You can easily blame this phenomenon on basic human nature. All of us get used to our living environment, albeit incrementally. Ever ask a teenager how they can live in the maelstrom they call a bedroom? They’ll usually say they don’t know how it got that way – then Mom or Dad will say that’s irrelevant, just clean it up. Little by little, we accumulate lots and lots of nondescript stuff. The human nature part of this equation is that we, like those teenagers, don’t even notice it while it’s happening! Here’s the rub: one day your spouse and you talk it through and decide that now is the time to make a major change for one reason or another. Perhaps a new job, different neighborhood, closer to outside interests, different schools, whatever. That’s the milestone day you call your realtor and announce your momentous decision to sell your house and feather a new home somewhere else.
If you’re fortunate enough to hire real pros like Jamie Thompson and his team, when he arrives for your listing appointment he’ll explain that his opening interview is very important for crafting his marketing plan for your home, and then will ask you for a guided tour of your estate. That, as Harvey Firestone used to say, is where the rubber meets the road. A true professional realtor will not mince words about the state of your estate. Before talking about painting walls or buying new carpeting, you’ll hear him or her say, “Time for serious decluttering.” Buyers don’t want to see someone’s personal effects all over what they are trying to visualize as their new home. They are mentally moving in and a five-month stack of Fortune Magazines is a turnoff, as are dozens of other things you could easily discard.
If you are not thinking about selling right now, just imagine how valuable a major decluttering would be to your day-to-day enjoyment of your home. It’s almost always a very dramatic change relative to the degree of clutter. Too much subconscious stimuli can hinder relaxation, which is a polite way of saying that unnecessary, even useless articles can get on your nerves without your being aware of the cause. The best think to tackle this is to survey your environment and ask yourself that difficult question, “Do I really need this? Will my life go on without it or have I been kidding myself into thinking that someday, the day that never comes, someday I’ll use it.”
If you are at Defcon One Clutter Alert, so to speak, step one is to determine a rough scope-of-work. If you find that there are just a few refuse cans of things to toss out, you’re in good shape. However, we’ve had clients where the quantity is pretty hefty, and this is where a personal dumpster can make your house-prep not just easier, but actually quite enjoyable. After pitching the first few boxes of things, you’ll begin to experience the liberation from larger items like that chair with ripped upholstery or an ottoman with cracked leather. Imagine having a clean, functional waste receptacle in your driveway that will devour virtually all you can put in. It is a far more economical and efficient way of staging your decluttering project than loading up your SUV and driving to the community landfill.
At the end of this process you’ll be terrifically satisfied with how your home now shows, in addition to making your realtor happy! Buyers walking through are seeing the architecture and usable volume of space for their own furnishings and future purchases. The world-famous architect I.M. Pei once defined architecture as the search for light. Buyers want to see the light in your home, the space within which they are warm and comfortable!
Finally, after you’ve taken your declutter medicine –it’s time for your reward, your consolation: Another very practical and useful phenomenon is the realization that after you rid yourself of things you never use (but somehow thought for years they merited storage space), you don’t miss them or even think about them. They are just things, most of which you regret buying or keeping because they seem to have value. Just say, “Adios, my useless shackles!” and call me for any service you need to get things in tip-top shape. My team and I have a long list of contractors from painters to landscapers to carpenters.
