 I'm super excited that you guys joined me today. Thank you so much for your time and energy. I know that many of you are looking for an opportunity to sell your home. And one of the things that we're here to talk about today is the opportunity of getting your house in order so that when that phone call comes from the realtor that you are ready to rock and roll. Sorry about that small technical difficulty that you're ready to rock and roll with the realtor so that there are no surprises. Speaking of realtor, I have Aaron Brown with us in the room and I'm super excited that he's joining us today. I have been looking forward to this all week so that we can share and answer your questions and we can make sure that as you are getting ready to sell your house that you do it the right way the first time and that you don't waste time and energy. So with that, welcome Aaron to our show. How are you today? Oh, I can't hear you. I've got a sound situation there. I can't hear you now. No. I can't hear you. Go ahead. No, sorry. Small technical difficulty. We've got Aaron here in the room and we have a small technical difficulty. If you'll take the headphones off, I'll just mute you as we're speaking so I don't get feedback from that. That might work out and you may have to unplug it. Yeah, you let me know if you can hear me okay. I can hear you just fine. Oh, perfect. I don't know what's going on. I just tested the headphones a few minutes ago. They seem to be working. They don't know. It's always weird when we have something like that happen. So sorry about that, but I am super excited that you've joined us today and we've got lots of friends that are joining us for the first time and this is a first of a 12-part series that we're doing on how to get your home ready and the thing that we're talking about today and it's a really near and dear to my heart topic is decluttering and depersonalizing your home. And it's a tough subject because most of us are clutter-blind and when we go into our own homes, there's stuff that we don't see and then when you get that call from a realtor and they say, hey, we're showing your house and we're going to be there in five minutes. You've got like five minutes to hurry and scramble and put everything together and then what are you going to get rid of? What are you going to hide? So this is that conversation so that we can prep ourselves in advance. So with that, I want to jump into a couple of slides that I have prepared and then I want you to ask your questions. I want to just stop for a second and I want to say hi, Melanie. I'm so glad that you're here. Hi, Angie. Hi, Rhonda. I've got clean Australia service. We've got some cleaning services here that are checking in and I know the reason why. It's because we get a lot of move-in, move-out cleans and customers will call us. I'm from the house cleaning side where the customers will call us and they will say, can you help me get my house ready for staging? And they want us to have the answers. And so if you are a cleaning company, hi, I'm super excited from the cleaning side and from the realtor side. If you are a realtor, hi from Aaron's side because this is where you come to get your questions answered. So here with our slides and first for today is preparing our homes so that we can be ready when that realtor calls. This is something that I want you to think about doing starting today even if you're not planning on selling your home right away because this will give us an opportunity just to have our ducks in a row and have our affairs in order. All right, shipping clutter is the first thing that we're going to talk about today and it's one of the things that we have to talk about, whether we want to or not simply for the fact that many of us over the last couple of years have been buying lots of stuff online. And I'm going to throw this over to Aaron for a second because as he's doing lots of walkthroughs with home buyers what are you seeing in terms of people having used boxes, stuff that's just sitting around that hasn't been organized as far as the clutter goes? Yeah, well, I think people need to watch your hoarding channel because a lot of the homes we walk into there are just boxes everywhere. People don't put things away and they often save a lot of the stuff that comes in packages, leave it all over the house, leaves a terrible impression when people come in. And I'm glad that you brought that up because the first thing that I want us to think of is in terms of if I was going to move into a house and I had to leave everything that was in the house that was there when I bought the house. Is this the kind of stuff that I would want left in the house? And the answer is no. And so if we have boxes of stuff that are coming in, the quickest, fastest way to get rid of them and we may use them for moving, right? If we are planning on moving, we may be saving those boxes because we intend to use them for moving. What we need to do though is flatten them and put them in either a closet or put them in the garage or put them in a storage unit or somewhere where they're not going to be taking up space. Because right now in this picture, what we're seeing is it takes up a lot of space. And I want you to think in terms of if the homeowner, the person that was going to buy my house was going to spend a whole lot of money for extra space. We want to clear out all the stuff so that it creates extra space so that it then prevents it looking like it's cluttered or that the house is tinier than it actually is. We want to focus on opening up the space by removing all of the shipping clutter. So shipping clutter is something you can do today and you can do it. It doesn't cost any money. You don't need any extra storage space. Even boxes will sit flat. And then I want to throw something else at you. If you're saving the boxes because you plan on moving, one of the things you can do is you can get rid of them on the Buy Nothing Marketplace or you can get rid of them on Nextdoor. And then when you are ready to move, you can just say, hey listen, we have sold our home and we need boxes now. Lots of people are recycling boxes because everybody's shipping online. Everybody has a house full of them. And the cost for recycling pickup, curb pickup, has gone up 14% in the last year alone. And so lots of people are not paying for the recycling service. So lots and lots of people have shipping clutter that's inside their house that can be flattened as boxes and then reused for people that are moving. So let's recycle that if we have the chance to do that. All right, the next one is storage clutter. And storage clutter is really near and dear to my heart because we help a lot of people clear out their scary rooms and their closets. And if you have a scary room in your closet, this is a room where maybe you just put something in there one day. You moved a couple of things that you were redecorating in there. And then a few weeks later it was a set of bedding. And then it was this, that and the other. And before long, it's a scary room, right? Or you're saving something because you haven't had a chance to process it yet. Maybe it goes in the attic, maybe it goes in the garage, maybe their clothes that are too small, things like that that you're not using anymore. Toys the kids have grown out of and they end up in that scary room. The catch is this. When a buyer comes to your house to take a look at your home, they're going to want to make sure that that room is clear in their mind. They're envisioning not another scary room. They're envisioning one of their children or their elder parents or someone living inside that room, right? And so we want to make sure that there is no scary room in our house. So storage clutter, if we're using that room as a storage unit, that's something we need to stop and really give it some extra thought. I am going to throw this over to Aaron because I know he's probably gone into homes where they run into a scary room. What is the response to the scary room and how do new buyers look at that space? Yeah, so they're not going to