30 Easy Home Staging Tips

9 / 1 / 163 / 21 / 18

If you’re just starting home staging, check out this post about the basic process I used to stage our house to sell in 36 hours and get multiple offers.

Warning: The before photos of our house are so embarrassing. There was a lot of “life” happening in that house with everything from a sick family (complete with ER visits), Christmas, moving, renovating…you name it. Look ahead with grace. Yikes.

When you’re ready to begin preparing your home for the market, the absolute first thing you should do is go outside and stand around in your front yard. Imagine you are a buyer coming into the home for the first time. Pay attention to where your eyes naturally look and take lots of notes.

Walk into every room and imagine you are someone with different tastes and styles. What stands out at you? What could be toned down to appeal to everyone, but still remain fresh? Did you see that spot on the carpet? Yikes. Better put that on the list…

Be mean. Look at your home objective and critically. If you’re having a hard time seeing it objectively, get it “ready” in your eyes, then walk around and take some photos. Then, compare photos of your home with photos of other homes that are on the market (just avoid the ones that have been listed for weeks…unless you want your home listed for weeks). The camera doesn’t lie when it comes to clutter.

Yikes. Do you see all that clutter that just happened in our house?! I told you the camera doesn’t lie.

The great news is that home staging doesn’t have to be expensive. Sometimes, all it takes is removing some of your personal items and giving everything a good scrub-down for your home to be warm and inviting. Even an older home can be market-ready with the right attention, even if it doesn’t have granite countertops and hardwood floors.

Here is a quick list of things to take care of around the house as you go.

Kitchen

Clear off the tops of the cabinets.
Clear off the entire countertop.
Choose the one or two cabinets/drawers you think buyers will check and organize those.
Organize pantry.
Make sure the top of your refrigerator is cleaned off if it is accessible.

Bathrooms

Clear countertops except decorative soap dispensers and simple decor.
Remove plungers and trash cans.
Remove rugs.
Hide extra toilet paper.
Replace decorative shower curtains with simple white shower curtains.
Clear out all soaps (and medicines), and replace with spa-looking soaps.

Bedrooms

Remove everything except main furniture (dresser, nightstands, and bed).
Put your most luxurious light-colored comforter on the bed.
European pillows are your friend (at least 2 for queen, 3 for king).
Pick up all kids toys. If it can’t fit on a shelf it should go in a box.
Replace blackout curtains with white curtains (I got ours from Ikea).
Remove everything from dresser and nightstands except decorative elements.
Remove 1/2 to 2/3 of clothes and items in closets.

Living Room/Common Areas

Pick up all toys.
Minimize electronics and wires.
Add throw pillows to couches/chairs.
Move furniture to center of room in a cozy gathering area and remove all furniture that doesn’t fit into the simple layout.
Add decorative elements like flowers.

Outside

Pick up all clutter including toys and decorative elements.
Plant fresh flowers for a pop of color.
Add fresh pillows to outdoor furniture.

Right before showing

Replace used towels with fresh decorative towels.
Hide the trash can (or take it out of the house altogether). Even if it’s large.
Turn on all lights.
Open all blinds and curtains.
Set thermostat to comfortable temperature.

Staging our home with a toddler and pets around has been a major project, but I know it is the reason we received multiple offers at a price we thought was over market value. The time I put into staging our home proved to be completely worth it in the end.

Do you need a general overview of how we staged our house to sell for full price? Head on over to this post to read more about the overall process of how to stage a house to sell fast.

Want a little more help?

If you’ve already given staging your house a try, but you still aren’t sure if you’re doing the right things and just need a second opinion, I totally get it. Sometimes it helps a ton to have an outside perspective, especially in a house. You have a tendency to see the day-to-day messes, while an outsider will have an overall perspective.

By the second house I staged in a year, I had the listing process down to a science. Similar to the rules of home decor, there are rules to home staging. I understand the rules and can help you sell your house in no time.

For this month only, I am opening a few free mini home staging consultations! I am offering a free mini-consultation (worth $149) to give you custom advice on what to do with your home.

You can send me up to 5 pictures of what your house looks like now, and I will respond back with a list of items you can do in each room to get it listing-ready. Think action items like “Declutter desk” “Hide/remove toilet bowl brush” and “Move sofa to “x” location.” You’ll get steps you can actually take to get your home show-ready in no time with no guesswork involved.

