Tag Archives: Safe places to meet

Now if you look, the shelves are gone, the extra chair is gone, and the coffee table. We also removed any of the throw rugs we had to draw attention to the floors.

MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE, MINIMIZE to Get an Offer on Your Home in 48 Hours!

Selling a Home, , , , , ,

This one is hard for most people (we discovered we are indeed hoarders) and may cost a little money in storage units or can make you some money depending on what you want to do.  But minimizing your house will help give people the space to imagine what their belongings will look like in it.

What does minimizing really mean?  Minimizing is defined by Google’s dictionary as: reduce (something, especially something unwanted or unpleasant) to the smallest possible amount or degree.  Well I’m not sure if the things we “reduced” were unwanted or unpleasant, but our house certainly does look empty without them.  Basically, you want your home to look as close to a model home as possible—and model homes do NOT have a lot of personal effects.

So how much has to go?  Well that really depends on your space.  In our living room we had a bookcase, couch, loveseat, chair, coffee table, two end tables, a large TV cabinet and a baby swing and bouncer.  To us, it looked neat and tidy…to the realtors it was too much stuff.  Basically, start to look at your items and ask yourself, “Do I HAVE TO have this right now?”  If the answer is no, then it’s time to start looking into some sort of move or storage.  For us, we split our things between two locations.  Our move will take us from Missouri back to Ohio so we opted to go ahead and move half of our things back to Ohio and put them into a storage facility until we arrived.  Storage facilities are very affordable these days and for a 10 x 20 foot unit we’re paying about $65 a month.  In our minds, this is well worth it in that it enhances our house’s visual appeal and gets our stuff closer to where it needs to be.  So we drove a 17 foot Uhaul from Missouri to Ohio filled with excess furniture, boxes of clothes and holiday decorations and anything else we could fit that we wouldn’t need for the next few months.  The funny thing is, I don’t miss any of it!

Next we arranged our garage to be able to be a secondary storage location for items we needed more regularly but that cluttered the house for showings.  We used the garage for storage of dog crates, large baby items, our hutch and continue to add to the growing mass as we continue to pack.

Basically, by getting rid of all of the excess furniture in the visible part of the house (not closets, cabinets, drawers), it makes the house look bigger and lets people’s imagination run wild!

One other option while you’re minimizing, start to assess whether you really need the item or not.  Garage sales and Craigslist can be an excellent way to rehome some of your items.  That means less stuff to move and more money in your pocket!  We’ve sold MANY items on Craigslist.  The safest way, is to meet the individual at a police station when selling the item.  Other options if this isn’t convenient are other highly trafficked places with security like the Post Office, Government buildings or grocery stores.

Join us tomorrow as we cover “HOW TO GET RID OF CLUTTER!”
Miss HOW TO PICK AN AWESOME REALTOR?  

Check out the first post in this series of 10 MUST DO’S TO Get an Offer on your Home in 48 Hours! 

Though the dog is the focal point of the picture look at all of the furniture in the picture.
Though the dog is the focal point of the picture look at all of the furniture in the picture.
And again here, there's a lot of furniture in the background (of course there's also a talking squirrel!)
And again, there’s a lot of furniture in the background (of course there’s also a talking squirrel!)
Now if you look, the shelves are gone, the extra chair is gone, and the coffee table. We also removed any of the throw rugs we had to draw attention to the floors.
Now if you look, the shelves are gone, the extra chair is gone, and the coffee table. We also removed any of the throw rugs we had to draw attention to the floors.  We also added a new light fixture and removed the one that was hanging.  It made the room so much brighter and more open feeling.