spend any time in there at all. And they're not going to be able to envision their family living in there if there's a scary room. And so definitely you want to make sure that room is completely cleaned out. There's no question. You've got to have it really decluttered when people walk in there because they're going to be coming in to see that space and see themselves living in it. So you want to move it out. Where do you move the clutter room? You got to move it to the garage. When we are staging a home to sell it, the garage is okay to fill up. You can fill the garage up with whatever you want. Everything goes to the garage. You got to get everything out of that room. No question. It's your home is now a product. So it's not your home anymore if you're trying to sell it. I love that thought that your home is a product. And Robin says, I'm pretending that we're going to put our house on the market in January of 2024. And I'm taking this year to trim down every single thing. Cabinets, closets, drawers and corners. I love that. And I love the fact that she's given herself or he's given himself a year to process this because what we're going to cover today are lots of different areas of the home. And it's not an overnight process, but here's what happens. And here's the interesting idea about what we're doing. And it becomes really interesting when you stop to consider the fact that sometimes life changes. Life changes when you're not expecting it and you might have elder parents that live 2,500 miles away. And suddenly you get a call that they've fallen and they can't get up and then you have to move overnight. And so now you're going to throw your stuff together and try to hurry and sell your house. And there's all this stuff that hasn't been managed. But if you had a whole year to go through room by room by room, you're not just chunking stuff in a storage unit. But you're now making conscious decisions about, did I want to keep this? And if I were to move, am I going to move this to a new house? What are the parameters of the stuff that I'm keeping, especially the stuff that I'm not using, right? So it gives us a whole different frame of thought. And it's going to make us think twice about the stuff that we keep. Because like Aaron said, your home is now a product. And the better the product shows, the more money you make. So if it looks like a crappy cluttered house, people are not going to offer you all the money. And so you want to make sure that it's beautiful. It's like when we go to a restaurant and we order some fries and a burger. If they come on a paper plate in a little red and white plastic basket, that's the image, right? We expect to pay five or six bucks for that. If we go to a restaurant and there's like a white folded tablecloth and they have folded napkins that are made of cloth and they have stainless steel silverware. And they bring us our burger and fries on a ceramic or a glass plate. All of a sudden we expect like, ugh, this is going to cost us a lot of money. We're going to spend $20 or $30 for this meal. The food is the same, but the presentation is different. And that's what we're getting into is we're getting into the presentation is different because you made conscious different choices, right? And so that's the focus of what we're doing today. Kathy says, hi, Angela. Hi, Kathy. Good to see you. So glad you're here. Joan says, hi from Texas. Hey, Aaron is also in Texas. You guys might be neighbors. Diane says, getting closer to downsizing the home as a senior. I love that. Diane gets a little happy bell. Happy bell means yes. I love that you've made a good choice. Robin, we said hi to Robin. Carol says, hello from St. Petersburg, Florida. You guys, this is awesome. And Tina is from London. Hi, Tina from London. If this is fantastic, you guys. The next thing that we have to stop and look at our collections. Now collections in the house cleaning industry are a real deal. And they're a real deal because they collect a lot of dust. And so if you have collections and you're thinking about selling your house, this is something that I want you to give a really serious thought to because you may have had an entire life of collecting something and it's all over your house. But on the spur of the moment, if the realtor calls and says, we have a prospective buyer and we're coming over in 10 minutes, are all of those knickknacks and trinkets and collectibles dusted? Because if there's dust on all of those everywhere you look, all of a sudden we have an issue, right? And they're very, they're made of all different kinds of things. I can't tell you the collections we've had. They're made of everything. And some are made of wood. Some are made of glass. They're not all cleaned the same. And very rarely are they all dust free. And so they are dustables, not collectibles, but dustables. And then when somebody's coming to look at the house, they're like, wow, this was not very well taken care of. Another thing about collectibles, and this is something we want to pay close attention to, if you have collectibles in your home, especially if they're priceless, I don't want to leave them out. There's a walk-through and there are going to be prospective home buyers coming in. Here's the reason why. It puts the realtor in a bad situation where if there are kids running through the house and they knock the collectibles off and the collectibles break, if they're not replaceable, you're going to be very sad if they break. And it's going to put the realtor in a weird situation because now they're going to have to tell you like, oh, hey, I brought someone over to show your house and they broke your collectibles. Oh, those were irreplaceable. Don't put the realtor in that situation and don't put the home buyer in that situation because the home buyer, if they have rowdy kids, this has probably happened, rowdy kids that knock stuff off or that play with stuff, or maybe it, I don't know, gets chipped or cracked or whatever, maybe not completely ruined, but now they feel embarrassed and they feel ashamed because their kids got out of control. And so now they're embarrassed. You don't want to put them in that situation, especially if they're going to give you all the money for the house, right? You want them to have a seamless experience and you want them to make sure that they're feeling comfortable and not like, oh, I got to walk on eggshells because they have all these little fragile figurines that might topple over, right? Erin, what are your take on collectibles and figurines? If possible, remove them all. Get them all out of your house, box them all up, put them in a nice box, put them in the garage, take the cabinet they were in, get some movers, move it out into the garage, get some family to come help you. If possible, get rid of all knickknacks, all of them. All of your collectibles, if possible. I can tell you how many homes I've been in, where there is a ton of collectibles around the house, and I cannot keep the buyer in the house. As soon as they walk in and see collectibles and see all this stuff, the conversation then goes to your collectibles, where you travel different parts of the world, vacations they've been on, and instead of them looking at your property as a potential, now they're talking about your collectibles, and they can't wait to get out of the house and go see the next one. And so, really, it will run buyers off by having those amazing collections all over your house. Please put them in the garage if you're going to sell. That's really, really good advice, and I'm glad that you brought that up. I know that because we are a fan of our collectibles, it's hard to say to ourselves, while this is meaningful to me, and I would like to keep these out, there's a time and a place for that. There's also a time and a place for, excuse me, religious and political artwork and decorations. And I'm not trying to encourage anyone to not have faith, and I'm not encouraging anyone to not have a political opinion. We live in an era of free speech, and I want to honor that in every family. But when