You’ve hired a realtor and set a listing date to put your home on the market — now is the time to think about how your home will look to a prospective buyer. When you declutter your home before selling, it can help your home look its best and fetch top dollar from eager buyers.
The process to declutter your home before selling can be a smart way to show your home to its best advantage, organize your belongings so that you only move what you need, and make move facilitation much easier. That’s why many home owners consider using a professional home decluttering services company to help declutter before selling. Your realtor also may suggest to have a home staging company come in, once the decluttering is done.
Benefits of Working To Declutter Your Home Before Selling
When you declutter your home before selling, the benefits are four-fold:
1. Increase interest from potential buyers
2. Showcase your home’s best features to attract higher offers
3. Simplify the process of moving into your new home
4. Clear out items you no longer need or want.
Unlike a staging service that brings in extra decorative elements or different furniture to help show a home, decluttering removes just the top layer of stuff and clutter, making the home appear more spacious and more organized, but still decorated, lived in, and loved.
How Does Decluttering Your Home Before Selling Improve the Odds Of A Sale?
The goal of a pre-sale decluttering is to help show your home to its best advantage, without the clutter of daily life overshadowing its best features. A professional home decluttering service can help you achieve that in two main ways:
First and foremost, decluttering helps create a sense of spaciousness to showcase your home’s best features. When closets, shelves, pantries, and storage areas are chock full of belongings and household items, it can signal to a potential buyer that there’s not enough storage in the house. This doesn’t mean your storage closet or garage has to be totally empty. In fact, removing just a small percentage of the clutter in these spaces will make them feel more ample and spacious while still showing that they are functional. Even steps as simple as putting away the shoes that typically collect in your mudroom or using all the same type of hangers in your closet will help present these spaces in their best light. These are the types of tips and tricks that professional home decluttering services can share.
Second, decluttering and storing your personal mementos helps a buyer envision themselves and their belongings in the home. When a room is full of personal photos and mementos, it can distract from a potential buyer’s ability to envision their own belongings in the space. Professional organizers work one-on-one with clients to leave the items they need for day-to-day living and carefully store other items until the move. This turns the house into more of a blank canvas where potential buyers can start to imagine how their own furnishings would look or fit into the home they’re viewing. As a bonus, carefully packed personal items and mementos often can be stored temporarily with the moving company, which can then drop them off on move-in day when it’s time to move into the new home.
A decluttering job can transform a kitchen pantry & create a sense of spaciousness.
Should You Use A DIY Approach Or Professional Organizers to Declutter Your Home Before Selling?
Some people are born DIY-ers while others love to delegate. If you’re not sure which camp you fall into, there are two key factors to consider when deciding whether you should declutter your own home, or hire professionals to help:
1. The size of the home
2. How fast you want to sell your existing home
Smaller homes and a longer timeframe might merit a do-it-yourself approach to decluttering a home before it’s put on the market. If you have a good sense of design, a helpful realtor who can offer tips, and you don’t get easily overwhelmed by a decluttering project, this could be a good fit for you.
On the other hand, larger homes obviously take more time to declutter which makes the case for hiring professional organizers. If you’re overwhelmed at the idea of decluttering your own home or prefer a professional who has worked with realtors in the past and understands exactly what and how much should be removed, then a professional home decluttering company is the best choice.
In addition, if there’s any pressure to sell the existing home fast, there’s nothing more effective than bringing a team of professional organizers to declutter the house much faster than home owners can do it on their own.
Some homeowners start the process on their own and then find themselves confused or overwhelmed and end up calling in the professionals. After all, it can be useful to have an objective opinion when it comes to decluttering something as personal as your home.
Is Pre-Sale Decluttering A Comprehensive, Whole-house Project?
The size and scope of a contract with professional organizers to declutter your home before selling is flexible and depends on what you need and want from the process.
Typically, when we talk about decluttering before a sale, it’s not a whole-house deep clean, but rather a judicious edit to help the home show well. In some cases, a realtor will recommend the use of professional organizers to address any overly cluttered areas of the home before an open house or before showings.
In other cases, a homeowner might decide to invest in pre-sale decluttering services for the whole home to make moving easier. This kind of deep, comprehensive service will take more time and require a higher investment. But the benefits are that the homeowners can rest assured they’re not paying to move anything they don’t need and love into their new house. This type of service can be especially useful for couples or families that are downsizing, or couples whose adult children have moved out — and left years of belongings behind.
Whether you opt for a light visual declutter or a more comprehensive whole-home service, the process typically follows the same simple framework: every item gets sorted into one of three categories: keep, donate or sell, and toss.
It sounds straightforward, but having a clear system makes all the difference between a decluttering project that stalls out and one that actually gets results. Your professional organizer will guide you through the decisions, but the final call is always yours. Nothing leaves your home without your say-so.
A good organizer also will know where to send the things you’re letting go. In the Denver area, there are great options for donating or consigning specialty items — business clothing, sports equipment, kids’ toys — so they find a new home with someone who actually needs them, rather than ending up in a landfill.
Professional Decluttering Also Makes Move Management Easier
A professional decluttering can also make your eventual move that much easier. For a light pre-sale decluttering, items may be stored temporarily in an off-site storage facility or with the moving company, which makes transferring those items to the new home that much easier.
With a comprehensive whole-home decluttering, home owners can rest assured that they’re only paying to move things they need and love — eliminating that terrible feeling when you realize there are boxes you haven’t opened months (or even years) after a move.
Professional organizers also can help manage the whole move and provide unpacking services at your new home. Imagine walking into your new home without a single box in sight, and everything perfectly put away and household goods easy to find.
Need professional organizers to help declutter your home before selling? Contact A Place For Everything if you need help decluttering your luxury home, managing the move, and unpacking in the Denver area.
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