To reserve a free mini-consultation, you just need to hit this box and drop in your email address to claim your spot. You’ll hear back from me soon with our next steps so that we can get you the feedback you’ve been needing.

So, if your house is currently on the market (or you wish it was), this time next week you could be preparing for appraisals, inspections, and closings. Or you could be wishing that you knew what to do to get your house show-ready before it hit the market three weeks ago.

Which one do you want to be?

I think I know the answer.

I’ve been there. Let me help you.

Sign me up!

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What to do if you move into a dirty house

4 / 19 / 1612 / 28 / 16

I have survived living in a totally disgusting dirty house, and have turned it into a home that’s totally livable for my germaphobe self, toddler and husband. And I don’t even cringe when I touch the light switches anymore!

Here’s how it all went down.

This post may contain affiliate links to stuff I love. It doesn't charge you any extra, but it will help support this blog and my family.

One year we were crazy and bought a 120-year-old dirty house. It smelled a little funky when we were house shopping, but then, after closing, we walked in and it reeked of smoke. Where was this smell while we were house shopping?!

Then we came to find out that the house we bought had been rented out for 8 years before the previous owner. Yikes. And the guy bought it for $40K, so I can only imagine the type of renters that were in the house before he bought it. Needless to say, this place was GROSS. (And the before picture doesn’t do it justice. At. All.)

Here’s how I made this old place feel fresh and new again.

Bathroom

Clean the Bathroom

The first thing I did was clean the bathroom. Actually. I’ll be honest and tell you my mother in law cleaned the bathroom. The tub was moldy, the toilet was totally disgusting, and the brick floors (yes, brick!) were pretty gross. If you don’t feel like you can get clean somewhere, then you’ll never feel any relief from the gross. She scrubby bubbled everything (even the floor!!!).

Toilet

One big change we made in the bathroom was to replace the toilet for $100. We got ours at Home Depot, but you could save yourself the headache of hauling it home if you get it from Amazon with Prime (which is stinkin’ awesome (get it?) if you have a tiny car!!). It took Nathan and his dad about 5 hours to replace the toilet (they, of course, had some problems with the 120-year-old house plumbing). But then, I could let our toddler actually sit on the toilet without worrying about him touching the nasty hiding in there (even though it was cleaned!!). Plus, it looked way more beautiful!

This is what we took out of there. Yep, we left it in the yard for a day. We wished someone might need a free broken toiled and just pick it up for us.

They didn’t.

Entire House

Clean the Blinds

The whole house reeked of cigarette smoke. Sniffed around the house and found that the windows were extra smelly, so I figured the mini-blinds might have absorbed some of the smell. I took each set down and washed them in the bathtub with some Dawn. You wouldn’t believe the gross that came off those things!!

Clean the Light Fixtures

I knew which light fixtures we would keep, so for those lights, I cleaned all of the chandeliers and replaced the light bulbs. You wouldn’t believe how just 15 minutes of cleaning with soap and water could make a dirty house feel so much brighter and cleaner. Clean light fixtures really do make a big difference, even if you don’t look at them. And light bulbs!! Don’t even get me started! Just-right lighting is amazing for freshening up a room!

Clean Ceiling Fan Blades

We also took off the blades on the lone ceiling fan in our house. We cleaned the ceiling fan and the lights like all the other light fixtures in the house, but the ceiling fan blades were so stained with tar that we ended up cleaning them and then spray painting them. Now they look so fresh and white. You can also buy replacement fan blades, but that wasn’t in our budget.

Heavy Cleaning

Walls

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. To clean a gross house, you have to (HAVE TO) either clean or paint the walls. Seriously. They are grosser than they look. We opted to repaint and I’m really happy with that decision. For a long time we left the trim as it was (since there was so much to do), but when we finally did finish the trim, it felt worlds cleaner.

Trust me. You want to paint.

Ceilings

We also painted most of the ceilings in the house. We used the cheapest contractor paint we could find at Home Depot (at $11 a gallon it was a steal), and it still looked better than what was there before!

