Staging Your Home for Living, Not Just Selling

If you’ve ever sold a house, you’ve probably used a practice called staging to help sell the house faster. You put a lot of effort, and sometimes money, into making your home more attractive to potential home-buyers. Of course, you might have noticed that there’s a bit of irony here. You’re making your house better for someone else. They are going to come live in it, and you’re not. So why not do the same thing for yourself? Becoming Minimalist has a great article on how to stage your home for yourself, in the house that you currently live in.

Staging Your Home for You

You can take a page from the staging book, and apply the same principles to the home that you live in. This time, you’ll benefit from your staging efforts, and you’ll also make your home a nice place to live in. If you spend the effort to get a stranger to buy your home, why not put forth the same effort for yourself?

• Removing Your Possessions. When staging a home, you’re always told to clear out some of the clutter. You’ll want to remove about a third of your personal belongings. This makes the house seem larger and more inviting. If you’re already moving, this process will be easier. Get rid of stuff you don’t need or use anymore. If you don’t want it, don’t take it with you, and you’ve already started decluttering.
• A Home for Everything. Take stock of your home. Do you have items out in the open that shouldn’t be, or that could be hidden away? Do you really need all of that stuff on your counters? Keep an open mind and brainstorm. If you can find a home for everything that you have, you’ll help reduce the visual clutter that can happen. Plus, you’ll have more room and know where everything is.
• Get Personal. When you’re staging a home to sell, you want to get rid of anything personal. But you aren’t staging your home to sell this time. You’re staging your home for yourself. So make it personal. In fact, you should highlight the personal decorations and pictures. This is your home, so make it yours.
• Give Your Bathroom Love. We can spend a lot of our time in the bathroom. Getting ready in the morning and at night are big ones. So keep your bathroom clean and neat, and you’ll enjoy using it. Keep all of your personal hygiene products put away. Clean the toilet, shower, and sink often. This will open up your bathroom and make it brighter. When your bathroom is clean and neat, you’ll enjoy using it every morning while you’re getting ready that much more.
• Curb Appeal. This is incredibly important when staging a home and selling it. You probably considered the curb appeal when you bought your home. This is the first impression of your home, so make it a good one. Keep the exterior of your home beautiful, and you’ll fall in love with your home again every time you pull into the driveway.
• Clean, Clean, and Clean Some More. This is just like cleaning the bathroom. You want your entire house to be nice and clean and bright. Pay extra attention to places that hard to get to. They can build up dust and grime the most. If you’ve already decluttered your home, you’ll find that it’s much easier to keep clean.
• Do the Minor Repairs. That squeaky door or leaky faucet that’s been bothering you could be a really simple fix. Create a list of all the minor issues in your home that need to be repaired. This could simply be nicks in the paint, a burnt out light bulb, or that squeaky door. And then fix them. More often than not, you can find simple and cheap fixes by searching online. Don’t wait to repair them when you’re selling the house. You want to enjoy your home, so do the repairs now.
• Major Repairs. Again, you don’t want to get all new appliances, or replace the roof, just for a new homeowner. If you can afford to, tackle the major repairs while you can actually enjoy them. Reap the benefits of your own work, instead of letting the new homeowner enjoy them. When you sell the house, you will probably have to do the repairs anyway, so why wait until you don’t get to enjoy them because you’re moving?
• Motivation. No one likes housework or improvements. And you might be cringing thinking about going through your closet. Getting motivated to stage your home for yourself can be hard. If you do find the motivation though, the reward will be well worth it. You’ll have that beautiful home for yourself, instead of putting in all of the work right when you’re selling it.