you're putting your home on the market, we don't want somebody to walk in with an opposing view and suddenly be turned off like, oh, this isn't my culture or this isn't my God or this isn't my belief system or whatever, and then also be offended for those reasons. And for the reasons that Aaron just mentioned, about them coming in and then the conversation pivots, and now they're having a political debate or a religious debate or whatever it is, you want them focusing on the property. And so for this particular buying situation, we want to remove all of that stuff that then can go inside storage or like Aaron said, put it inside your garage during the showing of the home process. We want to depersonalize the home in every way so that when a buyer comes in, they see themself in your home, not you and your beliefs and your dogma and all this stuff. We want to remove the questions that no one is asking, and that's what this is about. Aaron, do you have any questions or comments or anything that people have asked you based on faith-based rituals or like, am I supposed to wear shoes in a house or is there a rule for this particular religion when you walk in a house and there's apparently something else going on? Yeah, absolutely. You're very right. If possible, you want to neutralize the house as much as you can so that people can go in and visualize themselves in there. If they're coming from a different perspective or different walk of life, which people are, and they see things in the house that's not congruent with their lifestyle, they'll usually leave and they can't see past it. Unfortunately, what they see around the house makes them feel like, oh, this isn't me, this isn't what I want, let's go. And the whole idea of making things brighter and lighter and neutral is you want people to come in and have conversation in the house, talk about the rooms, talk about the space, talk about their family living there, and that goes away when things are on the wall that is not congruent with their lifestyle. They can't picture themselves being there, and then in their mind they're thinking, well, if this person was here, I don't know if I want to live in the same space because I don't agree with that. All these other things come up that are really unnecessary if it was just in a box. I'm so glad that you brought that up. Debbie Littleton says, I died a million deaths. I'm six months late selling my house because of all this stuff and I'm so happy to be here today. Debbie, we are so happy that you're here as well, and you're not alone. You're not alone. I get people to tell me, I can't think of any other people that find themselves like at a last-minute job change and they're like, oh, my spouse is moving in the next two weeks for a new job. And they're scrambling at the last minute to try to figure out how do we get our house on the market. And instead of focusing on all this stuff in an organic fashion, they're literally chunking stuff inside a storage unit. And while it's cool to do that, the storage unit industries a $31 billion a year industry, and it's growing, right? their storage units they started going through their scary rooms and they started pulling stuff out so they could sort through them. The challenge is now they're in the house and so if in two weeks suddenly your spouse is moving and you're going to end up moving everything at once it either has to go back into a storage unit or you're going to end up getting rid of some stuff you wish later you would have kept and so by going through this step by step this is going to give us a chance that you know in my new house I might have all my religious artifacts in a little room that I call like a little personal altar room or a little prayer room or something like that and you might imagine what that would look like. Is that going to be a main room of my house? Is that going to be a small room of my house and how many of those artifacts do I want to keep? It might be that you downsize and you scale back on having lots of angels and crosses and whatever if they won't fit in that one room and so this is a time as you're starting to pack stuff away and you're starting to make the decisions for what that looks like in the future for your next home how much of that stuff do you actually decide to keep? So again we don't want to create questions that didn't exist in the minds of the buyers for stuff that is not part of their lifestyle or something they can't see themselves in. Another one of those are personal awards and it's it's really easy to honor our kids our kids have gone through all of the soccer games and the practices and the races and all of the events that we took them to and the dance recitals and all the things that we paid for and so the trophies honor the parent as well as the child and so there's never a reason where we want to take them down but again this goes back to something similar that we were just talking about when it comes to the religious artifacts or the other personalized items by having all the trophies there you feel like you're walking into someone else's life and it's it can be a disconnect especially if you yourself were the athlete but you never won any trophies all that does then is highlight the misgivings you had about maybe you weren't so successful or maybe you had kids and they didn't win and so well I wish my kid had a whole wall of trophies like who are these people or whatever Aaron what is your thought on that yeah I can't tell you how many houses I've been in where the conversation starts happening around the trophy in the house all my kids also in Little League and you know this is the school and blah blah blah and now we're again we're talking about their family and not the client so to speak we're talking about the people's family of the house one in and they're like I wonder if I know these people I wonder if they go to the same school oh that kids against my school and the conversation goes away from the house and the living area to like what's going on with the family dynamics between this family that they don't and so I definitely recommend if possible you're going to want each room to to look like that Airbnb you know that comfortable inviting neutral I could just spend all of my day in here you know sitting on this sofa or hanging out on the bed and those are the kind of spaces you want to create if you leave trophies up it's going to derail the buyers coming into the house and then the conversation goes to knickknacks and trophies and again not about the house um Diane asked a great question she said I'm surprised about using the garage do buyers overlook the mess there what's your uh what's your take on that Aaron yeah so a couple of things with a garage um in professional photography we never photograph the inside of a garage unless it's a four or five car garage in your housing race cars or something in there uh so garages are used mostly as a storage unit while you're selling your home people are willing to overlook that um the only couple of things people need to know is what's in the garage in terms of is there extra storage space is the water heater up to date is there a water soft or you know some basics like that is the irrigation system hooked up in the garage and is it functioning so beyond those things which you can easily make a note of and leave on the table you could fill the garage all the way up and it declutters the home people are used to that or rent a pot and have it dropped in your driveway and move most of the house out into the pod and into the garage so that the house is open and free for people to visualize what their life would look like inside the house uh thanks for that um I hadn't thought about the pod but yeah we do see lots of homes that have the pods in front of them and then of course you know that they're in the process of moving and that's I guess would be expected if you have a home on the market um Diane said most homes or most houses are shown online now I would be mortified to see my house online um what is the the general consensus for people having their