We painted the brownish ceilings in this hall way. And replaced the light switch covers. Which brings me to my next point…

Light Switch Plates

As I painted each room, I replaced all the light switch plates and outlet covers. Matching fresh white covers made it feel like I could actually turn the lights off and on without having to make sure I didn’t miss the light switch. Just one more thing in my house I wasn’t afraid to touch anymore.

Floors

After you get all the ceilings and walls freshened up, you can give the floors a really good scrubbing. If you have carpet, this is where you’ll want to have a carpet steamer handy. (Mine is just like this and I still love it after 5 years!). It will disinfect your carpet as it cleans as a bonus, too.

Bonus!

Rip out the Kitchen

You get lots of bonus points if your kitchen is so gross you have to tear it out. Don’t worry, you’re not a princess if you’re so grossed out by your kitchen that you replace it. It probably isn’t as scary as you think it will be, but it is probably a lot dirtier than you think it will be. After we ripped out our kitchen, it was super gross in places I never could have cleaned. Needless to say, I felt totally validated when I saw all the grime. I’m so glad I don’t have to feed our family out of that kitchen. All in all, we replaced our entire tiny kitchen for about $3,000. If I had it to do over again, I would have done the same thing. 🙂

So, if you’re a germ freak like me, and you have to move into a gross place to live, have hope! You CAN have a clean happy home with just a little bit of money and a lot of elbow grease.

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Kitchen burn care supplies

4 / 13 / 169 / 28 / 16

What you need to know about burns before you get burned.

I’ve been cooking since I was 6 or 7. And I’ve been burned cooking since about that time. Haha. When I was a kid, I always held the cookie sheet wrong and got burns on my arms.

When I got a burn, we tried all kinds of remedies for burns while I was a kid. We would put butter on it. Then ice. Then (just kidding). And I’d have to go to the couch and prop my feet up. Hmph! Teenagers.

This post may contain affiliate links to stuff I love. It doesn't charge you any extra, but it will help support this blog and my family.

Now that I’m a grownup, I get a little bit fancier sometimes and will cook dishes that require me to put a skillet into the oven. And every time I cook a recipe like that, I promise myself I will be careful with the skillet handle when it comes out of the oven.

And every time, I get burned.

Recently, I got the worst burn of my life on the inside of my wrist. It was so serious that I went to the doctor after a few days of it not healing. My insurance was the pits at the time, so it was a huge deal that I went to the doctor. And for a burn? Psshhh! It wasn’t even a broken leg!

But while I was researching what to do about that burn before resorting to heading to the doctor, I found tips that could have helped if I knew them before I got burned.

For a standard burn, there isn’t much to do, but you need to do it immediately. First, run it under cool (not cold) water for about 5 minutes. This part will “take the burn out” and help with swelling later on. Ice is a no no and actually makes it burn worse when you take the ice off and your burn is no longer numb.

Second, wrap the burn in clean gauze. You want to keep the burn from getting air. Air will encourage your skin to scab, but you want it to do some healing before it scabs over. The gauze is acting like neosporin by creating an environment for your skin to heal itself. But don’t use neosporin because the oil can aggravate a burn. That’s why gauze is best.

If you have a really serious burn, silver can help your burn to heal quickly and keep it from scarring. The doctor gave me a prescription for a silver cream but I’ve heard colloidal silver works wonders on burns, too.

This is the kind of colloidal silver that I have, but the higher the ppm, the better.

And if you’re like me, you might be cooking dinner alone or with a kid on your hip, so you’ll want to make sure your kitchen is stocked with the necessities. I keep mine in a little basket in the junk drawer. It’s my burn basket.

If I get a burn, I just stink my finger under cool water. Dry it carefully, then wrap my finger nice and snug. Then, I usually feel fine enough to continue on with dinner.

No trips to the couch for me anymore. I sure miss those teenage days. 🙂

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How to clean paint off glass in 5 minutes

4 / 8 / 168 / 23 / 16

Some secrets in life you wish you knew sooner. Like how to clean paint off glass or out of clothes.

I read that you can get acrylic/latex (water based) paint out of clothes with simple rubbing alcohol. You just dab it on and the paint comes right off. A miracle I wish I would have known about a long long time ago.

When we moved into our house after the sloppiest painter in the universe lived there, I knew I had to do something. Our front door had small little windows and it felt like it hardly had any windows at all because the previous owner painted all over the glass when he painted the front door.

