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mamaslearning
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| Posted: July 02 2012 at 3:31pm | IP Logged
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So, I know there have been lots of people on here that have sold or are selling their homes. Any advice on how to do this with a house full of children? On one hand, I'm nervous that I won't be able to keep the house up for showings  , but on the other hand, I would hope prospective buyers would understand that we are still living here with four small children  .
I've packed up quite a bit of clutter that we can do without for at least 6 months, including toys, which I hope makes tidying up a bit easier during this process. It's going to be difficult, but we need the change.
Thanks!
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JennGM
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| Posted: July 02 2012 at 3:42pm | IP Logged
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Keep a shiny sink. Seriously, though, it is hard, but if you can get the house clean and organized (pantries, linen closet, other closets, basements, counters, bookshelves) it is easy to keep on top of things. It takes discipline, but it can be done.
Carve yourself a morning routine that gets the bathrooms clean, bedrooms tidy with beds made, air out the rooms.
Getting the clutter down is key. Try to limit the areas the children can go with their toys. For example, if you have a two-story, keep bedrooms off-limits after rooms are cleaned.
Lots of outside time, whether at your house or at a park.
You might want to ask the realtor to give some notice in the listing (call 1 hour before) so you can have some room to tidy, or schedule naps.
My big thing was to make the house smell clean and fresh, so I did try to air out the house a bit, especially after cooking meals and such. Deodorizers and other artificial fragrances are a turn-off. A nice candle is good, but nothing too heavy. It sends a signal that you are hiding something. (In fact, I didn't even view a house when I was overpowered by those air fresheners at the front door.)
My favorite advice is to keep laundry baskets empty and ready to just toss in EVERYTHING loose, including dirty laundry, and put those and the kids in the car and go when you have a showing.
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mamaslearning
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| Posted: July 02 2012 at 3:54pm | IP Logged
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JennGM wrote:
r.)
My favorite advice is to keep laundry baskets empty and ready to just toss in EVERYTHING loose, including dirty laundry, and put those and the kids in the car and go when you have a showing.
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What a great idea!!!! Thanks!
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: July 02 2012 at 4:49pm | IP Logged
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bake something.. fresh bread is one I've heard.. just take your one hour notice and toss a loaf of frozen dough (or partial) into the oven while you scramble everything else to rights and then be sure to take it out before you get out of the way.. burned bread would be the opposite effect.
But it won't smell contrived like the air fresheners or candles and it will smell good!! Or a cinnamon stick in water on the stove.. let it simmer for a bit then take it off. It'll smell more like something being baked or cooked than something artificial.
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JennGM
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| Posted: July 02 2012 at 4:56pm | IP Logged
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JodieLyn wrote:
bake something.. fresh bread is one I've heard.. just take your one hour notice and toss a loaf of frozen dough (or partial) into the oven while you scramble everything else to rights and then be sure to take it out before you get out of the way.. burned bread would be the opposite effect.
But it won't smell contrived like the air fresheners or candles and it will smell good!! Or a cinnamon stick in water on the stove.. let it simmer for a bit then take it off. It'll smell more like something being baked or cooked than something artificial. |
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Love the baking bread, but only in the fall and winter, or in a breadmaker. You don't want to heat up your house! I did the cinnamon sticks, too, but again, it's more a fall/winter smell.
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to & ds1 '03 & ds2 '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: July 02 2012 at 5:00pm | IP Logged
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Well we do pumpkin bread and zucchini bread as staples for swim team and those have cinnamon in them so it's become a year round scent for me. Though yes if it's hot, it can be too heavy.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
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JennGM
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| Posted: July 02 2012 at 5:04pm | IP Logged
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I'm in "hot mode" right now. Outside Temps in the 90s and 100s I'm thinking cool. You want to impress the viewer that it's cool and the A/C works great.
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to & ds1 '03 & ds2 '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: July 02 2012 at 5:48pm | IP Logged
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that's true.. you're much hotter than we get here. I mean, I wouldn't even have a/c to show off 
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
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mathmama
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| Posted: July 02 2012 at 6:12pm | IP Logged
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I don't know how old your kids are, but if they can help at all get them to help. It makes all the difference. When we have a showing my 7 and 5 year olds know that their bedroom and the school room are their responsibilities along with little last minute things like shoe straightening and some sweeping. They do an excellent job. Also, just shove stuff in drawers that usually reside on top of things. And don't feel the need to get all those clean clothes put away...that is what the dryer is for  And the dishwasher, a great place to hide that bib you couldn't get a chance to wash or the composting container.