homes photographed and being online is there a fear of burglary or a fear of I mean how is that how is that structured so that people can still feel safe living in their home if their home is being exposed online yeah um again this goes back to decluttering if you can imagine for just a minute you want each room to be as decluttered as possible which basically means three to five items per room if possible that means take a living room you have a tv a couple of couches a picture on the wall try to get rid of everything else um you know you're going to have maybe that throw rug in the center that the room is based around but you want to really take everything else out as much as possible your home will be photographed your home will be videoed and so when people walk through homes now um they walk through with their their cell phones on video recording and it's capturing everything through the house so again as decluttered as possible when it comes to that and then also you have to remember that those photos is the is the hook that's going to get people to come out and see your home in the first place and so having a really nice professional photography and having that home online will people stay up at night looking for homes to go see the next day with their realtor once they've booked up their showing hours and they're always sending extra homes to the realtor morning of going hey i found three more last night i want to go see and it's the pictures online that captured their attention to go out and check that home out so the home needs to match the pictures as closely as possible when they get there or they're going to feel really let down and most professional photographers in this business will edit photos enhance the lighting they enhance the grass so the lawns look extra green the trees look extra green everything looks amazing online and when they get there the windows are usually closed the house smells it's dingy and so those are all the things we want to stay away from so people have the same impression when they show up to the house as the impression they got online for wanting to go see it in the first place thank you so much for bringing that up i want to say hi to ronda and jeremy and melanie and we've got so many folks here you guys it's so great to see you guys um any lasser says one reason i have a hard time considering the importance of clearing out my excess is that my brain doesn't understand not being able to see see past it or the picture the home without it and a couple of comments that have come through here in the notes during the covid era and i don't want you to beat yourself up over this but during the covid era many people because we were mandated to stay at home many people stayed at home and they used that as an opportunity to kind of take a second look at all the stuff that they had and i don't want to surprise anybody but you're not alone if you think like uh i have a really cluttered house so does everyone so does everyone okay we are in an era right now right now six generations of inheritance okay so parents right now like people that are my age have elder parents and when their elder parents pass you have my husband's uh family home you have my family home you have their family home like my parents inherited a home when my grandmother died you have all these different homes that keep getting passed down the average home has five storage spaces and this is like a scary room or a garage or an attic or a storage unit or a you know something that is used as a storage area the average home has five storage areas that are like and then if you inherit one from a parent a deceased parent or from a grandparent or many times it's a kid that's moved away from home and you have all the stuff that they that they grew up with all of their belongings all of their pictures that they've drawn and all of those things right and so the the kid is not deceased they've just gone off to college or something and you're stuck with all their trophies and their toys and their electronics and all their clothes growing up and now as a parent you got to make a decision and so this is what that conversation is about you are not alone do not feel bad do not beat yourself up over this okay this is on an ongoing basis right now and because of the easiness of buying online lots of people are buying online and they're not getting rid of as much stuff so there's a bunch of stuff coming in but not as much stuff going out so we are in an era right now where these conversations are becoming a daily thing and it's the reason that we have started a whole entire youtube channel for a hoarding world and it's the reason that we started a whole entire channel now for the real estate industry because right now homes like just a year ago homes were at the top of the market people were banging on my door like hey ang can i buy your house i'm like what made you think it was for sale it's not no go away i'm not selling my home but the reality is there was a big boon if i were to have sold my house on this for the moment i would have got a lot of money for it but i wouldn't have had a place for all my stuff right i have a lot of stuff too and so now i am going through these same conversations and as i'm helping other people go through the conversations i'm having a look at my own stuff like why do i still have that stuff right so along with that it's little tiny things little tiny things that make the biggest difference imagine you go into a home and there are pictures the kids have drawn on the on the fridge and there are refrigerator magnets and there are all kinds of little magnets and knickknacks and whatever and while this is a cozy kitchen for you there's probably a lot of stuff on your fridge believe it or not that you don't even know is there there might be stuff on your fridge from a year ago or five years ago that is just still there and it might not mean anything to you anymore so clear all the stuff off your refrigerator because that's going to make your fridge look a whole lot cleaner not only that but if your magnets and all the little stuff that you have taped up there has been there for a while there's probably fingerprints and gunk and jelly fingers and all kinds of stuff that needs to come off of all of those appliances before we show the house so again it's not just get rid of the the stuff in the house but it's like as you start to declutter start looking at the surfaces like the surfaces of the cabinets is there a cabinet that you pull out next to the stove where it's a garbage can you got your garbage and your recycling in there and when you crack the eggs in the morning you crack the egg and you kind of like dribble along the way to get to the garbage can and it dribbles down the side of your cabinet and you don't know about that your clutter blind you were just fixing breakfast you weren't paying attention when somebody new that comes through your house sees that you're looking at the stuff stringing down the sides of your cabinets and they're like these people didn't take very good care of their home right and so instead of giving them making making them ask questions that no one no one is asking remove all that stuff and that starts with just something as simple as the pictures on the fridge because once you clear that it's going to create a whole new space it's going to let you see that with different eyes and it's interesting when I walk through a house and we do lots of walkthroughs because we do a lot of move in move out cleans when I walk through a house and there's nothing in there people have removed all the pictures and all the furniture and all the stuff I start seeing stuff we never saw when we cleaned the house we walk in and we're seeing like flaws in the walls we're seeing rips in the blinds we're seeing things that like when you were cleaning the normal house and there are all these other distractions we're seeing stuff now for the first time was that always there like I'm seeing marks on the walls that need to come off I'm seeing marks in the window ledges I'm seeing marks on