So, on a whim, I grabbed a paper towel and my rubbing alcohol to see if I could get the paint off the glass.

Hear that? It’s the angels singing. It didn’t even take any elbow grease to get the paint off the glass. Just a soaked paper towel with a little bit of rubbing alcohol and a little bit of rubbing cleaned the paint off of the glass! Just like that! It was the easiest cleaning tip I’ve discovered yet.

After I cleaned the paint off the glass, it had a few streaks left over, so I just hit it up with a shot of Windex and it was as good as new. Amazing!

Have you found any amazing secrets to life lately?

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How to back up your photos effortlessly

4 / 7 / 1612 / 8 / 16

This post may contain affiliate links to stuff I love. It doesn't charge you any extra, but it will help support this blog and my family.

If you want to get 3 free months of free backup, head on over and sign up for Backblaze’s free trial. If you decide you love it (I’m pretty sure you’ll think it’s the easiest backup plan you’ve ever tried) and you sign up for the year they’ll add 3 free months to your account! Who doesn’t love that?! But this offer expires 1/6/17, so hurry on over to get started with your free trial!

Backup your photos tonight because you might not get the chance to tomorrow.

One day I sat down to my computer to get some stuff done. When I went to the file explorer to find my files nothing was there. Nothing. It was empty. I checked to make sure my external hard drive was on. The light was on. I unplugged it and re-plugged it. Nothing. Restarted my computer because that’s what all the geeks swear by. My hard drive still wasn’t there.

After lots of prayer and scrambling around trying to get my hard drive to show up, I finally gave up the fight. I sunk into my chair as it sighed out a breath of truth that I had just lost everything. My mind raced through the folders I had stored on my hard drive. Work I had spent months and years cultivating. Important documents like taxes. And, most importantly, precious family photos that I can never retake again (and most likely will never remember unless I see them again).

Tears began to run rivers down my cheeks. I had lost everything that I owned digitally. I had archives of over 10 years worth of photos. Nathan and I when we were dating. Wedding photos. Our life living at the beach. The birth and first years of our son’s life. Vacation photos. Birthdays.

All gone. In an instant. It totally sucks, doesn’t it?

Now. Don’t get mad at me right now. Because I made it all up. But the sad truth is that a lot of people have this happen to them every single day. Every single day. And it could just as easily happen to you.

The good news is it doesn’t have to happen to you (or me!) if you backup your photos right now. Today.

Because tomorrow might be too late.

This post may contain affiliate links to stuff I love. It doesn't charge you any extra, but it will help support this blog and my family.

Here is how I backup my photos by only copying one folder every few months.

I have Dropbox Pro. I looove it. I have all the space I need to have continuous backups of my phone camera photos. Their phone app makes it an easy no brainer. And I love that Nathan and I have both our phone syncing to Dropbox so I can access his photos whenever I need to. (That feature has been especially helpful working on the house this year.)

If you don’t have Dropbox Pro, it’s definitely worth the money to make sure those everyday moments are synced to your computer. But if you aren’t feeling like paying for a ton of storage with Dropbox, their Basic service gives you 8 GB, but you can earn up to 16 GB by sharing the link with your friends. You can also watch their blog for promos to earn extra space. I did that before going pro and it was so worth it.

All those photos eventually fill up my computer long before they fill up my Dropbox, so every few months, I archive my Dropbox Camera Uploads folder to my external hard drive and start again.

And when that happens, the photo sitting on my external hard drive is the only copy I have of the photos. And that’s where I would lose sleep if I didn’t have an easy automatic system to backup my photos and files that are archived on my external hard drive.

Let me introduce you to BackBlaze. It’s the absolute best backup system I’ve ever used. And I’ve used all the big guys back in my former wedding photographer days. File security was the biggest liability when I was shooting. A failed hard drive could mean a lawsuit if it wasn’t backed up and easy to retrieve.

And want to know the best part about BackBlaze? It’s only $50 per computer per year. No data limits. And you can have as many external hard drives per computer as you need! Score!

Another thing I love about BackBlaze is that you don’t have to spend a long time setting it up. It knows exactly what you want to back up and starts running in the background of your computer right away. It works so well you won’t even know it’s there until you need it.

