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When you put your house on the market, what is the cheapest way to get most bang for your buck? And recommended by 99% of realtors? You know the answer – de clutter and clean the house.
Really, you have no idea.
This is what I do not understand, the frantic cleaning, improving and organizing and painting that my clients do only when they are leaving their homes. Shouldn’t they have been cleaning and de-cluttering while still in their homes?
I read countless articles (because I’m obsessed) with suggestions like – Before you put your house on the market, fix that leaking water faucet and make sure all the kitchen drawers open easily. Really, fix those things just before a sale? If I was standing in my kitchen spending my evening jerking the stuck junk drawer open for the 1,000th time because the sissors opens up inside and catches on the underside of the drawer and the faucet to my left started that infernal dripping again, I would go mad and there would be more to fix than just the sticky drawer.
So what interests me is the source of all this helpful information. What prompted a magazine to pay a writer to give advice like: before strangers wander through your house for the sole purpose of judging your housekeeping, make sure you empty the cat litter box in the guest bath and wipe the ketchup off the kitchen counters. For the longest time I thought, well, this is just hyperbole, no one really lives in a pig sty with sticky drawer and un-swept kitchen floors.
But no, I was wrong.
I have walked into houses that are “open for showing” and you cannot see the bedroom floor for all the clothes strewn about. The bed is unmade and the huge fifty inch TV looms over the master bedroom space like Darth Vader on a tear which makes it pretty clear why this couple is getting divorced and has to sell.
So frankly, when it comes to mess, I don’t recommend picking up your house because you may sell it. I recommend picking up the house before your spouse comes home from work. I recommend hiring a monthly house cleaner if you can’t face the bathrooms anymore. I recommend recycling the playboy magazines from 1976, I don’t care that they make you feel patriotic every time you read the articles.
Get rid of the stuff. Clear and open up the house while you are living in it, just seeing nice dusted surfaces will reduce your stress and maybe just save your relationship in the first place.
And here’s another rant. If you have so much stuff that you must rent a storage container to keep the stuff, re-consider the stuff. Consider this, if there was a fire, what would you grab? Children? Pets? The pewter soup spoon collection? Don’t answer right away.
Really, start from fire and work backwards. For a more beautiful home: re-think the crap.
Disclaimer – the author would like to point out that no matter what I say, she is not giving away her books any time soon.
Allison Little first appears in Death Revokes the Offer – part of the Little Book series. Read about Allison on www.missbehaved.com. Learn more about Real Estate at www.CatharineBramkamp.com or www.Century21.com
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