How Families Can Keep Their Home Ready For Showings

How Families Can Keep Their Home Ready For Showings

Getting your house ready to go up on the market is always a big job. Add kids to the picture, however, and that job gets much bigger. You want to make a great presentation, which means keeping up with chaos that can go hand-in-hand with kids. Here’s a look at how families can keep their home looking great until the right buyers come along:

Have A Plan

It’s important to get everyone in the house on the same page when it comes to staging your home. This includes any children old enough to take on some tidying tasks. For the time your house is up for sale, upgrade everyone’s chore charts to reflect a few items off your staging checklist. This way you’re constantly keeping your home ready for buyers.

This is super useful, since it allows you to host agents and house hunters at the drop of a hat. For practical purposes, keep the checklist handy and make sure everyone knows where it is. You can even share your list electronically with other adults in the household and kids who are old enough to use phones or tablets. If your agent lets you know they’re swinging by soon, anyone old enough can ensure that surfaces are wiped, shades are open, and personal items are safely stashed away.

Use The Best Tools

Keeping your house tidy all the time is a big task, but it can be made substantially easier with the right tools. For example, a good set of microfiber cloths can make quickly wiping up surfaces a breeze. A stick vacuum is another tool you’ll want at your disposal. Since these are more versatile and lighter than traditional vacuums, they make spot cleaning fast and easy.

Go through all of your cleaning supplies and try to identify which are most useful for a quick, efficient clean up, and assemble a cleaning caddy so you can grab everything at once when you’re on the run.

Remove Personal Items

One of the most important things your family can do when it comes to staging your home is taking down décor that makes it look too lived in. Per Creative Home Stagers, this includes family photos, bold color schemes, and especially stylistic wall art or furniture. These personal touches may make you feel at home, but they’ll make potential buyers feel like they’re in someone else’s home.

On one hand, this is true, but on the other, it can be a problem. Even if sellers aren’t thinking of it consciously, they’re trying to picture themselves in the space. Pictures of your family holiday party or child’s first steps will make it harder for them to imagine their life in the house.

Plan Fun Outings – And A Backup – For Open Houses

Although it may be tempting to try and scope out interested buyers, sellers should never be at an open house. In addition to being an even starker reminder that the home belongs to someone else, The Balance points out that your presence will put uncomfortable pressure on the buyers and make it harder for them to pay attention to the property.

Instead, plan a fun outing with your family during the scheduled open houses. Head to a park, playground, or museum to pass a little time. If you have younger children, it might also be wise to find a friend or family member who will be willing to host you if your plans go south. You don’t want to show up to an open house at all, much less with a screaming toddler.

Keeping a house market-ready with kids can be a challenge, but don’t be intimidated. Prep your home and family, and make arrangements for showings and open house events. With a plan under your belt, there’s nothing stopping you from keeping your house buyer-ready until that magic day it’s sold!

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