I have to admit, I am bad with staying on top of things. I feel like if I clean my house today and then find out someone wants to come through 3 days from now I would still have to do some cleaning. So, in general between showings I keep up with what really needs to be kept up with and then when we get a showing scheduled it is all hands on deck that day to get the place ship shape. We are getting good at it  Now, if only this place would sell To me the most frustrating thing is the disruption to our schooling. I have decided to school through the summer (not really strictly, but whenever we reasonably can) because of all the disruptions we had due to the showings/open houses and who knows when it will all end. I feel we need to stay ahead of the game as much as possible between the house and the baby due in the fall.
Good luck!!
Beth
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Kathryn
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| Posted: July 02 2012 at 9:00pm | IP Logged
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Pack...and then pack some more! Seriously we rented a 10 x 10 unit b/c around here they usu. do 50% off for 3 months so it was worth it. I thought it would be plenty big and I packed a lot! Then my neighbor came in and said to pack even more. So, I went and rented another 10 x 5 when we filled the first one!   I could have put the extra in my garage but with heat indexes already in the 100s, I'm just not willing to leave my car in the hot driveway. Of course if you don't want the extra expense the garage is the way to store stuff or in attic/basement depending on what area you live in.
Unfortunately I really haven't been able to do much of any schooling at all since getting it ready. Now that it's officially on the market and all that prep work is done I feel like I can get back to reading and math with DS which is really all we do in summer anyway.
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SallyT
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| Posted: July 03 2012 at 6:19am | IP Logged
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Some random thoughts:
What Kathryn said. Purge and pack. Leave your children a very small assortment of toys that can be put away quickly in a basket. Start clearing closets, shelves, and cabinets, getting rid of what you really don't need and packing away everything you can possibly spare (the good thing about this is that then you're half-packed for your move already). Streamline what you're going to need for homeschooling -- if your house is on the market for a while, you may find yourself relying on a lot of audiobooks in the car anyway. Maybe organize the books you'll be using in bins with lids so that you can quickly slap the lids on and stack them neatly out of sight when the house is shown.
Pack away family photos and knicknacks. Aside from the disruption, I think the hardest thing is making your house look anonymous. All the things about our old house that I loved were things that made it personal, but prospective buyers aren't impressed with all that. They want to see themselves in the space, not you. I read advice also to put away religious items, but we didn't do that -- I kept my icons and crucifixes in their places (though actually, by the time our house finally sold, we had moved and it was vacant and therefore totally anonymous!).
Meanwhile, note that people will look in closets and will be turned off by clutter even there. It's important to get as much as you can OUT of the house altogether. I remember hiding a load of dirty dishes in a stock pot out in our locked garden shed once when people were coming to look at the house -- I just threw it all together, shoved it in the shed, put the kids in the car, and we were off. My kids still think that was funny.
Pay attention to deep-cleaning details like tile grout, touching up marks on walls and woodwork . . . anything you can do to make your house look spacious and visually fresh. The smell thing is a good idea, but we learned quickly, in selling our house (in 2008/9, when things were at rock bottom), that people are very alert to any suggestion of dinginess. If you can roll a fresh coat of neutral paint over all your rooms, do it.
But the de-cluttering is key. In fact, I'm going in a couple of weeks to help my mother do this very thing -- her house is on the market, and it's a fabulous house, but I think she doesn't even see things like my dad's old legal pads stacked in the corner of a room, or notice how stuffed her closets are, or that the grout in her bathrooms has gotten discolored. Her house is generally very clean, and it is beautiful, but the level of clean-and-decluttered you have to maintain even to be on the playing field in the current market is kind of beyond her. So this is on my mind, even for a house which doesn't normally have children in it!
It is very much still a buyer's market in most places these days, so that when people are looking at houses, their default mode is *picky.* Sad but true. And what prospective buyers often want to see, unless they're looking for a cheap fixer-upper, is a house that looks like nobody lives there. The less work they feel they would have to do to make it "theirs," the better the impression. This is really an impossible ideal for a family with little children, but the more you can do toward that ideal, the more favorably your house will impress the people who see it.
Good luck! A prayer to St. Joseph for all home-sellers!
Sally
(PS: a funny story: I was digging in my back yard not long ago and turned up a St. Joseph statue which the sellers of our house had obviously buried. I'm sure they weren't Catholic, but *everybody's* heard about St. Joseph. It worked -- the house was on the market for well over a year, but we bought it! And now St. Joseph has a nice, comfy space in a little shrine with Our Lady. Our very own St. Joseph, who brought us home . . . )
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Kathryn
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| Posted: July 03 2012 at 1:08pm | IP Logged
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Everything Sally said...ditto again!! I just cried when I packed up our school room because it looks NOTHING like our schoolroom now and we spend a lot of time in here. Also the stager lady said photos in the kids rooms were ok but I just had 1 in DS's room and a few in DD's room. Also made me sad because I took all the other photos down (off the stairs, out of my bedroom and I did leave 1 in the living room hutch). I did leave the kid's artwork that I had in frames and cleaned EVERYTHING off the refrigerator door too.
