time they visit.  Now your house is for sale and your best bet is to keep your decoration collection to a minimum. 

Collect Buyers not knick knacks.

Look what I found - Home Staging Eye Candy

I was looking for some nice examples of small and inexpensive changes that someone could do (likely with the help of a Home Stager) and found a wonderful site of before and after photos at Home Harmony  .  This is a Montreal company that makes miracles with very little money and uses mostly the home owners things.  Take a look and see if you agree.  The best thing is the ease of making the before and after comparisons plus everything is available in Canada and the home owners are very obviously real people. 

Hope you enjoy the site as much as I do.

 

Why these 5 Decorating Mistakes Turn Buyers Away

There was a television special about the 25 biggest decorating mistakes people make in their homes.  Everyone has made a few of these and some are more obvious to home Buyers than others.  Of the 25 here are 5 of my favourites when it comes to selling / show casing your home: 

  1. Toilet rugs - for the family who want to keep their feet warm - good on you BUT for the Buyer this is just a trap for bodily bits and fluids.  This one has a high yuk factor.
  2. Packed Foyer - for the family this is the first catch all station of book bags, boots, shoes, garbage going out, groceries coming in and dropped outerwear.  For the Buyer - this is about getting inside the house and part of the first impression of the house.  Let the Buyers have room to navigate getting their own shoes off and stepping into the living space.
  3. Lack of traffic pattern for furniture placement - for the family where the furniture sits becomes known and members can navigate in the dark around all the pieces.  For the Buyer - clear room to walk in and around the space is needed.  Keep big things away from doorways.  Less is more when you remove furniture to make room for Buyer traffic.
  4. The room purchased in a box (where everything matches).  For the family this is a simple way to decorate - get the bedding, wallpaper, border, pillows, lamps and rug all in the same pattern (the same would go in bathrooms with towels, shower curtain, paper, border, vanity accessories).  For the Buyer this is a nightmare.  
  5. Floating area rugs - For the family, the small rug under the coffee table is perfect.  For the Buyer, the eye sees this as making the room smaller and chopped up.  The solution is to get a bigger rug and anchor it with the legs of the couch, armoirs, etc.  

These are five of my favourites.   There will be others in later blogs.  Remember, if you are not selling, who cares how you live.  When you are selling, you are selling a product - an image - a lifestyle.  Stage your home to show off its best.

Photo credit:“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Albert Einstein @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/katerha/4526272937/

Zingers #101 - Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

Did you ever light a wood fire and have black soot billowing everywhere?  Do you have black greasy soot building up on the fireplace bricks?  Not all soot stains are permanent.  Clean off as much as you can before selling your house.  Do you want the Buyer to think the fireplace is a hazard?

Don’t let soot put a damper on your sale.

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