the doors where people kick the doors they close the door with their shoe because their arms were full I'm seeing all that stuff we didn't see even as a house cleaner and so now is the time to start removing all the surface stuff so that you as a homeowner can see that with new eyes what's your thoughts on that Aaron I love that we get ahold of house cleaners all of the time for that very reason once you get that basic layer of stuff moved off like the magnets off of the fridge and the pictures around the house you start noticing how dirty things actually are light switches the handles to appliances and I can't tell you how fast it turns off a buyer when they walk into your home and they go over to the fridge and it's it's got food on the door handle or they go to turn a light off in a bedroom and this switch is is dirty I've had people literally say this house is too dirty for me let's go look at another one and we'll leave the house showing us over so something is just as simple as cleaning those things cleaning those surface things will make all the difference of people coming in and saying oh this person really took care of this house I can really see myself here and I don't think there's going to be any issues on the inspection report as opposed to them going well if they can't even clean the surfaces I can't imagine what's behind them I can't imagine what we're going to run into I don't even want to go down that road so it's a huge deal and it's a tiny tiny difference but it makes a huge deal in the mind of a buyer. Family photos and personal mementos this is a really big one because as Aaron said a minute ago and I know many people don't think about this because they're thinking oh this is a picture of me with my dad and so of course I live in this house so I want to showcase this but what Aaron mentioned a minute ago as home prospective home buyers are coming through your house and they're taking a look at the house they are videotaping everything with their phone because they're going to show their spouse or they're going to look at it later if they look at three or four houses that day and they want to remind themselves about the house there's nothing to say that they won't go inside a Facebook group or on social media and that they won't say hey guys help me make a decision which house should we move into and they post those videos and now there are pictures of you and your family inside the house okay now that tags you as this being your house and so like Aaron said we want to make sure that there are no personal items in the house that will if they get photographed that they will link back to you and along with the personal family and the the photographs and the personal momentos are awards that you want this could be an Emmy it could be an Oscar it could be a YouTube thing all of the different pieces of information that identify you as this being your home need to be removed on the walkthrough and I say that just for the sheer fact that we don't want anything that identifies you as as this being your home because not only that the buyer knows where you live and so if the buyer knows where you live and they're posting this on social media they could say hey we're we're thinking about buying this in this neighborhood and if if you're home maybe you're a celebrity and you have famous things that would identify you or your family now people can figure out really quickly where you live right and so you want to make sure that you just maintain your own privacy not just for you but for your children and then also for the the potential buyers that are coming in you don't want to expose that either especially if people know oh that's a famous house of so-and-so and they know where you live if that stuff starts showing up online now they know where the potential buyers is going to be so again you want to maintain your privacy by being very careful about those things another one of those items are personalized anything and I say personalized anything because if you go into a house and there are names of people scattered all over while this is super cool and this ends up being about you again this is one of those identifying things that shows people whose house this is so we want to we want to just take extra care that as we remove things we give it an extra eye and we look at it from a buyer's perspective if I was going into a home and there was a bunch of personalized stuff there is this going to make me feel like oh yes I have arrived I'm at home this is my home or is this going to make you think like well no I got divorced and I have a really sad life right now and I don't have a his and hers mug in my house and people start thinking of a whole bunch of weird stuff and you took them out of the scene as we say so instead of them going oh wow I can just imagine myself with a hot cup of cocoa sitting there by the fire you know now it's become a personalized issue and you're like I don't see myself in this in this situation at all it may not have anything at all to do with cleanliness as much as it has to do with you've you've exposed too much of your life and the buyer just doesn't see themselves in that situation so again no personalized anything no bedspreads no ball hats no hoodies no nothing that would with names or anything on it you want to keep those totally separate all right another one that we want to talk about and this goes back to the kitchen and this becomes a very important issue and one that house cleaners are very keen on because we have lots of small appliances many people have lots of small appliances and the house cleaners clean lots of small appliances but do you need them all on your counter and so going back to what Erin said about having two or three items in your kitchen if this stuff that you have in your house can be removed put it in the pod put it in the garage get it out of the house if you're not using it right now put it inside a cabinet or a cupboard put it out of sight out of mind because everything that's on your cupboard is just going to leave a cluttered look and feel and so if you're not using it right now are you going to use it at the next house and if you're not now is a good time to start getting rid of some of that stuff we did a show a few minutes ago over on hoarding world where we were talking about things that we bought but never use and I was reminded of the time that I bought a waffle iron not a waffle iron for when we got married I was going to be like the perfect wife and I was going to like make waffles for my husband but my husband works from sun up till sundown every single day at a car dealership and as a house cleaner I was out the door before he ever got up and went to work so I was never going to actually be there during breakfast time after about a year into our marriage and I had made waffles maybe a handful of times I never used the waffle iron and so I hung on to it probably for 10 years longer than I needed to but when it came time to move I decided not to take it with me because in our lifestyle that was something that was never going to get any use so as you look around your house what are you having your house that you're not using that you bought but have never used is it a waffle iron is it a juicer is it a blender are there things that you have that I don't know it makes sense to have it because like it's cool but you never use it right now is the time to start downsizing and if you didn't use it for the last 10 or 15 years please don't put it in a pod please don't put it in your garage and please don't take it to the next house if you didn't use it for 10 or 15 years you don't need it you're not using it this is not part of your life get rid of it right the purpose of moving to another place is not to find a place that's bigger that can store all the stuff as much as it is get rid of the stuff that you're not using like I said there's there's more where that came from right inheriting houses and stuff from relatives and stuff from kids and neighbors give you stuff and at any moment if you want something that you once gave away you