Staging Your Home for Everyday

One of my favorite shows on Sunday mornings is the morning show on CBS, Sunday Morning on CBS, or something like that.  This morning they showed a story about how staging your home can decrease the time it takes to sell your home and increase the contract price.  I do believe a home that is staged well or shows well will sell faster than one that is "well lived in."

But what about every day living? Why not stage your home for you for every day living???

When I sold my house in Idaho in 2006 (family room photo) we went through each room before we put the house on the market and we assessed each room and what needed to be done to make it "show ready."  After we did everything the house was perfect! Every wall had been repainted, that needed it. We had cleaned every nook and cranny and we had put things away that were really cluttering our space.

I fell in love with my house all over again and I didn't want to sell it.  My fondest memories of my home were how easy it was to clean, how comfortable it felt and how it still told our story but it was just so perfect for us.

In the end we sold our home for $120k more than we purchased it for and set the high record for the neighborhood.  They have never hit that mark since.

My challenge for you today is to step back from your home and rooms and really look at it from an outsider's view.  Look at what you might be holding on to "because." Think about how to move things from one room to another.  For instance in the office photo above the plant had been in the dining room and then the master bedroom but eventually ended up in the office. It was perfect. The hanging paddle with the lighthouse to the right of the hutch was in the foyer but it made sense to move it into this room with other lighthouses that were in the room.  We purchase old windows from a restore store and hung them above the desk for artwork.

In the living room photo at the top of this article, we pretty much lived in this room this way except that we added the boat on the wall and some accessories on the coffee table.  We loved this room so much once we staged it and I am challenging you to fall in love with your spaces again by touching up some things and really give it a good try to stage your home for every day!

Happy Decorating