Plus, it’s really easy to find files when you’re away from your computer because it’s structured identically to your own drives (some others aren’t stored that way). You can download one file or all your files for free at any time. And if your computer crashes, you can pay a little extra to have all your files sent to you on an external hard drive so it doesn’t take forever to download all those files from the web.

It’s the peace of mind that lets me lay my head on my pillow at night and not worry about the security of my memories of our 2014 vacation. Or my 2013 taxes. Or my son’s first time fishing. Or that afternoon we had a picnic in the backyard.

And that’s worth so much more than $50 to me.

So, don’t wait until tomorrow. Backup your photos right now. Right. Now.

Start your backup then go hug your loved ones. Tomorrow might be too late.

Don’t forget to drop by and grab your 3 free months of free backup. This offer expires 1/6/17, so hurry on over to get started with your free trial and sleep peacefully knowing your memories are safe!

I know there were a few steps in this post, so if you want to save them for later, don’t forget to pin this image so you can find it later. 🙂

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My addiction to cleaning supplies

4 / 4 / 164 / 5 / 16

I have an addiction. To cleaning supplies. I am a self-proclaiming cleaning supplies hoarder.

When we moved, I gathered all my cleaning supplies from around my house so that they could move to the new house all in one box. Funny. It was more like 6 boxes. I seriously have as many cleaning supplies as my son has toys.

This post may contain affiliate links to stuff I love. It doesn't charge you any extra, but it will help support this blog and my family.

“A watch won’t take you to where you want to be. It’s up to you if you want to be on time.” Mama Bear Berenstain

If you haven’t discovered The Berenstain Bears on Sprout, you really should look for it. The show is everything you want a Berenstain Bears cartoon to be, right down to the calm demeanor and bluegrass music. To say I love that show would be a sincere understatement.

I love the wisdom of the Berenstain Bears and that same simple wisdom brings me back to my cleaning supply stockpile. Apparently, I believe somewhere deep down in my heart that if I have this one more cleaning miracle, I will finally win the battle with my dirty, messy house.

And that’s just about like saying that a watch will get you somewhere on time or a camera takes nice pictures. Cleaning supplies don’t actually clean your house. Now, if I could just convince my wallet not to buy them…

I just stink at cleaning. That’s the cold, hard, and really bitter truth. Almost as bitter as 100% chocolate. I love having a clean house. I really do. I just have “more important” things to do. Or I’m already exhausted from a long day of hard work being a mom and I can’t fight yet another battle with the mop and a dirty floor.

I know you’re feeling my pain right about how. And, as much as I would like to inspire you with a “here’s how I fixed it” moment, I just don’t have one. I’d love to start cleaning Ruth’s way with only 10 cleaning ingredients for the whole house. But she says not to start using those products until you’ve used up what you have. And I have years worth of cleaning supplies.

What a tangled web we weave…

So, in leiu of inspiration today, I’m just going to hang out with all the other mamas with dirty houses and a stockpile of cleaning supplies. We may not be the awesomest at cleaning. And we may think we’re making progress when we buy that new scrubbie. But we make a darn good pie. Not your thing? No. Me either. I bet we are killer organizers. Me neither. But!! I do make the awesomest sheet fort you’ve ever seen. Even if there are fuzz bunnies in the corner.

There’s no judging here. You’re totally not alone. As long as you promise I’m not alone, either.

How to stage a house to sell in a day

4 / 2 / 163 / 21 / 18

Home Staging To Sell Your House Fast

If you’re doing some home staging to sell your house fast, you’re in the right place. I’m going to share my favorite home staging tips for a quick sale! We just listed our house for sale. It’s been a long journey to this point, but when all is said and done, we have a beautiful house as an end product. And staging the house was just the cherry on top. We sold our last house in 36 hours and this house already has 3 offers on it!

This is the general overview of how to stage a home. Check out this post if you’re looking for a detailed step-by-step list of how to stage your house to sell.

This post may contain affiliate links to stuff I love. It doesn't charge you any extra, but it will help support this blog and my family.

Steps to Stage A House To Sell Fast

Get a vision of what it should be.

