Staging Your House On Pennies!

De-clutter! Remove all clutter—family photos, bric-a-brac, whatnots, you name it—box it up! Remove all unsightly items! Myself, I sent a few unsightly things to my mother-in-law’s basement, such as a French chair that I bought five years ago and have yet to have it reupholstered. Now after five years, and lugging it around, I’m thinking that I’m going to use as a bartering chip with my buddy Cruella. She wants it! Next, remove all personal collections! Case in point, my mother-in-law had to remove a huge antique doll that had been passed down to her from her own mother. Hence, she feels the need to display the doll in one of her guest rooms. Problem is, the doll is so creepy looking that my father-in-law, brother-in-law, and hubby all call it Chucky. You don’t want to frighten potential buyers away! Remove pizza coupons, postcards, birthday cards, kid’s drawings, calendars, dental appointment reminders, and the like from the fridge!

Clean, clean, clean! Trust me, I know this is not easy, especially if you have dogs, children and a husband. Having two dogs and a husband—I know all-too-well! Luckily, at our house in Nashville, we had wood floors and just a few rugs and doormats. My basset hound, Rolle, decided to claim one of the doormats for his afternoon naps. What I found that worked, and was not expensive, was plain old baking soda. And another cleaning product that I used was Meyer’s Verbena—a nice lemon scent—can’t go wrong! P.S. don’t forget to clean the inside of the fridge – people look!

Organize! If your closets are overflowing just like the one I saw this past Sunday (Hubby and I are house shopping), try removing all unwanted items and maybe even a few wanted items. Also, I’ve found it will save you time later when you do have to pack. After all, why carry around unwanted items! I color-coordinated my sweaters, blouses etc and used all matching hangers. You may want to recycle the hangers you get from the dry cleaners! For the hubby’s hangers, I bought Ikea's, and for my closet, I used cedar hanger from The Container Store. Let’s face it; men don’t care as much! Highlight Your Assets! We had a 1930’s cottage and in order to highlight some of the architure I removed a few curtain panels to show off the old pane windows.

Outside, remove all dead plants, weeds, children’s toys, dog toys etc. Blow away the fall leaves and lay some fresh pine straw. The fresh pine straw will add a lot!

Image from Real Simple

Once the Hubby and I decided that we were going to put our house on the market, we still had a few unfinished major projects that had to be done. My challenge was to figure out how to finish the projects with out having to spend a lot of cash to do it! Later!