Some people might call you crazy if you’re placing your home on the market while still living in it with kids, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do! For a family that has some basic routines and structure in place already, it’s definitely d-able. I won’t say it’ll be a stress-free experience, but I will say it will be ‘manageable’ if you stick to these tips.
Depending on your agent’s marketing strategy, you’ll need to generally be out of the house for at least one open home on a Saturday (maybe two), and potentially a mid-week open for inspection one evening, or a private inspection or two if you have some interested punters.
We live in a world where if both parents aren’t working, at least one generally is, and the other is racing between one appointment or another while trying to balance the household schedule and make sure there’s food in the fridge.
In other words, you might generally be able to manage a quick 20-30 minute tidy up on any given day before you have to herd the kids into the car and make yourselves useful somewhere else while your house is on show. I get it.
To maximize the best use of the short amount of time that you have, I’ve developed the following list to help you get started in getting your house open home worthy. If you follow these tips, they will really help you maintain some level of sanity while your house is on the market AND occupied by your beautiful rug rats:
1 – Before going on the market, take all of the toys, books and clothes that your kids haven’t needed in the past 4-6 weeks, and put them in big storage containers to sort through at a later date if you don’t have the time to sort through them now. This should leave you with a manageable amount of items to keep ‘tidy’ during the week.
Use smaller baskets (target, k-mart and ikea have great ones) for each category of toys, and get the kids to sort their toys into categories. Some categories/baskets that might work for you include…
- Race cars
- dress ups
- play dough
- puzzles
- random annoying small kinder surprise toys etc.
The kids need to do this sorting so that you can then ask them to do it at the end of each day and at the start of each morning while your house is on the market while you focus on the rest…
2 – Do one big clean before you go on the market. Wipe down skirting boards, get rid of spider webs, vacuum, mop and clean any dirty windows with sticky finger prints. Wipe down dirty walls, touch up marks with paint if needed and fix anything that’s broken around the house or it may come back to bite you during a building and pest inspection.
Use CLR or another similar brand on the bathroom taps and shower screens to remove calcium build up. Change old light bulbs that don’t work, make sure the lights in the range hoods work, locate air conditioning remotes and make sure they work, and try to remove as many things from your home that you don’t need as possible. I recommend breaking your house up into ‘zones’ and working through it this way, rather than room by room. You may find it easiest to focus on the following zones in the following order, so that you’re freeing up storage space to put things away when you get to zones like your living room..
- Garage and Shed
- Linen cupboard/s
- Laundry
- Study or work space/s
- Toy Room/rumpus
- Bathroom/s
- Kids Bedroom/s
- Master Bedroom
- Family Room/Lounge
3 – Keep an old towel in the bathrooms and each morning wipe down the vanity, mirrors and anytime it gets wet…the shower screen. This stops water marks, soap, toothpaste and all sorts of other things from marking the surfaces and is just enough to get you through having to do a decent clean more than once a fortnight. Wiping the shower screen down after each use also prevents calcium build up which creates a milky/crusty look on the shower screens over time.
4 – Clean up after each meal AND dry up. It sounds simple, and takes an extra 10 minutes at the end of a meal, but makes a huge difference to your ability to focus on finishing touches before an open home rather than trying to scrape food of a frying pan with 5 minutes to go. Make sure that you clean all pots and pans, dry them and put them away and stack your dishwasher before you go to bed, and before you leave each morning, leaving the bench top free of clutter and mess for any potential buyers.
5 – Laundry can be problematic when your house is on the market, as you shouldn’t have clothes hanging on the line on a Saturday during open homes. Try to get through your laundry on a Sunday or during the week if possible. After each load is hung and taken off the line, fold it and put it away then and there before moving onto the next thing. The last thing you need to be dealing with before an open home is an epic pile of washing that needs to be hidden in the back of the car along with any other multitude of sins that can’t be on display to the public.
6 – If employing the services of a property stylist such as myself, you should have everything that you need to really take those finishing touches to the next level. If not, plan ahead and make use of candles, greenery, decor, gentle music and soft furnishings to really make potential buyers feel at home, and visualize the space as their own. Once these items are there, it should be as simple as kindly asking your agent to light the candles and blow them out as they leave.
7 – Plan ahead. Talk to your agent. If they haven’t told you already, find out how many open homes they’ll be doing each week and plan your commitments or fun family trips around them. An oldy but a goody is to take the kids to a new park for a bit of fun on a Saturday so that you’re out of the house and not worrying about anything being messed up in between open homes if there’s two on that day. It can be used as a reward for the kids if they tidy up their toys that morning, and it can also serve as some much needed down time for you guys while your agent does their thing. Whatever takes your fancy, the point is to try to give back to yourself and your family during the time that your home is on the market. Although it can be a nerve wracking time, it can also be an exciting time…it’s all about how you look at it. So like every day, make the most of it.
firstimpressionspropertystyling.com 
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