Think of a vacation rental or your favorite homes in magazines. When you are listing your home for sale, it should look like a vacation rental. It is clean, it’s organized, and it’s decorated. It’s simple but not bland. It’s equipped but not cluttered.

The Most Important thing: Prepacking!!

The absolute most important element of home staging is decluttering. If you don’t need it every single day, it shouldn’t be out. Would you pack it to take on vacation? Nope? Then you don’t need it while your house is on the market.

And the things that you will need the next few weeks (like a toothbrush) need to be tucked away in a proper place (like a drawer). If you absolutely must keep something out that is not solely decorative, put it in a basket. Every surface in your home should be for decorative purposes only (except maybe your cable box under your tv). Even your soap dispensers should be simple but decorative. These soap dispensers are inexpensive and will appeal to almost anyone.

If you aren’t committed to pre-packing and decluttering, then why list your house for sale at all? Commitment to a show-worthy house will make is sell-able. So, either, you’re in, or you’re not. So decide now because if you can’t pre-pack, then you aren’t ready for the next step of staging a house….

Take everything away. AKA Declutter again.

This part hurts a little so get ready. You’ll need to pack away everything that you either don’t use every day or doesn’t make your house beautiful. Get a stack of boxes and moving supplies (this kit makes it easy to get started). Make a pile in the center of each room with all the things that did not fit in their proper place (like extra towels, knick knacks, and appliances (fans, humidifiers, toasters, etc)). You are going to put each of these things in a box. Clear off your entire kitchen counter top and upper cabinets, too. No, it doesn’t really look that nice. It needs to go.

After you have your pile of extras, start boxing it away. I like to keep my boxes per room (bathroom extras), not per category (small appliances). If you mix rooms, it will take longer to unbox the mixed up boxes later. I prepacked and decluttered about 20 boxes worth in both homes I staged recently. This is hard work but selling your house for full price is worth it, right?

Decluttering is the absolute most important part of home staging.

Put a few things back.

Before you tape up your boxes, look at your pile of items and begin to replace the necessities. In our first home, I emptied a drawer of extra dish towels to hold all of my large kitchen utensils like wooden spoons that I used every day because my spoons just didn’t look very nice. But this time around I had a cute little crock and kept them on the counter because they fit in with the decor and made me feel like cooking.

stage a house to sell quickly — Staging a kitchen – In our first home, I emptied a drawer of dishtowels to hold all of my large kitchen utensils like wooden spoons that I used everyday. But this time around I had a cute little crock and kept them on the counter because they fit in with the decor.

Decorate in scenes.

After you put the necessities back out on the counter, you can start the fun part: decorating. I didn’t spend a lot on our decor for home staging. Instead, I got all of my decor items out and put them where I could see them. Then, I went around the house creating vignettes in each room. A vignette is like a little picture-perfect scene that’s part of a bigger picture.

To create a home staging vignette, you want to look at each large piece of furniture or decor in the room as an anchor. You also want to make sure you have enough similar pieces to fill that particular room.

Example: Even though I’m trying to phase teal out of my home decor (the hubs isn’t a fan :/), I have a lot of teal decor items left that I just can’t part with. It was an easy decision to use teal as an accent color throughout the house since it tied each room together, making the house feel more cohesive. I also moved the furniture around the house so that no room had only one type of furniture material (e.g. the black dresser in the foyer came out of my son’s all-wood bedroom so it wouldn’t stand out).

After you have your furniture and accent colors ready, you just build up some height and soften it with some greenery. Pairs are romantic (good for the master bedroom) and 3s or 5s are easy on the eyes. I also tried to have at least one (albeit fake) plant or flower in each room. Each piece of furniture should be a complete, but simple, ensemble.

Don’t forget about your walls. Leaving empty walls can leave a house feeling cold and unloved. And, I’m not going to lie, there were some strategic placements of art that said “Home Sweet Home” and art about embracing possibilities, only one chance, & making life beautiful. Did it make a difference? Probably not, but the wall art definitely softened each room.

Are you feeling like your home decor just doesn’t measure up or you need something extra to freshen up the space? I totally get that, too. We purchased a comforter set (similar to this one) that said “I’m luxurious” to our home shoppers.

If you know you need something but aren’t sure what, check out my post on my favorite home staging necessities.

Hide the ugly.

