Selling your house has become an exercise somewhat like falling into the rabbit hole in ALICE IN WONDERLAND. You may think you’re going in one direction only to find out that the world has somehow become a place where you’ve never been before.
Take, for instance, the latest method of “staging” your house so that it will sell. I believe this has come about because most women, like me, are watching all these home and garden shows on television. We are constantly being told that you can’t have any clutter in your home when people come to look at it.
In other words, your house needs to look like you don’t live there anymore!
Gone are the 25 or so major and minor appliances from your kitchen counter tops. Heaven forbid that you should need to use the toaster or mixer or blender to prepare a meal! If you happen to sneak one of these appliances onto the counter, you’d better get it back into its hiding place before a prospective buyer shows up or it’s all over!
Your bed must be made at all times. All 35 pillows must be in precisely the right order so that your bed will look like it arose from the pages of HOUSE BEAUTIFUL just prior to the buyers’ entry. No socks or underwear can be visible in any corner of the room and preferably in any drawer, because who knows what the buyer may look into.
The bathroom can’t have any wet stockings hanging from the shower rod or tissues in the trash can. In fact, lose the trash can because you don’t want anyone to think that you have to throw anything away. Remove most of your towels from the linen closet or it will look too crowded—and you know, the best selling point is storage areas the size of Texas.
Get those wet towels into the washing machine immediately after you get out of the shower. Dry out the Jacuzzi immediately or people will think it’s been used. Scrub out the sink every five minutes to make sure no lint is visible anywhere.
No remotes allowed anywhere except hidden beneath the DVD stand. No food in the living room. No wrinkles in any chair or sofa seat. No ashes in the fireplace. No dust bunnies in the corners. No spider webs on the ceiling. No books open to the place where you were reading. No smells of cooking food anywhere. No piles of papers near your computer.
Have I forgotten anything?
What about outdoors?
No trash in the trash cans. Call the garbage pickup to see if they can arrive three or four extra times this week.
No yellowing leaves on the plants. No visible water where you have watered the container gardens. No leaves visibly growing through the mulch.
No cars in the driveway. No mail in the mailbox. No trash on the edge of the lawn where the litter bugs have struck again.
Aaaugh!
Whatever happened to “here’s our home and we hope you like it”? Gone, gone, gone.
Now it’s “imagine your own furniture here where we’ve left a few items to give you a glance at how we used to live.”
It’s no wonder the real estate market is having a bump in the road. All the people who are trying to sell their houses in order to move to a new one are still trying to remove themselves from their old houses and hide their stuff.
And, by the way, if you get caught somehow unawares and still have items that need to disappear, race them to your car, especially in the trunk!
Have we all gone crazy, or are we just heading in that direction! Or is it just me?
Having it clean and presentable is a better option that many homes we see on the market. Of course people live in their homes and buyers understand this. The home don’t need to be spotless, but should be in order and ready to show.
Many great points of how to have a home ready !