Beyond Cleaning: Getting Your Home Ready to Sell
People who put their homes on the market are often surprised by how much work it takes to get everything in order and to get their home ready to show. Proper staging is essential for making a positive impression on potential buyers; however, it’s very detailed work and will lead you to reassess your home’s condition. It’s easy to assume that everything’s in acceptable condition, only to find out that your realtor believes otherwise.
Houses absorb a lot of wear and tear over the years, and much of it is very noticeable to a discerning home buyer, and that’s the problem. Even things that seem minor to you can leave a buyer with a negative impression. Remember that perception is the reality: A leaky faucet may cause someone to assume that the rest of your home is in poor shape. I-Deal-LIfestyle™ Professional Organizer offers some tips and strategies you can use as you determine what you want to get done before letting a potential buyer into your home. 

Know Your Worth
Before you start making any big staging moves, be sure you know what’s worth investing in based on your home’s value. It probably doesn’t make sense to spend $2,000 repainting your entire home or freshening up your landscaping if you won’t recoup these costs in the profit from your sale, but consider spending money and hiring a team to repair things like replacing window glass or tackling any roofing work. 
Before you enlist the help of a real estate agent, you can get a ballpark idea of what houses in your area are going for by downloading apps from Redfin, Trulia, or Zillow, to name a few. These apps allow you to check out listings in your area, which can give you a rough estimate of what you can expect when your home finally hits the market.

​Good Flow and Energy With Lots of Space
A house with plenty of flow, good energy and open space is more likely to stand out with buyers who will easily imagine how they might transform it. That means clearing out all the clutter and removing any outdated or excessively large and bulky furniture. Go room by room and organize everything in such a way that you know what’s being thrown away, donated, or placed in storage. Remember that clutter means more than loose piles of papers strewn about or shoes and toys that somehow never get picked up. Extra bookcases, televisions, dressers, cabinets, and loveseats will be better stored or disposed of to ensure that nothing distracts a potential buyer. Want help with decluttering? I-Deal-LIfestyle™ Professional Organizer Marla Stone, MSW wrote a book on decluttering responsibly and without drama and confusion. The book is in all the libraries across the US, on amazon, and in Barnes and Noble stores everywhere. The book will help you create order and discard the accumulation of belongings that will weigh you down. 

Deep Clean and Depersonalize
It’s hard to keep a home clean when it may be on the market for months, and keeping it clean is especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic. Consider hiring a cleaning company to make your home look pristine and ready to sell. Continue to keep it clean during the selling process. Opting for freshly-cleaned carpeting will make a home look brand new and get rid of lingering odors. Don’t forget those dark, musty spots that haven’t been cleaned in years, which buyers will surely sniff out. Believe it or not, there are house cleaning apps (Tody, Home Routines, etc.) that help you when it’s time to scrub.
Depersonalizing is a crucially important part of staging. It’s how you’ll deemphasize your presence and allow buyers to see themselves as the owners. Many agents advise that your walls should be almost bare, with nothing more than a smattering of generic and non-threatening artwork (i.e. natural landscapes). 

The Right Paint
Choosing the right color for your interior walls is an important step in creating a space that’s conducive to prospective buyers. Neutral colors are widely considered the best way to go because they won’t distract visitors the way a rich, luxuriant red or shades of lavender will. Remember, the home you want others to see is better not to be a house dominated by your personal tastes; instead, one the buyer can envision as their own. Beige, tan, or shades of gray are considered the best choices by real estate agents. By the same token, slapping on a couple of coats of white paint can be noticeable because if it is too bland. A nice mid-range shade is optimal. If you want help, This Old House has a list of apps, including ColorSmart and Paint My Place, that can help when it comes time to select and match the right paint for your home. The Clutter Remedy: A Guide To Getting Organized For Those Who Love Their Stuff is also a great resource for home decorating tips.

Drawing Them In
Giving your property curb appeal is essential for getting people to stop by or make inquiries. You can improve your curb appeal by tidying up your landscaping, planting flowers in a pot by the front door, and making sure the lawn is clear of weeds. Above all, make certain that your house is easily seen from the street as people drive by, particularly if you have a lot of trees and/or bushes in the front yard. Want some landscaping ideas? Apps such as Houzz and iScape provide you with some inspiration to make your own yard look great.

Most people expect a lot of cleaning and minor fixes when getting ready to place their homes on the market. But there’s a lot more to staging than vacuuming and dusting. Think of it as transforming your space into someone else’s. With the correct approach and a little help from a handful of apps, you will make your home a hot commodity that stands out.