can probably get a really nice or a new one discounted on the next door next door.com or the buy anything or buy nothing marketplace lots of people are getting rid of stuff so easy come easy go this is not the time when you want to like be hoarding a bunch of stuff and you know not not processing stuff because you didn't have a place for it right but get rid of that clutter because the more clutter you have in your house the harder it is and if a buyer comes into your house and they see stuff this is all highly organized it's color coordinated it looks awesome but if somebody walked in they're like well there's a bunch of stuff on the counter right it's just clutter what do you think about clutter? Yeah well so I could go on and on and on about every room in the house but let's talk about the kitchen for just a second it's usually the heart of the home it's where people spend a tremendous amount of time and it's ultimately where your realtor is going to be having conversations with your potential buyers so imagine your realtor is standing in your kitchen with a family and they're talking about the house and what you want to showcase is that your kitchen is bright it's beautiful and it's huge so I'm going to give you a couple of pro tips on how to make that happen just like Angela was saying the decluttering part obviously and for sure you need to do that but think in odd numbers so think of three think of five you want the counters clean if there's something you're going to use every day like that coffee maker make sure it's clean and make sure that it's it's there but put away the cord is tucked away it's going to make the counters look much bigger even if you've got a really tiny space or really tiny kitchen and another pro tip is half of your covered space in any cupboard needs to be empty so imagine you open a cupboard you have 20 plates in there how many plates do you actually need to live on a day-to-day basis or five six when you open that cupboard up it's going to make the coverable gigantic if half the stuff is gone because in people's minds they're thinking I need a ton of storage space and is this kitchen big enough is it going to fit everything that I need to put in here and are we going to have enough space to make meals all these kinds of things if it looks like people are living there and there's a ton of space unconsciously people are going to say yeah for sure this kitchen is perfect it's tons of room and most of us keep our cupboards pretty full and so if you would just take half of everything out of every cupboard and then organize the other half and put it back in when people are in your home and they're opening those cupboards up they're going to go oh my goodness there's so much storage space in here I'm so excited they're going to look at those countertops they're going to be clean and they're going to be like wow there's so much counter space in this kitchen it's massive even if it's a really tiny tiny kitchen and then also bring a little bit of greenery into your kitchen even if it's a plastic plant it can be a small one but it adds a touch of color to the kitchen that people feel this warmth that there's some it's it's alive it's a warm place it's a great place to hang out and all of that clutter is gone so I highly highly recommend that you take a minute to do that when you're getting your house ready to list it's a huge huge difference and by the way NAR the National Association of Realtors say the average house cost goes up by almost $20,000 by having it staged so just to kind of put that into perspective what is it worth to you when you do these things and you're going to sell your home it could be worth another $20,000 in your pocket that's a national average so it's a big deal to just do those simple things to pair it now. Thank you so much for bringing that up Erin. Staging is a whole episode that we're going to do during this 12-part series and we're going to talk about all the cool things you can do to stage your home. One of the things that we do want to talk about right now is stacks of paper and mail. We talked for a second about having stuff that's personal that is out of sight out of mind for the sheer fact that when somebody comes through if they're photographing we don't want any past due notices with your name on them on the desk or the countertops and if you have a great big stack of mail or taxes or whatever and it looks like you haven't paid bills in a while their son's an unconscious message and we've seen this in a lot of the homes that we've cleaned over the years where all of a sudden the requests go up they're like oh these people have neglected their mail for a very long time what else in the home have they neglected and their mind starts going off on this weird rabbit trail if they haven't paid their bills on time have they kept up with the home maintenance repairs are the homeowners association dues current have they kept up with regular maintenance of the house and they start they start thinking in terms of and nobody gets a great big stack of mail every single day and leaves it day after day after day right if you have a great big pile of mail it needs to be moved to a place where the mail is processed and there are ways that we can declutter and process mail so that it's not right there front and center for someone to see but as long as you're processing it and as long as it's not right there where people can see it's not going to send them on a weird rabbit goose chase I say a rabbit goose chase a rabbit hole or a goose chase where they're starting to think in terms of like Aaron said earlier if if this than that if there's a great big stack of mail and I see past due notices and whatever what else did they neglect what else are they behind on what else am I going to get stuck with as a home buyer that I I don't I don't even have the the know how yet to know what is involved right if they neglected this what else are they neglecting don't make them ask those questions put your stuff away put it out of a site and make sure that you are responding in a timely manner to the incoming requests we got a lot of people here I'm super excited you guys we got the batman here whoo whoo he says awesome and robin in virginia says so I get the concept of the cabinet's being downsized but what if they're full and organized but not overflowing will they have the same wow this is a lot of room seems logical what is your take on that Aaron will they have the same the same organized look and feel if they're not overflowing but they're still full yeah no psychologically people just see more room and they make it feels like it's a lot more space even if it's not even if it's a really small cabinet you see this the most in master closets yes the closet can be big but if it's full unconsciously we're thinking that's a really tiny closet if you were to take you know two-thirds of the close out of the closet people walk into the same space and go wow this is huge I would have plenty of room to put everything even if it's well organized and we see this a lot in pantries um buyers will open the pantry it's full it's organized it looks great but the first thing they're like wow this is such a tiny pantry as opposed to only you know half the stuff on the shelf and they're going wow look at all this extra space I could easily put everything in here so I would highly recommend if you can you're not using everything in your cabinets take as much as you can out it gives the appearance of it being bigger and people unconsciously think wow there's so much more space in here to be utilized this home has tons of space one of the tricks that realtors do and this is in the staging episode that we'll do but they'll use like tiny furniture in a room because it makes the room look even that much bigger like oh look there's a bed in this room and if you stop to look at the bed you're like that's actually kind of a small bed that's a small dresser but it makes the room look so much bigger and so more so so much more um approachable right one of the things that we love is when we go to a hotel