When your home is on the market, keeping your home squeaky clean can be a bit stressful. However, it is possible to keep your home show-ready with minimal life disruptions! Michele Harmon Team has 7 cleaning tips on how to do it!
1. Invest in Clear Bins
When you have less stuff out, you have less stuff to keep tidy. Depersonalize your home and limit as many items as possible. It would be a great idea for you to thin out closets, your garage, bookcases, armoires, and any other places clutter collects. The big, plastic, storage bins are cheap and will allow you to make everything look uniform. Keep these storage bins somewhere out of the way but accessible so that you can get to your stuff when needed.
2. Clean as You Go
Keep in mind that when your home is on the market, cleaning is not a thing you do, it is the way you should live. Assume you will have a showing every day. Each time you finish an activity or leave a room, make it your goal to look like you were never there. For example, load your dirty dishes into the dishwasher or wash them and put them away after each meal. Make your bed after you wake up. Fold the laundry straight out of the dryer and put it away immediately. This may take a few extra minutes up front, but it relieves a ton of stress at showing time!
3. Limit Everyone to One Bathroom
The bathroom is one of the most important places for you to keep clean. Consider using only one bathroom while your home is on the market. The fewer toilets you have to scrub in a hurry, the better! Be sure to keep this one bathroom as perfect as possible while in use. Squeegee the tub or shower after each use, wipe the sink and counters after every use, and clean the toilet and wipe down the floor daily.
4. Tackle Odors Daily
Odors are an instant turnoff for buyers and unfortunately, new odors appear every day. Start off on the right foot by deep cleaning your home and focus on grease build-up, stinky drains, and musty attics. Then, do a daily disinfectant sweep of your home’s smelliest areas.
- Wash your trash cans every time you take out a bag.
- Vacuum under furniture
- Wipe down baseboards and window sills (where dust – thus, smells- get trapped)
- Carefully clean your stove and surrounding cupboards after cooking to prevent last night’s dinner from becoming today’s turnoff for buyers
5. Rotate Kids’ Toys and Books
If you have children, containing their toys is a daily challenge. When your home is on the market, it is time to get strategic! Your first step is to banish toys from all but one room. Whether you choose a playroom or bedroom, keep the toys behind one door at all times.
Secondly, you will want to deal with quantity. Divide your child’s entire toy collection into groups and designate tubs for each. Allow your children to play with one group at a time and put the rest into a closet. If only a certain amount of toys are accessible, only so many toys can be everywhere when a potential buyer is on the way.
Finally, keep your active group of toys in an accessible storage system such as cute bins or baskets.
6. Give Your Pets a Vacation
We love our pets but, boy, do they not love showing season! You are stressed because their fur is EVERYWHERE and they are stressed because you are stressed, and stressed pets shed more!
If you can send your pets to a friend or relative while your house is on the market, it can help minimize stress and your house will remain as hair and dander-free as possible. If this is not an option, here are some alternative strategies:
- If you have more than one pet and enough household members, appoint each member their own pet and assign daily cleaning tasks such as brushing pets’ fur, cleaning their food bowls and eating areas, vacuuming their favorite nap spot, etc.
- Take them away with you. A dog park is a great place to take your furry friend and it will help socialize them!
7. Drive Away with the Laundry
No matter how show-ready your home is, there is one that is often tough to time perfectly: the laundry.
For many busy families, the laundry is always unfinished and the washer and dryer cannot run any faster. Although you may be doing your best to stay on top of it, you may get a text that a buyer is on the way while you have piles of dirty laundry awaiting their turn. Toss them in a basket, place them in the car, and drive away! No one is perfect but, your buyers do not need to know that!
Are you thinking about selling your home? When you work with Michele Harmon Team, you have not one, but multiple licensed and experienced Real Estate agents and Admin working for you! For the same commission as an individual agent, you will receive:
- More availability
- Greater attention to detail
- A deeper pool of experience
- An amazing cohesive group of people with a shared goal of providing excellent customer service
- Access to specialists in www. Marketing, negotiating, buying, selling, commercial, investing, and leasing.
Michele Harmon Team combines their expertise and resources for your benefit. Give us a call at 713-818-1330 to get started today! It would be our pleasure to work with you.