When you’re ready to clear out the clutter for good and to bring organization into your life, look to I-Deal-Lifestyle™ Professional Organizer to connect with. The owner Marla Stone gives a free 30 minute assessment by calling 949-709-7000 To ensure you make this transformation a lifestyle change, pick up the The Clutter Remedy: A Guide to Getting Organized For Those Who Love Their Stuff book today! 

With rising prices and living costs, people are less likely to donate to charities. With services diminishing, and criteria changing for who is mentally ill or solely delusional or simply homeless, people with severe mental health challenges are falling through the crevices and cracks.

Many years back, when someone was hallucinating, whether auditory, olfactory, or visual, the goal was to get them on psychiatric medications and stabilized. Now the new model is to let them be the way they are. This philosophy or mode would be like saying if a child wants to wander out the front door and cross a road, they should have the free will to do that. With this new way of handling intense mental health, psychoses, and our most vulnerable elderly, many wandering souls are taking over our streets, uncared for and often left dying in a park, under a bridge, or on a sidewalk.

People with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, PTSD, OCD, and schizoaffective disorder absolutely should have free will yet be allowed to get stabilized. Sometimes though, when people are fully psychotic, they will not choose to get the help they deserve and for what we all pay taxes for to help them. What do we do then, let them roam around barefoot in the winter without a coat or shoes? Digging up some warm clothes and donating to shelters will be a good deed for 2022.

The homeless population is primarily people with mental health challenges, drug addiction (which is a mental health challenge,) and sometimes people with a low IQ who do not know how to care for themselves on their own. What is our responsibility as tax-paying citizens? It is to make sure our government agencies are responsible for our hard-earned money. The tax dollars earmarked for mental health services are significant when we make sure they find their way to the most vulnerable and at-risk people. Moreover, we want the money to go towards worthwhile programs that create long-term solutions and ends homelessness, abuse while increasing tolerance and acceptance for taking care of our most high risk human beings.

Many great leaders have suffered from mental health challenges, or a family member or friend they know has suffered. If a loved ones find their way to a nice neighborhood in a tent, with very little food and water, would the more fortunate amongst us think that is okay? When the low down, locked down, and thrown out folks, the millions of strangers remain unknown by us, is it okay?

No one wants these folks in their palatial neighborhoods; that is understandable. However, where should these wandering souls end up?
Will each taxpayer, individual or corporation make their dollars count towards the care of mental health in this country? Will the dollars get to the mental health services that provide care that will end the madness, the wayward lives lingering in front of all of us? What kind of housing solutions do we have long-term before all of our sidewalks and even a home's driveway become the resting place for the people that never rest?

Figuring out the best place to donate money is a grand New Years' resolution. It is also important to consider calling the congressperson in the area. Ask them to explain how the money winds up helping those that deserve to be cared for by all of us.
​www.i-deal-lifestyle.com

As more people work from home, apartments and households get more crowded. Living spaces often become more cramped, and you can become more depressed and, despondent. Decluttering the home is therefore now more important than ever. Fortunately, with creative space planning, storage space for all the dislodged items can be found in many places around the home and beyond it, even for residents of small apartments. 
Clutter takes many forms, from kids toys and magazines to all the clothes you bought which didn’t quite fit in the wardrobe. Then there is the paperwork that you want to sensibly get organized. Most papers can be tossed or shredded, yet for important papers you want to find the correct spot for easy access. Marla Stone, CEO of I-Deal-Lifestyle and author of The Clutter Remedy: A Guide To Getting Organized For Those Who Love Their Stuff, will certainly get you uber organized. Stone will find places to store all the that are important so you will manage your life and live in harmony with the others in your household. This can be easier in some places crowded spaces that others, and access to storage space at home varies across the country. Although, solutions are available, and a nearby self storage unit can be rented to act as a helpful garage or storage space a meaningful and successful decluttering process is important to see what is actually important enough to store.
Living Space in US Homes Have Become More Cramped
The pandemic sent employees home to telework from their bedrooms, and many of them would like to keep working that way. And then, with college kids no longer able to live in their dorms and seniors sometimes preferring to receive care from relatives, multigenerational living is now increasingly seen. All those family members take up space, with many households increasing in size and living space becoming more cramped. The other issue is that everyone has moved out, and yet they have left behind their belongings in your precious space. In addition, homes haven’t necessarily become bigger over the years to accommodate larger households. Certainly builders are creating smaller cabinets with tiny shelves, instead of deeper shelves, smaller pantries, and not enough place to stash things away.
New apartments were built with less space between 2010 and 2019, losing 90 square feet — equal to the size of a small bedroom — and ending at an average of 1,156 square feet. Also, with increasing accommodation costs, many Americans are not able to move to larger homes, so they want to be more cognizant of how they will keep their living spaces free from clutter.