Let’s be honest. Life isn’t always magazine-worthy, but deep down in there, don’t we all dream of living a mess-free clutter-less life with zero maintenance issues? That ideal is part of what you are selling to potential buyers. “Living here is a breeze. Look, I don’t even have trash.” Yep, you read that right. I even hide the trash can. I also use decor items as an opportunity to hide the imperfections in our home that give it it’s…uhum…character.

Take my steps, for example. (Pardon the hazy photo.)

You think these plants are merely decorative? Think again. The bottom step needs replacing soon. The watering can takes the attention away from where a sliver of a step came off. And that stately boxwood at the top is cleverly (sort-of) concealing a hole we patched in the wall. Tread carefully here, though. You don’t want to draw attention to the flaws. Just pull some of the attention away from the mundane and make the potential buyers’ senses come alive.

Skip the extras.

You want to work in groups of 3’s and keep things simple. You want potential buyers to see the floor and see themselves in the space. You’re selling square footage and the hope of a nice home. If you wouldn’t see a vignette like that in a magazine, skip it. NOTHING is better than something wrong.

I really wanted to make this little entrance more inviting, but I just couldn’t find the right wreath or element to go here (everything at the stores was covered in Easter eggs this time of year), so I just left it alone. It eventually did get a pail of white flowers to hold it open, though.

Clean.

After you get your whole house decluttered and vignetted up, it should be crazy easy to clean. (Want to know why you’ll never buy Mr. Clean Magic Erasers ever again?) There’s always a few more details that need to be taken care of (like those left-over decor items). After you box those up, it’s time to call your Realtor!

If you’re ready for even more step by step help, check out this post for a list of steps to stage your house to sell.

Ask a pro (or at least a friend).

For this month only, I am opening a few free mini home staging consultations! I am offering a free mini-consultation (worth $149) to give you custom advice on what to do with your home.

Which one do you want to be?

I think I know the answer.

I’ve been there. Let me help you.

Sign me up!

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How to clean a chandelier

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This post may contain affiliate links to stuff I love. It doesn't charge you any extra, but it will help support this blog and my family.

We moved into a really cool, very old home with beautiful light fixtures. I should say beautiful but disgustingly dirty light fixtures. The house had been a rental home until a smoker bought the place. Can you even?

Lord help me. I cleaned the you-know-what out of that house, repainted, replaced light switches, everything I could think of.

And when I was whooped from a day of painting on top of a ladder in a house that was 85* (and who knows how hot it was on the ceiling), I would crash into my chair and stare up at the ceiling.

Only to see the grossest, brownest, beautiful light fixture looking down at me. Begging me to clean it. And honestly, day after day I was just too sore or too tired to clean it. It glowed a weird creamy brown color. Really.

But one day my mom came for a visit. She helped me hang curtains in the whole house. And when I had hung curtains in 4 rooms, she volunteered to clean my light fixture for me. So it was her turn to climb the ladder.

how to clean a chandelier

Hooray! Mom to the rescue. She got some cleaner (we used Windex). I was surprised how easily it cut through the tar and grease from the cigarette smoke.

You’ll need a roll (yes, a roll!) of paper towels, especially if you have a chandelier with a lot of sparkly things. And you’ll need a trashbag.

You’ll also want a tarp to catch the yucky drips.

And if you’re a weenie like me, you’ll want cleaning gloves.

Here’s what you do.

Lay out your tarp and set up your ladder to the side of your chandelier.
Put your paper towels and cleaner on your ladder.
Turn off the light.
Gloves on unless you’re a really brave soul (like my mom).
First, spray down the entire chandelier, taking care to miss the light bulbs.
Then, start working on the top few sections. You want to spray the main areas then wipe it down.
Once you finish one arm of the chandelier, you should get a dry paper towel to sparkle up the dangling crystals.
Continue working your way down the chandelier until you get to the bottom.
**This is the important part** Step down off your ladder before putting your supplies away.
You’ll most likely find one or two pieces that you missed. And if you don’t climb back up to clean them, they’ll taunt you until you do.

It only took us 20 minutes tops, from the idea to having a white sparkly chandelier. And since we cleaned it, I can’t tell you how much more relaxing it is to crash in the chair after a long day of work.