and we walk in and even though there's a bed and a dresser and usually a mirror or a chair of some kind inside the hotel room there's nothing else everything is like totally empty so we walk in and there are no distractions what we see is the bed and our first thought is oh that's going to be so fun to lay on and just relax and you know enjoy this time and it just seems so I have arrived and people love that feeling and so we want to remove things like the clutter from our bedrooms so when people come in they get that oh I've arrived on vacation feel not oh wow these people just left in a hurry because we were down the street looking at a house and the realtor just called and said we're two doors down and here we come right so we want to make sure that even every single day when you get up at the top of the day that you don't know if that's a showing day you don't know if a realtor's coming over in 10 minutes if your house is on the market you want to make sure that when you get up the first thing that you do in the morning is that you make your bed that you take your clothes that you put them away because we don't know when we're going to get that phone call and having sold homes before and I don't mean like I was a realtor I mean sold homes of my own we got those calls and they were last minute calls like hey we're in the neighborhood can we drop by we're like yeah let's run out the back door so that you guys can have our space but we knew that we left everything in show condition right so that if somebody just shows up on the door and said hey we're in the neighborhood here we are looking at homes I want to have the chance of selling you my home if my home's on the market if they're looking at a competitive home in my neighborhood I don't want to be taken off the list because I got pajamas thrown around and I have breakfast stuff that's left in the kitchen sink and all those things I want to make sure that day by day as I go I keep my house in that clutter-free condition now I forget who it was that was going to give themselves a year I love that but that gives you a year to set routines and to start getting the habit of every single day as you walk through a room pick the stuff up that that you used take it out of the room on your way out even if it's dishes take them out don't leave them in there again that last minute phone call could have somebody on your door that that gives you the potential of buying and you don't want to find yourself up a creek without a paddle as they say right this also is true for scattered toys and with scattered toys for example there are lots of kids who have toys that they're playing with right now when they're done playing with the toys we got to figure out a way to train the kids to pick up the toys and to put them away put them in the cabinet or put them on the shelf or wherever that that toy box is put them away so that they're out of sight out of mind because again at a last minute if somebody were to come through and these are toys or maybe they're outgrown toys if you have outgrown toys that the kids no longer play with this is an excellent time during this window maybe maybe you have a year maybe you have two weeks I don't know but this might be a great time to sit down and go through some of the stuff that once served your family that was once useful but is no longer and so if your kids have slightly outgrown those toys don't wait and say well you know maybe they're going to use these for their kids when you know they're grown and they have kids of their own don't do that you can get new toys at that time this is the time to go ahead and pack everything up and send it on its way so that you're not storing it and so that it's not unsightly when somebody shows up at the last minute what are your thoughts on toys yeah so a couple of pro tips here go go out to your garage where you stored those amazon boxes from the first thing that we were talking about decluttering your boxes get a couple of small boxes obviously you're living in the home you have kids you have to live life while you're selling your home whatever can whatever toys can fit in that box is the box you should keep in there for the kids take everything else out to the garage as far as the toys are concerned this means when you get a call for a showing it will only take you a couple of minutes to run into the kids bedroom put everything back in that box and put the box in the closet and everything will look really really nice another pro tip for kids bedrooms is invest in a cover for the bed that looks really nice that's not stained maybe the kids don't use it during the process of selling the home it's one that you're going to grab out of the closet you're going to throw over the bed right before a showing so the bed looks amazing and then another pro tip is pillows pillows always make the bed look more inviting if you would get covers for your pillows you can get those on amazon get them a size smaller than the pillow and the pillow looks really plump and full if you get one that's a size smaller and throw that cover over the bed a couple of those pillows on the bed and throw the toys in that box the kids room is going to look amazing when people come in it's going to give the right impression it's only going to take you two or three minutes when you get that call for a showing to have the kids room looking like a million dollars that was an awesome pro tip thank you as a house cleaner we see lots of vanities that look like this and i know none of you have a vanity that looks like this however the same pro tip is true for your bathroom and the reason i bring this up is many times we get dressed in the morning and we have our morning routine and it kind of sits there on the vanity and if somebody were to come in at the last minute and they see all this stuff the first thought is like oh oh my goodness this is overwhelming and if you have a sense of overwhelm when you see clutter and mist strewn stuff all over your house this is a highlight room okay the master bathroom is a highlight room in any house you walk in and that's where people spend about an hour an hour and a half of their day they get dressed in the morning they close their day out inside the master bathroom when they go in they want to see one of these oh wow look at this bathroom kind of feels that they walk in and all the vanities are cluttered there's a bunch of stuff in the shower and it's just kind of overwhelming again this is one of those things they're going to go yeah i don't want to spend an hour of my day here in in in this room and so just like erin was saying about the box where you want to pack this stuff up if you'll put your makeup on in the morning and then you'll put it inside a travel kit and put it back in the drawer or put it underneath the sink so that it's out of sight out of mind you can do that really quickly with a little tote get a little tote that you put your um hairsprays and your deodorant and all that stuff in when you're done using it for the day take the little tote put it underneath the bathroom sink you still have it again for tomorrow but if somebody were to come in on the spur of the moment what they're seeing are these nice clean vanities and they're seeing these this great big opulence of a master bathroom that they're like oh yeah i can totally see myself in here as opposed to what what happened in here right i don't want any part of whatever this is and so again it goes back to making sure that there's that that look and feel that is inviting to someone right uh joey says what about mirrors i'm going to throw this one over to erin erin what about mirrors i'm so glad this came up mirrors are a huge deal when it comes to selling your home um a couple of different approaches on mirrors first of all um in bedrooms if you have mirrors that are longer and taller they make rooms look bigger and they also reflect light and make the room look so much bigger so if you have a weird angle in a room or the room feels really small putting a long mirror like in a corner across from a window will bring more