Utilize All Your House’s Storage Solutions
If you have a house with a basement or an attic, there is potential storage space. Be aware that conditions there may not be ideal in terms of temperature extremes and humidity, which can damage paperwork, clothes and wooden furniture. A garage or a garden shed are also tempting places to use as storage rooms, but they are even more exposed to the elements, so are only suitable for tools, tires and those windsurfing boards.  
Regions are not equally equipped with storage options for house owners. Basements are often built beneath houses where the frost line necessitates deep foundations. Therefore, cold-winter cities like Milwaukee, Boston and Pittsburgh, and New York feature basements in around 90% of houses, while Texans and Floridians rarely see them. Garages are more fairly distributed, but this time metros in the West and Southwest fare better, with around 90% of houses having them. 


Your Apartment Building May Have Storage Options
Apartment dwellers are obviously more squeezed for space. But their buildings increasingly provide storage options, perhaps lockable units in the basement or more informal partitioned spaces. Other buildings have outside lockers where tenants can keep bicycles and maybe other outdoor items. These options are more common in the West and Southwest, with over half of the multifamily buildings in the California, Phoenix, AZ, Dallas, TZ, and Portland, OR, metros having them. 
Other storage options for apartment dwellers are parking garages on their block, friend’s houses or storage units, though this tends to be in the more high-end buildings. These are more common in the metropolitan areas of the spacious West, but even the metros centered on Dallas, TX, Kansas, MO, Milwaukee, WI, and Denver, CO, only offer the facility in 16%-18% of their multifamily buildings. As well as keeping your car there, some landlords allow items such as bicycles to be stored.


Get Clever Finding Extra Storage Space
When your home doesn’t provide storage space outside the living area and your cupboards and shelves are fully utilized you want simple and economical solutions. Corner storage cabinets, spaces above doors, shelving, ceilings and corridor wall units are places in the home that can be used for additional storage. Ottomans are types of furniture that increase your storage options. And restyling your home to add new levels and even storage rooms are good ideas. 
Renting storage may also be a good solution for you. For example, the average street rate for a standard 10’x10’ storage unit is $128/month, and that will hold all the contents of a small apartment. Also, when revamping your home for added storage, you will be able to keep your prized furniture and other items out of the way. Self storage is much cheaper than residential space, and with the rapid expansion of the industry, you will find a facility near your home. 


Decluttering is certainly a feature of many Americans’ lives right now, especially when they are coping with increasingly cramped living space. Fortunately, there are some effective storage solutions to cope with space challenges. Residents of multifamily buildings can maximize their options. Happy decluttering!
Call 949-709-7000 for a free 30 minute assessment and ideas to create space for the things that are important to you!
www.i-deal-lifestyle.com

In my #organizingbusinessinorangecounty, I recently noticed a lack of motivation to put things away, even after everything is categorized, fine-tuned, and contained. I believe it is one thing to get uber-organized and another to keep it up. The best of systems will not last unless #clutterremedy strategies are in place and utilized.

There are many reasons for having decreased motivation: lack of clear vision about goals and dreams, negative life challenges, mood challenges, mainly anxiety and depression, an overly busy schedule. Also what puts a damper on keeping up your space is not enough help or support, and a misunderstanding about how to keep a house or workspace clear of clutter, regularly.

Another thing I've noticed is a trend in time-saving tips that do not actually  save you time. One of the tips I've seen turning up is about not Turning clothes inside out before hanging them. One of my recent clients shared a tip going around that you can save time by taking things out of the washer or dryer and hanging them up as they come out, even if they are inside out. The biggest problem is that it does not save time at all. Eventually, you will want to wear an article of clothing from your closet, and guess what you will put in the time you think you saved by turning it right side out. Also, the bigger problem is you will not see if there are stains or tears on the right side of the clothing until you've put it on and are admiring yourself in the mirror. Now you will be late for work or your morning meeting.

Another client shared that instead of having somewhere to hang her delicate clothes, a tip was to hang the wet clothes all over her apartment, without hangers, over furniture, countertops, shower doors, and anywhere they can be placed. While this works to get the clothing dry, running around scattering wet clothing is comical and time-consuming. There are so many over-the-door hanging apparatuses and easy-to-use drying racks that fold up when you're finished. Why wouldn't you employ some tools that will save you time, steps and protect you from walking into a home full of strewn clothes? The fewer steps and processes to laundry, the better, obviously, but let's be practical.

Daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly manual labor is always involved in maintaining a well-organized and clutter-free space. We all make daily messes, yet putting things back where they belong regularly consists of willing yourself to pick up and put away things that have been scattered about. There is no mystery why beautiful, valuable shoes, clothes, toys, papers, receipts, and stuff pile up and turn into a cluttered mess. You're not keeping up with the putting away part.

Here are 8 simple #organizingtips to remain #perpetuallyorganized:

1. Categorize every single thing you own into broad categories.
2. Fine-tune all categories into sub-categories to help you find things more accessible.
3. Contain every sub-category separately. Do not lump things together in drawers, or on cabinet, or closets shelves without a container of some sort.  Drawer inserts and bins or baskets help keep like items from schmooshing together with non-like items.
4. Have a home for every sub-category based on how often you use the items and where you will use them.
5. Will yourself put things away when you take them out of their home, and when you are finished using them.
6. When new items come into your space, figure out immediately where they will be placed. 
7. For new items coming into your space, such as purchases, mail, gifts, or packages, open them immediately, discard the boxes, envelopes, and bags they come in, and figure out where they will go. If you are a big return person, keep a bin  for the return material.
8. Always put things back where they belong, and when you don't have time, have empty space or baskets to put them into in the meantime until you have time to distribute out-of-place items.

Also, read or listen to The Clutter Remedy: A Guide To Getting Organized For Those Who Love Their Stuff by Marla Stone. Stone, a former social worker, and psychotherapist will help you declutter your emotional self first and has revolutionized organizing any space possible with clear and concise criteria for keeping what you value most in your life and rooms.
​www.i-deal-lifestyle.com

​Jealousy, the wild riptide emotion that tears you up inside and snarls apart once fun and loving relationships, is one of the most devastating and harmful of all emotional tirades one can experience. Jealousy causes irrational and wobbly impulse schemes, blaming shenanigans, and histrionic waves of distrust, disregard, and damage control. These often delusional and unruly behaviors will shut doors in faces, click-off phones, and block social activity similarly to all socially unacceptable life responses, such as intrusion, racism, antisocial and violent acts. Yet, unlike the latter, jealousy with a scoop of intellect and pound of understanding will ideally be met with a more caring and accepting approach. If you cannot see past someone's blind bashed feelings, are you also part of the problem?

Jealousy is a deep pocket sewn into the most fragile part of the emotional body. It triggers tail-chasing instability laced with threads of desertion, neglect, and betrayal. The button sign that says unwelcome or sayonara is often met with reels of rejection, flames of furry, and a backlash flight or fight tizzy going out of control. Then coming in like a tidal wave is unwanted rage and devastating longing for what once was inclusion. 
It's like a kick to the jaw and a boot to the heart 
all at the same time. 

Whether the stranding or jilting is done with fair or unfair treatment, the tsunami swells, bubbling up torrid resentment strewn towards all involved, and toppling and swirling everyone everywhere. 

So, what creates zealous jealously in some and not others. The key is, the jealous person feels massively unloved and then sordid, stubborn, and angry about it. Feeling unloveable is the primary, more profound, and darker feeling of jealousy. The scathed and abandoned part of someone stems from unresolved childhood issues, having nothing to do with the victim of the possessive, grasping, glomming hands from the distraught loser of victory, friendship, love, or award.

A jealous person is the ultimate loser of everything from relationships to careers to life experiences. Jealousy is a sheath for disappointment, loss, grief, and painstaking confusion. It twinges with psychotic pain like that from losing a loved one when you're not ready to lose, and it sneaks up beside you, shaming you down.

Unlike envy which is light and green with admiration, devotion, and revere, jealousy seethes into the sleeves of despair, despondency and turns up a downtrodden disappointment in the coating of one's life.

So, how do you want to handle someone who has come off the handle, so off-keel, that they would kneel before you with regret one minute and spit you away from the next? 

Remember whether the outright dismissal is for good or bad reasons. Do you want to make the person disappear, or in a sense, die from your life altogether? Do you want to kick them further to the edge when they walk the narrow path on the wrong side of the road? Do we up our arms and walk away without a care? Well, I guess that depends on whether that person was worthy of your friendship from the beginning!

