Decluttering Tips To Try Before A House Showing

How do we learn around these parts? By doing. And sometimes by panicking. So when someone called us to see our house out of the blue, and wanted to drop by in an hour, we panicked. But only for five to ten minutes. Then we used the other 50 minutes to do the ahh-someone’s-coming-to-look-at-our-house shuffle. Luckily the house was already pretty clean since we knew we would be showing it sooner or later. But what about that recommended pairing down step to reduce clutter and make cabinets and closets look bigger (so you don’t seem like you’re bursting at the seams)? Here’s how that went:

• Step 1: Take two large plastic bags (ideally big black lawn & leaf bags as opposed to smaller white trash bags)
• Step 2: Designate one bag as the donate/toss bag and one bag as the store-out-of-sight bag
• Step 3: Work your way around the house (every closet, nook, cranny) and toss anything that you can stand to get rid of forever into the donate/toss bag
• Step 4: Remember if you don’t want it in this house, it’s not likely that you’ll want it in your next one
• Step 5: Also remember that the bag isn’t going to the dump or Goodwill right away, so when in doubt just shove something in
• Step 6: As you go, if you see anything that you want to keep, but won’t need around while you sell the house, drop it into the store-out-of-sight bag in the name of decluttering (which can help sell the place)
• Step 7: Try to think of the store-out-of-sight bag as one of those Pods in your driveway (it’s only a temporary drop spot, nothing permanent)
• Step 8: Pop both bags into the trunk of your car to later be sorted (into a donate and a trash pile and a keep-this-in-the-car-during-open-houses bag)

Oh and we figure that people look in cabinets and closets but it takes an odd individual to peek into your hamper – so in a pinch it seems like a great place to toss those last one or two things that you didn’t get a chance to pare down or store in a smarter way. Not that we would know. Ok, we shoved some errant books and magazines in there in the final minute before the doorbell rang. Hey, whatever works.