light into the room and it'll actually make the room look a lot bigger that being said to bring more light into the house get rid of those dark lines please take them off your windows the the curtains themselves any dark curtains go with white sheer or really light sheer blind curtains and then it's really important that you move the curtain rod six to eight inches above the window and let those drapes go all the way to the floor it'll make the room look twice as tall and it will bring a lot of light into the room and then reflect that off of the mirror so that's a pro tip for bedrooms when it comes to the bathrooms i recommend have a little cleaning box that stays under your sink so that those mirrors can be wiped down and cleaned before a showing there's nothing that turns a buyer off faster than toothpaste all over the mirror when they go in to look at the bathroom so keep that little cleaning box and then also another pro tip is all of the the linens in the bathroom should be white they should be folded and they should be clean so rags towels etc your bathroom is on display so go to the store grab some white towels white washcloths put those out and those will just be for show when people come over and come into your bathroom it'll look really really nice it'll look pristine when you're ready to use something yourself open up the cabinet from under the sink pull out those towels use the towels put those back under and leave everything else the way it will look really really nice and white specifically it gives that you know real chic looking nice hotel feel when people go in there and i also recommend a few other textures especially in bathrooms you know like a nice scented candle that's not lit but that's just on the counter some really simple things if you've got a garden tub they've got those boards that go over the tub you know that you can sit and like read on those look really really nice and give the feeling of a really relaxed spa feel when it comes to when it comes to your bathrooms so highly recommend that thank you so much for those amazing tips and when you talk about scented candles i can't i would be remiss if i did not talk first about litter boxes because litter boxes are a sore subject with lots of homes that we clean where we have homeowners who their smell blind to the scents in their home they have their own pets and their pets smell like a certain thing and then you have somebody that comes in that might be allergic to pets or they may have sensitivities and as they walk in they're like hit with the smell like whoa what happened in this house and this is also true for some strong cooking smells like we've gone into homes to clean and do move out clean and we're fighting with like a curry smell for example which is a very strong smell nothing wrong with it but it's a very strong smell and for somebody that's not accustomed to that smell whether it's pets that have either marked their territory or you just have litter boxes that haven't been cleaned in a regular basis there are our smells that will then hit you like and we've had people literally turn around and leave walk-throughs of homes because of the smell and i know as house cleaners that go in sometimes house cleaners are like well just the smell is overwhelming i can't clean at home and so if the cleaners are in that situation it's it's it's a really good idea to stop and say what what is going on in my home there are little boxes of baking soda and they're called ventable boxes i don't know if you are familiar with them or not but they have like little doors that open on both side and the air flows through the box of baking soda so no baking soda spills out you can buy them in like little packs of 10 and just putting one in every room kind of like hidden in every room they can hide behind plants they can be on a bookshelf as long as air can get through there the baking soda will absorb the odors so even when the air conditioning kicks on it will kill a lot of the odors in the room and it will kind of help clean that up um erin what are your takes on smells and what do people do if they have pets and there's a last minute showing what do you recommend yeah it's a it's a really big deal um having having pets in your home the odor gets into furniture it gets into especially you know you got a dog that sleeps on your couch something like that um dog beds specifically capture a lot of odor and so i would highly recommend if you can during during the selling process if you can take any of that furniture out into the garage or replace it um it will get rid of a lot of those odors definitely talk to your professional house cleaners on how to get rid of more of those odors what we recommend from a staging perspective um your your bbq briquettes absorb a lot of heavy smells from pets and animals so if you go get a little tiny bag of briquettes that you would put in your bbq and open that up stick it in your laundry room next to the litter box it's going to absorb a ton of those smells baking soda like angela was saying is another one that you can stick in the tops of closets in refrigerators anywhere where smells would perpetuate and then again anything that's old an old couch throw uh dog beds that have been around more than six months a year if you can get those out of the house it will it will help so much with the smell people ask us all the time can we put deodorizers in the bedrooms there's a little bit of a problem with that you want a house to smell naturally clean if there's deodorizers in every room and you've got this overpowering smell of you know whatever it is people feel like you're trying to cover something up and even though it might cover up the animal smell for a little while you know during a showing that overpowering smell of you know in every single room it's too much what I would recommend is a scented candle in your kitchen um maybe cookie dough is a really good one or something that's pumpkin and people love that smell it permeates through the house but it's not too overwhelming um and then again if you can be careful with candles oftentimes on showings we have little kids running around um you don't want hot wax spilling anywhere um and kids especially young teenagers they like to go after medications and so again it's one of those things put them in a box put them out of sight and the showing will go so much easier for you thank you so much for bringing that up uh uh any last low last or says I have poor fake smells such as candles air fresheners like febrize airwick airwick or perfume and colognes and that also goes back to people that have chemical sensitivities I know from the house cleaning perspective one of the things that we really are encouraged by the realtors that we work with is they're like don't bring any strong scented smells because there are people that come in and again going back to what erin was saying before if you're in a situation where you're trying to buy a home and you're trying to say is this the right place for me if you come in and there is pet dander and your eyes start to watering and your nose starts to cry and you have these really fake smells that are just overpowering it causes some people migraine headaches and if they get a migraine headache from your house they're not going to go like oh yes I want that I want the migraine headache house they don't do that anyway our time is up for today I'm so sad because this has been so much fun and I've really enjoyed spending time with you I do want to highlight the fact that we're going to be doing this every week same time same place for the next 12 weeks so that we can help you sell your home next week we're going to be talking about deep cleaning and some of the deep cleaning things that we want to make sure that we cover when you're cleaning your house getting ready for that great big move and so on behalf of myself and erin this has been really fun and thank you guys so much for joining us today and we will see you again next time we love your questions as well so thank you so much we look forward to answering them next week