Stop wasting your time doing these 5 things when you’re staging your own home.

Getting ready to sell your home can be a chaotic time. There’s so much to do and one of the biggest and most time-consuming tasks is preparing your house for viewing. For most sellers, this means hours spent cleaning, decluttering, packing and repairing.

But, is some of that stuff a huge waste of time?

Well, yes.

Let me share with you the biggest wastes of time I see when I’m staging homes so that you can spend your time doing the things that truly matter.

1. Deep cleaning too soon

This is not the time for deep cleaning every little corner of every little drawer. Right now we are focusing on step one: staging for marketing photos & future showings. It’s a lot of work on it’s own, don’t bog yourself down by trying to deep clean as you go.

Yes, before moving out every drawer and cupboard and baseboard and window track needs to be scrubbed. I would even suggest once your photos are taken starting to tackle these things during the time your home is listed so that as potential buyers come for showings, your house looks it’s best. But right now, you are slowing yourself down & wasting your time if you are focused on deep cleaning, especially if you are still living in the home.

It’s best to focus your time & energy on a good basic ‘clean, declutter & style’. This is the time to focus on first impressions and welcoming people into your home visually.

When is this actually worth it?

If the house has been neglected for a bit too long and either looks or smells a bit dingy and it’s going to be obvious from photos or from standing at the front door, then yup, a deep clean is needed at this point.

My strategy:

In each room, a quick basic clean & polish is all that’s needed. Wash windows, wipe surfaces, dust, wash any walls that are obviously grimy, make sure it smells fresh, vacuum or mop the floor. I do not scrub baseboards, worry about dust in window tracks, or clean inside cupboards or drawers. The only small exception here is the bathroom: I advise my clients completely scrub & deep clean every single thing in the bathroom, but even there I do not worry about cleaning inside the drawers and cabinets.

2. Fixing nail holes

A tiny pin or nail hole is nearly invisible and takes zero minutes to deal with (slowly pull the nail out). Alternatively, patching, sanding and painting a few nail holes in a wall takes an hour and looks horrible. It's nearly impossible to color match older wall paint with a newly mixed can and even if you have some old paint leftover from the original job, the sheen will not match after only a few months. Even further, going the extra mile and 'doing it right' by patching, sanding and repairing the entire wall (or likely, the entire room) will take a bit of money and half a day of time.

When is this actually worth it?

If the room is painted a very outdated, bright, dark or bold color and needs to be repainted anyway or if the walls are really extra damaged (wall-mounted TVs, peeling vinyl stickers and intricate gallery walls, I'm looking at you.)

My strategy:

Remove thumbtacks and obvious picture hangers. Small nails are just gently pushed flat against the wall (this is less obvious than leaving a hole and can easily be pulled back out for the next owner to hang something on).

3. Replacing or covering every family photo

Don’t waste your time replacing every family photo with different photos or art. Just remove them. Yes, it’s going to look empty to you… but to a buyer, this looks clean, airy , open and just fine. You can take down every photo and take the back off, find a nice neutral photo of a landscape or abstract art in a book or online, put that into the frame, polish the glass front & back, replace the back, then hang the picture back up again… but, why bother? It’s a very time consuming process for very little gain, especially when you have to do the entire process again in reverse at your new house. Don’t waste your time.

When is this actually worth it?

If you have some large framed photo as the only focal point in a room (above a couch or bed, or in the entry above a sideboard is common) then you should probably have something in those places. The other situation is a large, detailed gallery wall with lots of pieces hanging in a styled arrangement and only some are family photos. In this case, I would leave the entire wall as-is and replace or cover just the family photos.

My strategy:

Remove, wrap & pack as many family photos as possible. The ones that need to stay or be replaced (see above for the exceptions to the rule), I do a few different things. For larger art, I will look for a large canvas in an abstract or landscape usually. These are light enough to be hung on the existing mounting hardware. For my staging clients, I loan these out but for you, I would look to see if someone you know has one you can borrow for a month or check for a used one online or in thrift shops before buying a new one. If you have to buy a new one, look for one that you would love in your new house or just plan to sell it when you are done with it.

