Prospective purchasers will look at a home and picture their items in it, including art, furniture and appliances. Their imagination will be constrained if your home is cluttered up and displaying the characteristics of a hoarder. It’s therefore very important to clear your shelves and walls of as many little objects as you can before you start showing your house. That said, don’t go overboard by making it look like you have been robbed or that your home is uninviting and clinical. Ensure your property has a little soul and personality to look comfortably lived in. This will also give unimaginative purchasers suggestions as to what your space is capable of.

The best way to showcase your home is to get rid of the clutter as it will look bigger and appear to be a tidy, well-ordered place to live to potential purchasers – Just what they want!

The task of de-cluttering helps you to start looking at your house as a commodity for sale and manage the emotional bond with such, which in extreme cases can cloud ones judgment and stop you from selling sooner. Below are a few things you can and should do:

  • Clear off the kitchen counters
  • Clear passages and make sure they are well lit. This creates an initial feeling of space.
  • Donate or throw away unused items and then throw away some more.
  • Clutter makes spaces look smaller and a messy home is a purchaser repellent. Toys, laundry, shoes, post, newspapers, magazines and other small lose items should be tidied away.
  • Tidying up doesn’t mean you should conceal the clutter and toss everything into a cupboard, as serious purchasers are likely to open cupboards in order to get a sense of the storage space. If there isn’t enough storage for you, they’ll assume there isn’t enough for them. Bursting cupboards should be emptied slightly as cupboards and storage areas should ideally not be more than 75% full.
  • You don’t want it to appear as though you are short on space and are selling as you have to move into a bigger house. If need be, store excess, bulky or non-essential furniture that makes the room feel small and replace it with smaller furniture, even if only for a few weeks while you market your property.  If you take photographs for your property listing, having less furniture can also help the home appear to be more spacious. Only a minimum amount of furniture is required to define the use of a room and by making your house look bigger you can achieve a sale quicker. At the end of the day, space sells!