Find stylish toddler bedding

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If you’ve searched for the perfect toddler bedding and come up short, this post is for you today!

This post may contain affiliate links to stuff I love. It doesn't charge you any extra, but it will help support this blog and my family.

You’ve seen the gorgeous kid bedrooms on Pinterest or your favorite home furnishing website. They’re furnished with handsome functional furniture, adorned with the cutest toys you’ve ever seen, and sprinkled with the perfect style elements to make any grownup or kid excited to go to sleep. Okay, well. Maybe not that last part but, it’s exactly what you have in mind your own toddler bedroom.

And then you go to the store. It’s Paw Patrol or Disney Princess. Or, if you’re lucky, teddy bears. The best blankets that are toddler sized are actually crib quilts and they look like it, too. What’s a stylish mama to do with a toddler in their own bed? Especially a stylish mama on a budget too small to walk in the door at Restoration Hardware?!

You could scour Etsy for a baby blanket or crib quilt that looks more grown-up than the typical teddy bears. But, it won’t take long before you realize that you could easily be dropping over $50 for a blanket your toddler might (or might not) use for a season or two.

Don’t get discouraged yet! I have figured out the perfect solution for attractive toddler bedding options on a budget! Like a $20 budget. Here’s the secret: Throws.

Yep. That opens a world of gorgeous, grown-up possibilities for your toddler’s bed! You want a modern toddler bed? No problem. Thinking a fluffy cloud blanket is the perfect choice? You got it. Or are you really aiming for the skies with a farmhouse toddler bed? Me too. I found the perfect woven throw at TJ Maxx for only $19.99 made by Max Studio (similar woven throw).

Want to hear the best part? If you design your toddler’s bedroom to fit in with the rest of the decor in your home (or at least in the same color family), you can use your new versatile toddler bedding in other parts of your home when your toddler grows out of his or her toddler bed.

I know, right? Genius. This is one of my most favorite discoveries yet to keep our home looking stylish, even in my son’s toddler bedroom.

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Quick Ceiling Fan Upgrade for $5

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This post may contain affiliate links to stuff I love. It doesn't charge you any extra, but it will help support this blog and my family.

You can update your ceiling fan from completely disgusting to brand new with just $5 and an hour or two with something you probably already have at home!

You know when something is so gross, you don’t even want to look at it? As if not looking somehow makes you safe from the dirt and grime? This is how we cleaned the grossest ceiling fan I’ve ever seen.

My son’s ceiling fan was like that when we moved into our house. After I noticed how gross and dirty it was, I turned it off even in the heat of the summer. And I prayed the dirt wouldn’t fall off. Haha.

His fan was especially disgusting because the guy who lived here before us was a smoker. Tar covered our walls and ceilings, and this fan showed it. There was gross brown tar all over this, and that oily tar from the smoke catches all the fuzz bunnies and makes monster greasy fuzz bunnies. Gross.

(Skip over this picture if you aren’t into seeing gross stuff. Yuck.)

I’m going to tell you how we fixed that puppy up since it isn’t in our budget to get a new one at the moment. It’s pretty easy (even for a beginner DIY’er) and super cheap. Just how I like things!!

You’ll need:

A screwdriver
Cleaning gloves if you’re squamish like me
Degreaser or all-purpose cleaner
Paper towels
A ladder (or a bed under the fan you can stand on!)
Spray paint
About an hour (mostly to let the paint dry)

Optional:

Cleaning gloves
Spray primer
A drop cloth to catch the overspray

Now let’s get down to business!

Gloves on!
First, you’ll want to unscrew the fan blades from the fan.
Then, get your cleaner and paper towels to give the fan a good wipe down. If the lights have been on and are hot, be sure to spray cleaner on your towel, not the fan.
Clean the blades real good.
Lay out all your fan blades on your tarp and spray them in nice even strokes. If you have smoke tar on your blades, this is when you want to use your primer to make sure the paint will stick to any oil you didn’t get off thoroughly.
Let it dry. And follow the instructions on the back of the spray paint can to know when you can apply your paint layer.
Let it dry.
Screw the fan blades back onto the fan.
Stand back and hear the angels singing.

See? You, yep, even your busy doing-it-all mama self can have a brand new looking ceiling fan in no time!