For small framed photos, I rarely replace the actual photo (though if you just have a few and already have something that will be a good fit for the style of the room, you go right ahead). My go-to trick is to just leave the frame right on the wall and put a small ball of tape in each corner of the glass. Then I take a small piece of nice wrapping paper in a neutral or fitting color and stick it on. Then I just run my thumbnail around the edge to cut it off and tuck the edges under the frame.

Lazy or smart & efficient? You be the judge! This has the added bonus of having all photos in the room or on the gallery wall match nicely. This is going to look odd to you but in listing photos it’s perfectly subtle. When people come for showings, if they notice at all they will understand why you styled it that way.

4. Moving around & storing things instead of just getting rid of them

This is a common one: analysis paralysis. People aren’t sure what they want to do with some things as they get ready to move, so instead of just making the decision to get rid of it, they put it in a closet, basement or spare room. Then they move it around again. Then they pack it into boxes. Then those boxes need to be moved for listing photos. Then they get buyer feedback that the storage room looked small, so they need to move all the boxes to the garage. Then when they finally move, after carrying it all to the new house, they unpack it and realize they didn’t want this stuff anyway, and finally take steps to get rid of it. What a waste of time.

This is a time to be efficient – if you can just be honest with yourself about the stuff you no longer need and get rid of it as you are preparing to stage, you are going to really lighten your load (mentally and physically!) Remember, all people want is a clean slate and the less ‘stuff’ you have in your home, the more open and clean it looks. Getting rid of excess baggage helps your mental state and helps sell your house. Win / win.

When is this actually worth it?

If you have things that are valuable (financially or emotionally) and you don’t have time to properly assess and deal with them (and, be honest, you do not have time right now), then it’s better to store and move them around than make a rash decision you could regret later.

My strategy?

Look at each item and be as fast and discerning as a falling axe: keep or go? That ‘go’ pile should go straight into either garbage bags, boxes to go elsewhere or boxes to be sold. The garbage should go straight outside as soon as you are done in each room. The boxes for elsewhere should go straight to the car or garage (wherever it can be dealt with asap). The boxes for selling should be put wherever you can easily take your photos… and please be real with yourself these things are actually worth selling with the time you have right now.

Go room by room and finish up one room before you move on to the next. Remember, every single thing you can get rid of at the beginning is something you don’t have to deal with again in this move.

5. Doing it all yourself

I know, moving can be a time where you are worried about finances. It can also be a time when you feel like you are bleeding extra money (from buying new matching lightbulbs to eating out more than usual, it absolutely all adds up). So, I come at this one from the place of ‘if you know you can swing this, then do it’. Only you are going to know if you can truly fit this in the budget but don’t forget to also take into account the profit you will be making on your house by selling faster! With a professional doing the work it’s most often quicker and better than you or I would do. There is also immense value in keeping your stress level reasonable.

Very simply, doing it all yourself can turn out to be one of the biggest wastes of time you will regret. From carpet cleaning to window cleaning to hiring a handyman for a few hours, you may find that having these things done by a professional is well worth the money it costs. It gets the job DONE and done quickly and properly. There are many things that are best for you to do yourself and some that are simple to do and sometimes not worth paying someone else, but those things are going to be different for every seller.

When is this actually worth it?

If you have no extra funds for this or no family or friends able to help, then that answers that. You can certainly do it all yourself (I sure have!) and you can do a damn good job of it, too. So, if you simply aren’t able to get some help, get your plan in place and do what you have to do to get it done. None of this is hard stuff, you’ve got this!

My strategy?

Make a master list of things that need to be done. Walk through the house and write it all down. Now, look at that and mark the ones that are in your wheelhouse. You might have experience, time, energy, expertise in those areas and you can get them done quickly and easily in the time you have. Now, for the remainder of the list, can you ask for some help from a friend or family member for any of them? And, lastly, the remaining items (this might mean moving some things from your other lists if there’s nothing left!) can you hire them out? Don’t waste every ounce of energy you have doing every single thing if you have the means to get some help. Even hiring out one or two tasks is a much more efficient use of your time and lets you breathe a little (and be ready to list faster).