the home clean, de-cluttering, and making the home brighter and more beautiful. Below are some basic steps to take when cleaning and organizing a home for staging: The entire house should be studied and straightened. Sellers should make an effort to erase their own assumptions about the house—they need to look at it as if they have never seen it before in their lives. Then, with that mindset, they are advised to go through all the rooms in the building to make sure everything is in its proper place, and to make note of what needs to be moved, repositioned, or removed. Make piles. It may not sound very organized, but sometimes the best path to a neat home is through a messy one. Once you’ve taken a good, detached look at the house, start sorting its contents into piles. Piles should be organized as the seller clears each room. The value, appeal, and aesthetic of each item should be considered. Items that you don’t want the prospective buyer to see during staging should be set aside; those you intend to keep should be recorded. Have a spreadsheet. Keeping some written notes makes the whole process a great deal easier and less stressful. Make a list of rooms that require organization, and catalogue their contents into different priorities to get a good, quantitative sense of what must stay and what must go. This will be very helpful as you proceed. It will also help with prioritizing expenses, like new staging elements to add, areas in need of paint, and other small home improvement notes. Empty closets. Before staging a home, it is advisable that sellers’ closets should be emptied and cleaned. Any unused items in the wardrobes should be properly disposed of, either temporarily or—if the “Spring Cleaning” mood strikes you—more permanently. This helps the buyer see how much space they have to work with, and lets them envision filling it with their own possessions.
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