How to sell personalize your life
How to Stage Your Home For Living
hey fun fact about me i'm in my 40s
and i have lived in 16 different homes
my wife and i have been married for 20
years and we've lived in six different
homes
needless to say i've got a lot of
experience
in moving buying and selling houses
there's an interesting thing that takes
place when you get ready to sell a home
a realtor comes over takes a looks
around
and they'll say all right we need to
stage
this home for selling and then they'll
list
a long list of things for you to do to
get your home
in shape for it to be sold and i've
always found this to be
an interesting phenomenon that takes
place in my life and in other people's
lives
where we work a week 10 days and we get
our home
in like the best shape that it's ever
been
just to sell it and move out
and so i've coined this phrase and i
call it
stage your home for living
how do we take some of those principles
some of those ideas
some of the items on the to-do list to
get our home ready for selling
and apply it so that we can enjoy
the home that we're living in now
and i've narrowed it down to nine steps
here are nine steps that you can take
to stage your home for living
for enjoying it in its best shape while
you're still
inside of it number one remove
a third of your possessions
on the top of almost every realtor's
to-do list when they come into a home is
they say
you need to get rid of about a third of
your stuff
and this is because homes that have
fewer possessions
are calmer they're more peaceful
they seem more quiet more spacious
larger and so start there
get rid of the things that you don't
need
and create a better environment to live
in
number two everything has
a home find a place for everything
that you own now the reason this takes
place is because when you're
selling a home sometimes you don't get a
lot of warning when a potential buyer
wants to come through your house maybe
a 15-minute warning a 20-minute warning
and so you quick
run around and you're trying to put
everything back where it goes
so that the home looks tidy when the
potential buyer walks through
well i have found that you can do this
for your life as well you can have it
where you can tidy up
you can reset your entire home in 15 to
20 minutes
now you can't do it if you haven't done
the first step
if you have too much stuff then that's
impossible to do
but if you've taken the first step
you've gotten rid of a third of your
possessions
you've identified the homes where
everything lives
it becomes much quicker than you can
possibly imagine
to reset your home every evening for the
following day
number three declutter surfaces
i'm talking about countertops shelves
tabletops all these items where we just
allow things to accumulate
because all the things in our
vision our eyesight become a form of
visual
clutter in our environment and in our
home
and so take a look around at all the
things that you just leave
out where can they be put can you find
new storage solutions for them
again this will make your home your
environment more calm
and more peaceful it'll feel like
there's less visual
noise around you
number four personalize
your decorations now when you're selling
your home
the realtor will come in and say we need
to remove these photos of your family
and just put up generic decorations
instead
and the reasoning is this if a potential
buyer walks in and sees a lot of photos
of your family
it communicates to them we live here
not you and so they'll say
take out the photos of the family and
just put up stuff that matches
of course if you're living in your home
you want the exact opposite to happen
you do want it to feel
like you live there and so look for the
exact opposite to happen
remove generic decorations replace them
with photos of your family
things that mean something to you things
that communicate
important truths about the culture of
the home
and the family that you're trying to
raise
number five give your bathroom
a thorough cleaning it is one of the
worst
places in the home to clean i get it
no one likes scrubbing in those cracks
and in those
corners but when you're getting ready to
show a house
you've got to do it and so you spend the
time and you do the scrubbing
and suddenly your bathroom looks shinier
and brighter than it's ever been
and my thought has always been man i
wish it was like this
every morning when i was getting ready
rather than just when i'm getting ready
to move out
so bite the bullet on this one and put
in the effort and put in the time
to make it shiny and clean and more
enjoyable to be in
number six focus on curb
appeal a potential buyer typically makes
a decision if they're gonna buy your
house or not in the first couple minutes
and so what they see when they first
pull up
to your house to your home is one of the
most important things about it it's
called
curb appeal your realtor will point it
out
of course you drive into your driveway
every single day
you leave your home almost every day and
so why not make that pulling into your
driveway or pulling out of the garage
an enjoyable experience paint the
foundation
lay down the new mulch put grass seed on
the bare spots in your yard don't leave
your kids toys out all over
in the front yard make it an enjoyable
experience for you
just like you will when you go to sell
it
number seven clean thoroughly
not just the bathroom but clean the
other areas of your home as well
in most homes we're doing the usual
stuff we're cleaning up the kitchen
and we're vacuuming and we're cleaning
off the table and
we're making the bed like we're doing
the usual stuff
but when you get ready to sell it again
you're going to be dusting places that
you don't
usually dust and you're going to be
getting into all the different corners
and cracks and crevices well just take
the time to do it
if you're living in the home and enjoy a
clean
environment number eight
tackle minor projects
take a little notepad around your home
and notice all the little things that
need to be fixed up but you just keep
putting off
the paint chips on the walls the leaky
faucet
the squeaky door the light bulb that
needs to be replaced
these are all things that when you get
ready to sell it
you're going to have to do them just do
them now
so you can enjoy the space while you're
living in it
and then the last one which can be
difficult but i recommend it
if you can tackle a major project
if you're getting ready to sell your
house and the inspector comes through
and says you need to put on a new roof
you really need to fix that saggy spot
in the deck
whatever the major project might be you
need to replace the appliances
who knows what it's going to be but
here's what's happened
to me here's what happens to most people
we live with the crummy roof we live
with the saggy deck
and then we get ready to sell it and so
we bite the bullet and we make the major
repair
and again we never had any chance to
enjoy it ourselves
you don't necessarily have to go into
debt to do this i don't think i would
recommend that
but if there is a major project that you
know needs to get done
begin saving the money for it or just
make the decision to fix it
today i've sold a lot of houses in my
life
and there is a reality that we are going
to make our home as
perfect as we possibly can before we put
it on the market
but i just wanted to remind you that
it's a shame
if we just spruce up our home for
selling
make it perfect make it as good as it
possibly can be
every single day that you live inside it
it's time probably aren't going to do it
in a day or a weekend but set aside a
week or 10 days
and stage your home for living
[Music]
you