Re odors...we had some oil based painting done on the trim and he recommended putting out bowls of coffee (and then throwing them out NOT to be used for drinking later). So, I kept that idea and bought some disposable bowls and a big can of coffee and have them in various places esp. the pantry, in a basket in the schoolroom and our closet and the laundry room. They're inconspicuous to not be seen but gives at least a nicer "aroma". Also, I bought a big bag of lemons and cut one up. I put the rest in a glass bowl on the kitchen counter for decoration and every time we leave I put a slice of one in the disposal and turn on the disposal. Again, nice aroma without overpowering and helps rid any leftover odors...I hope! Plus we've been eating outside and using more paper plates and bowls so not washing as many dishes.
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elynnmom
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We're putting our house on the market in a week or two, so I'm right there with you!!! Love the suggestions... The decluttering thing is quite a process. I can't believe how much I have bagged a nd boxed and we still have more...STUFF! But it does feel good. And I thought you all might appreciate this: a friend of mine who is helping me stage the house keeps teasing me about how many baskets and books we have 
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mamaslearning
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| Posted: July 14 2012 at 9:43am | IP Logged
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So, the upstairs is completed - fresh paint in two bedrooms, lots of stuff packed away so rooms have no clutter, carpets cleaned, but still working on deep cleaning the bathrooms (some lime build-up and some shower door issues). We painted the stairway and hall ways, took down coat hangers in the hall, cleaned out the dining room/schoolroom/computer room as much as possible (still need the bookshelf, but packed up a ton of books). Today we are working on the painting the living room, and next week we will select new carpet and kitchen flooring (they must be replaced, no cleaning those worn out floors!).
We need to do a basic weeding in the landscape, clean up the garage, and then start following a weekly cleaning routine to stay on top of the house, but we are almost ready to call the real estate agent. 
I have done a ton of work these past few weeks, but I'm so happy to be moving forward - even if it feels like I'm running in place most days .
I'm wondering how often you clean when showing a house? I mean, do you clean the entire house everyday on the off chance of a surprise showing, or can I do bedrooms one day, bathrooms the next, etc.? I'll probably have to do a house sweep every morning and night to ensure there are no ghastly messes that were not brought to my attention!
This is so exciting! Thankfully, we are not in a rush or in a position to HAVE to sell, so hopefully I can keep from getting discouraged when it takes forever to sell. I'm not going to allow myself to look at new property until we get an offer since there is no way we can afford two payments. This should stave off the impatience of waiting for the house to sell.
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: July 14 2012 at 10:15am | IP Logged
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Good for you!
I missed this the first time around, but putting a lot of our things in storage helped us as well. We only had two drawers for toys, one for lego and another for playmobile. Everything else went into storage. Our house was tiny, so it was important to make it look open as if it could hold a person's possessions, so we even cleaned out the basement to put stuff into storage.
It is a lot of work to keep the house show worthy. I tried to have everything tidied every day so that it only took me an hour to do the final stuff. When we had a showing, I usually got the kids ready and kicked them out into the back yard while I did the extra cleaning (or maybe downstairs while I did upstairs, and then outside while I did the downstairs), and then I took them straight to the car without coming back into the house. Windex on all stainless steel, a *little* Orange Glo on the wood floors (not on stairs or major walkways with care not to make the floors slippery), and shining for all glass.
Anytime I was leaving the house for longer than my three hour window (pretty sure our realtor set a three hour minimum notice in the listing), I tried to leave it show worthy on the off chance someone would want to see it. This also helped in that everytime it is show worthy, it is a little less work to get it that way again, if that makes sense.
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Kathryn
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| Posted: July 14 2012 at 1:51pm | IP Logged
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Well, I can attest that spending those weeks painting, packing, scrubbing and cleaning AND keeping your house as show ready as possible WORKS! Granted, we do live in a great area for resell but after only 2 weeks, we have 2 offers!! We were priced even a little bit on the higher side but our house looks exactly like a model home in terms of de-cluttering and showing condition.
We kept it mostly picked up and when we got a call, I just used a clorox wipe to wipe down the bathroom counters, a febreze swiffer to run across the floors and cleaned the kitchen last. Also the windows and maybe run the vacuum if it had been a couple days. I've only dusted 1x! I would also say we've used easier meal prep as well as the disposable plates/cups when dishwasher was full if we were in hurry. The kids knew in the AM to make beds and get their rooms "show ready" which really just meant making their beds, opening blinds and picking up clothes (hmmm...isn't that how it should always be? )
Good luck!!
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Kathryn in TX
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4Real Forums : Tea and Conversation
Topic: Selling Home
