Selling a House: Tips on Getting Rid of Clutter

Posted by: Spencer // April 26 2010

I hate moving, but after seven years, it’s time to find something that’s more our style. First things first, though: we need to sell this house. But right now it looks like our home and not someone else’s. Making our space more of a blank slate for a potential buyer is a lot of work. And it all starts with getting rid of clutter.

Getting rid of (or hiding) seven years of living requires a serious plan. We have three months to make this place look like something that you’d see on TV.

So where do we begin?

Write up a plan of attack to organize your efforts. Think about how you can streamline your space. Create a list with columns for Toss, Store, Sell, Recycle and Donate.
Learn to love Goodwill, Craigslist, and eBay. You can also go old school and have a yard sale. This is the time to get rid of everything that has been sitting around the house with no purpose.
Try to figure out how you can recycle different materials instead of tossing everything. You can take almost any electronic item to your local Best Buy for recycling and for most items there’s no charge. Anything with a screen will cost you $10, but Best Buy will give you a $10 gift card. Look around the house for anything else you can recycle – metals, cell phones (Best Buy), eyeglasses (Target) all can be recycled.
Get serious about clearing out your seasonal wardrobe. With warmer weather coming up, you can store those bulky coats and sweaters out of sight to make your closets look even more spacious.
Put all of your stuff in storage. All right, maybe not all of it, but half or more isn’t out of reason. You want rooms to look spacious and the easiest way to do that is to reduce the amount of things within them.
Check expiration dates and get rid of all that old crap. Drugs, food, cosmetics, spices, all can go bad after time. Throw prescription meds in the trash (don’t flush) if they’re past expiration dates. For advice on cosmetics, read the following article, Are your cosmetics past their use-by date?

For us, we plan on putting at least four or five large pieces of furniture in storage, along with anything else that we don’t need on hand. You’re going for that artificial hotel look: just enough furniture to give people the idea, but nothing more. BTW – Shop around when looking at storage facilities. The prices vary wildly and checking the web will generally lead to nice discounts.

We’ve set a schedule of three months to have our house ready to sell. We’re not experts at this, so we’d love to hear your suggestions in the comment section. Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing our progress and our tips.

Read More: