What is clutter? Clutter is anything you’re keeping around your house that doesn’t add value to your life. Decluttering is all about making room in your home for the things that matter.
Clutter can also negatively impact your ability to sell your home. Buyers have a hard time looking past large objects. It can create a feeling of anxiety, which is the last thing you want when trying to entice a potential buyer into falling in love with your home. According to Psychology Today and Web MD, people may feel like life is out of control when they surround themselves with more things than they can manage. The mess causes stress. If you’re not taking care of the clutter in your home, you may not be taking care of yourself either.
This clearly is not the feeling or message you want to portray to buyers. So it is very important prior to listing your house, to start going through your stuff and decluttering. To do this, start out by setting a goal.
Goal Setting: Set a goal for how many rooms you want to address and a timeline to have everything completed by. For example, you may have a leisurely goal to decultter one room a month. You’ll tackle one wall each weekend. Or perhaps the goal is more aggressive. You may want to have the entire house completed in a month. So you could break that down as one bedroom and one space (kitchen, dining room, bathroom) each weekend.
Separate: Identify items into three or four categories (Donate, Keep, Trash and Storage). Once you’ve identified the stuff you want to keep, further separate the items by its use or frequency. Things that may be used quarterly or once a year should go into storage.
Get rid of the Clutter! Once you have finally decided on the items that are Trash vs Give away or S. Put together a plan with on the when, where and how you’ll get the stuff to a donation center or garage sale, or dumpster. Then make a plan for all the other items that don’t enhance your life to go into storage. This could be seasonal items or belongings. Things that you could live without that take up space and or is an eyesore. This will also prepare you for moving. For more great tips or strategies decluttering your home give me a call 602-428-7200.
