Increase your House Value – De-clutter your house
Sell your House in Spring – Day 2 .
Clutter is the enemy of selling your house. Clutter turns buyers off. Clutter makes it hard for buyers to visualise how the house could look with their stuff in it. We are not suggesting you change your life dramatically, you need to go on living while you are selling, however its in your best interest to make your house as appealing as possible to buyers and removing everyday clutter is one of the easiest cheapest ways to do this.
10 Steps to reduce clutter and Increase your house price
Step 1 Recognize the Problem. Acknowledge you have a clutter problem and that the pain of eliminating it will be outweighed by the pleasure of a tidy house and a good selling price
Step 2 Get the resources. Get garbage bags (lots of them), boxes, tape and a marker. Some of the clutter may be coming with you to the new home, but much of it should be on the footpath for council cleanup or in the local charity clothing bin.
Step 3 The Kitchen.
Fridge magnets are not homely or fashionable. Under the clutter, Im sure there is a nice kitchen in there.
Whilst this is an extreme example, you get the picture.
- Get rid of the fridge magnets and clean the fridge with spray and wipe
- Remove everything from the horizontal surfaces and clean them
- Dont put anything back except a bowl of fruit, coffee machine, a bottle of wine, nice plant and maybe a big pepper grinder.
- Get rid of all your cooking books except the big thick french one with the nice cover.
- All the stuff you took off the surfaces, either throw, pack or donate. Unless you need it to cook with, eat or hold food in the next 30 days, do not put it back in the cupboard or back on the benches.
- Remove any spices, grinders, sauces or anything else in racks, pack or throw, only put spices back into rack if you have nice containers
- Any strong cooking odours such as curry or fried food need to be controlled, get rid of the plastic containers, remove anything that has been holding spices and then coffee and flowers are good.
- Kids drawings and art, I know you love them, buyers dont. Pack them up.
- Get to the back of all of your cupboards, if you haven’t used the dried food/spices/pasta etc in the last year, bin them.
- Clean all the surfaces of all the cupboards and drawers with spray and wipe.
- Donate all the old tupperware, crockery and wacky cooking devices (donut maker, egg poacher etc) and utensils that you have never used.
Step 4 Bedrooms
- Pull everything out of the wardrobes and drawers
- Throw out anything you didn’t wear last season, anything which is in poor repair (except favourite rugby or sailing tops) or anything which you never actually liked
- Ditch all the odd socks
- Old shoes need to go in the bin
- Remove everything from your bedside tables except the Lamps and maybe a candle
- Remove everything from your dressers and tables, clean them and only put back the jewelry box and a few nice perfumes,
Step 5 Bathrooms
- Get rid of anything in the shower or bath and the vanity which is not absolutely neccessary
- Get a nice candle for the inspection days
- Fresh towels
- Clean all the grout, in fact, get a dedicated cleaner in for the 6-8 week campaign and make them scrub the bathroom each week
- Mirrors cleaned, toilets spotless with nice toilet disinfectant/blue rinse.
Step 6 Lounge Rooms
- Get rid of any book you dont want to keep for reference or read again, give them to your friends or the book exchange
- Pare down the number of photos on your bookshelves, tables or fireplaces, keep 1-2 family photos, but buyers dont want to hundreds of photos, they also gather a lot of dust.
- Get rid of all of the collectibles, perhaps leave one very special piece. I know you love them, buyers just see clutter and dust
- Get rid of any non essential electronic equipment, game consoles, stereos, video/DVD/CDs and pack them away
- Try to either hide all your power and stereo cables or use cable ties to tidy them, you can also use the cable tidy’s that nail the cable to the skirting boards just make sure all cables are hidden or unobtrusive as possible
- Get rid of everything on the coffee tables except one or two nice coffee table books and a candle or two and some flowers
Step 7 Garage
- Anything you havent used this year, things you think you are going to repair/restore either pack them off to storage (ask yourself the question am I willing to pay Kennards Storage $200 per month in storage to keep these items) or throw them to the council cleanup
- Get yourself some hooks for the walls and get the bikes, chairs, whipersnippers, camping equipment, roof racks and anything else which can be hung from the walls up off the floor
- Put all the tools off the bench/shelves and into a tool box
- Get rid of old wood scraps, you wont use them before you sell, you wont take them in the removal truck, might as well get rid of them now.
- Clean out all the old paint, oil, garden stuff etc and arrange a drop off to your council processing centre.
- Sweep the garage out
Step 8 Closets & Linen Presses
- Get rid of all the old linen, towels and blankets that you dont use or are past their use by date. Buyers want to see lots of storage space, there is no point keeping it if it is going in the bin when you move anyway.
Step 9 Courtyards, balconies and yards.
- Get rid of any dead pot plants or any pots that are not beautiful
- Sweep up all leaves and trim back any hedges, climbers or creepers
- Pot some nice seedlings that are just about to flower
- Any dog or cat stuff such as litter trays etc must be hidden away, tidy.
Step 10 Hallways and Entrances
- Coat and Hat rack, either get rid of it, or reduce it to a minimum of 1-2 nice hats and coats, these things get bound up with every coat you have and often you havent worn any of them for months.
- Get rid of the change jar, the key hooks, the place where you stick the bills, the widget holder and everything that seems to accumulate on the hall table.
- Keep one nice bowl or flower vase and perhaps a candle again
- Anything at the door such as dog leads, shoe boxes get rid of them
Hope this was helpful, now you deserve a nice bottle of wine 
Attribution Photos
