Kitchen details for home sellers... What's in your pantry?
Food?
Appliances?
Empty or almost empty boxes?
Piles of garbage sacks?
Unidentified objects?
Cleaning solutions?
Pet food?
Paper products?
The first thing to do is take everything out!
Wipe out all the shelves
Paint or line your shelves with a simple shelving paper. Make it fresh and clean to look at...because they will look in it.
Separate your canned goods from your cereals and pastas.
Categorize everything and stand back and look at it. Do your pantry contents say "Wow, he/she can really cook" or does it say "Egad! What are they thinking?" or "Wow, what a large pantry!"...What does your pantry say! Have a good conversation about it for a few minutes and then read on.
Gather some bags or boxes and set them out where you can drop:
Still good but will never use that food so give it to the needy
This is expired and not safe to use so this goes in the garbage can
Family or friends.
The rest put back onto the shelves in a logical sequence...
Cans: sauces, veggies, ready to eat, etc. (Face them forward so they are easy to read)
Pastas, rice, instant potatoes, etc.
Snacks
Paper products: Napkins, paper towels, and misc. Organize them so they are easy to reach and use...take them out of the packaging and stack them nicely for easy access at one side of a shelf.
Appliances for everyday use:While your home is being shown, simplify your meals so you don't need your mixers and bread machines and so on. Go ahead and pack to away so they will be ready for the move.
Cookbooks: Keep 1 or 2 handy if you must and possibly display the pretty ones on a shelf or on a book stand and pack the rest away.
Brooms, vacuums, dustpans, fly swatters, etc...should go into the garage or in an area away from food.
Eliminating everyday odors:
Rinse opened cans of tuna, pet food, etc., before you put them in the trash can.
Save a large jar or can with a lid for wet garbage such as potato peelings, fruit seeds, coffee grounds, meat trimmings and so on and keep it near by when you are cooking.
Place a fabric softener sheet in your shoes to keep your closets smelling fresh.
Do you have walls left over from the last decade? Who doesn't! If you have walls that were sponge painted and they just hit you in the face yelling "SPONGE PAINTED!"...then here is a quick fix before you call the realtor:
What you want to do is to mute the spotty appearance of sponging as much as possible and there are several ways to do this. I am proposing you dab another coat of paint with a rag onto the surface and take another dry rag and pull the excess paint off for a nice soft feel. See! It's that simple and so easy to achieve. But what about the paint and color...what to choose?
Color: What is the color or colors you are going to mute? Did you do it yourself? If so, do you have any paint left? If so, check to see if it has dried out...if not, great! We'll just use that.
How: Add a little water, about 25% of the contents...dip your rag into the paint and dab it onto your walls until you have covered about 3 square feet...dab your dry rag over the painted area until there is a nice visible texture happening without the new paint filling in all the patches. Go onto the next 9 square feet and so on until you have covered your walls. Voila!
If you don't have any more paint...gather some paint chips or anything that is close the existing paint color and have it matched. Follow the same procedure as above.
If you don't have any sponging and would like to have the rag roll effect...paint your walls a solid matte color and rag roll on a lighter shade and pull off the excess with a dry rag.
Ceilings:
If you have cottage cheese ceilings and want to scrape them to smooth out your ceiling, it is important that you verify if you have harmful asbestos in the ceiling material. In the past, we used to just scrape it off with large spackle knives but we do not recommend this treatment (however urgent it may be) until you have had it tested.
Once you have had it tested and it is free of any harmful substances...GET RID OF IT! Be sure to follow the guidelines and instructions to the letter from professionals. I am not going to recommend any particular service here but I found many on Google. Be very careful and remember that your safety comes first before any decorating update. If you feel it is very important in the overall appearance of your home then consider having the professionals remove it. We have done it many times and it has always been worth the effort but it is a messy job and a lot of hard work.
Laundry Rooms: What on Earth can you do with a wash room?
Depending on the condition for most homeowners, you have ceramic tile or linoleum on the floors. Walls are white of off white and if you are lucky to have cabinets, they are probably white too.
First things first: Depending on the size of your laundry room...check the floors and think of your options.
Walls: Do you have a window in your laundry room? Yes...you are fortunate because that light is a door opener for possibilities. If you do not have natural light, then you will need to step up your lighting with task lamps or brighter light bulbs.
Appliances: Old? You can spray paint them white or cream or whatever works for you.
Storage: Cabinets? If you don't have cabinets, for $30 you can purchase a 2 door white cabinet and install it onto the wall over the w/d. It does wonders for your soaps etc.
Ironing: Baskets of ironing? If you have had any item for more that 90 days in a laundry basket...get rid of it because you are never going to iron it and if you do, them next time you wear that garment, it will sit in the ironing for another 6 months. Eliminate your headaches!
Folding Issues: Fold your clothes right from the dryer the minute the dryer buzzes. Don't start a load until you know you will be available to fold the clothes and put them away.
Color: Refer to your color schemer and go a few shades lighter for the walls in a tone that you absolutely love and paint your walls. Neutrals with yellow undertones does wonders for seeing stains on your clothing.
Kids art from school framed inexpensively and hung always bring a little joy into any room and a laundry room can use all the joy it can get! Postcards or pages from a travel magazine offers a little daydreaming while folding.
Storage: Baskets are a necessary evil in the world of laundry. In the new world we live in, it is a good idea to upgrade to canvas laundry baskets on wheels that can be pulled from the bedroom closets and wheeled into the laundry room and wheeled back. And they are not bad to look at either.
Shelving: If you only have shelving or room for a shelf, get it organized with matching baskets and containers. Do not set your bottles on the shelves advertising products. Tacky!
Hang your dust buster in your laundry room for the best quick lint clean up
Don't have any pretty containers?
Go through your house and look for boxes, empty coffee or Cremora cans, jars, and hat boxes, anything that you can paint.
Apply a coat of Kilz (fabulous primer for everything), maybe 2 coats.
Use acrylic paint colors and make horizontal stripes in your color scheme (3 or 5 or 7 colors)
If your basement is dark, adding a simple track light to the ceiling is fairly simple and gives you an immediate update.
If your home is family size, turn the basement into an organized children's room by painting hopscotch in acrylic paint on the floor. Twister is another game that can be painted on the floor by copying the mat. Instantly your basement has a theme and a purpose! The same can be done in the garage on the floor or the patio in the back yard. Be sure you add about 4 coats of varnish if your painting is outdoors.
We received this photo from one of our do-it-yourself home staging members who followed through with one of our family ideas and painted the Twister game on his garage floor for his kids.
He is a single parent and did not have the time to sit and spin with the kids and that really bothered him so he laid out the original mat and used what acrylic house paints he had stored in the garage and copied the pattern as you can see in the photo.
The father then added another dimension to the concept and recorded the spins onto a CD so now all the children have to do is push play and they're good to go anytime. Brilliant! No more mats to trip over and no more begging for a spinner from the kids. Good job!