My suggestion is to bring people into your life with the art of discrimination. That way, when people in your life misbehave, you will make good decisions about who to keep around and who to eliminate. People, unlike objects, can't be tossed, thrown, or donated. That is why you want to be discriminating in choosing friends. Like friends, shells on a beach are not all going to be picked up and brought home with you. Figure out 30 things you want in ideal friends and partners. Write a list and go big, fairy God-Mother big. That way, when someone acts out and gets ugly, it is so much easier to lend a hand or lock the door. Whatever you choose, please do it with cups of love and tinctures of compassion!

Marla Stone is the author of The Clutter Remedy: A Guide To Getting Organized For Those Who Love Their Stuff and owner of www.i-deal-lifestyle.com

Whether it is a glam room, a board room, or any space in your office or home, www.i-deal-lifestyle.com organizes anything that can be organized. Marla Stone, MSW, Professional Organizer and Author of The Clutter Remedy: A Guide To Getting Organized For Those Who Love Their Stuff, is a world-renowned, consummate organizer/designer who has traveled the world helping people not only get organized but stay organized, permanently. ​

Marla started as a social worker/psychotherapist and then reinvented herself in 2010 into a home and business organizer. Her team of organizers loves organizing businesses, residential properties, and lives. "Coaching people to overall wellness, inside and out is the goal," Stone exclaims enthusiastically. 
Bringing Stone's mental health background has bridged perpetual internal disorganization to outer chaos. It is no mystery why people get disorganized and drown in clutter when there are unresolved disappointments and grief issues buried in the unconscious process of people's lives.

Stone's favorite jobs are corporate settings and creating space that is not only safe with covid restrictions but also aesthetically pleasing. Setting up cubicles or having people out on the open floor exposed with no privacy is not the solution for increased productivity. It takes a Feng Shui perspective to set up corporate space, with space planning finesse. 

The newest product Stone is selling is an alive and online education program based on her book The Clutter Remedy. The corporate training program "Declutter Your Strategy." The training program not only helps with a cluttered work environment. The goal of Declutter Your Strategy is to educate and elevate productivity, sales, and relationships. The program supports C-Suite Executives, Realtors, and Brokers in understanding their inner emotional clutter and how to help their customers by understanding them better. It is a quick and easy seven-module program that teaches primary mental health diagnoses, coping strategies, and improved communication skills, all geared towards improved productivity. Stone says, "There is not enough education about mental health, and it's keeping people blocked up from reaching their loftiest goals."

To find out more about I-Deal-Lifestyle Inc. services, email info@i-deal-lifestyle.com.​

We serve all of Orange County and anywhere outside of Orange County. We are an Irvine-based business. We offer Re-designed office space, decluttering any room in your home, even your garage or storage unit. We organize the house and act as a personal organizer. We are the best professional organizer in Orange County and make getting decluttered straightforward with no drama. To get organized, procure help, hoard help, or organize services in Orange County, don't hesitate to contact us through our website at www.i-deal-lifestyle.com. For training and development, public speaking, or a successful event, don't hesitate to contact Marla Stone directly at marla@i-deal-lifestyle.com. For a house organizer, desk organization, clearing space, or designer services in orange county, contact us at info@i-deal-lifestyle.com

If you are finding holiday gift boxes scattered around your house and the entryway is frustratingly blocked by a giant pile of snow boots, it may be time for the annual spring clean. However, the seemingly insurmountable task of getting the home ready for brighter weather can leave some homeowners paralyzed with indecision. If you are wanting some inspiration on how to start your spring clean, consider any of the advice listed in this helpful checklist.


​1. Declutter the Home Office
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, many people were forced into remote working situations without any kind of infrastructure in place as to how to make this work. This leaves many professionals working in makeshift areas indefinitely as they wait, not-so-patiently, for in-person work to resume.

However, even when life eventually does “return to normal,” the remote work environment wrought by the pandemic will undoubtedly retain a presence in the years to come.

As a result, it is important to have a clean, tidy, and functional home office space in which you can compartmentalize your professional responsibilities from everyday home life. Clutter causes increased stress, as it is a visual reminder of work left undone, which can undermine work performance. The Clutter Remedy: A Guide To Getting Organized For Those Who Love Their Stuff by Marla Stone helps tremendously to get started on your Decluttering project. The Clutter Remedy Book

Therefore, the office is a great place to start your spring cleaning efforts in 2021. Find a different place for that spare dresser with stray socks poking out of the drawers and those board games piled on top. Keep your desk clear of any personal items, such as dishes, cups, none-office stuff, or personal electronic devices not used for work. Make sure the floor is not littered with extra pairs of shoes or children’s toys, ensuring the same professional atmosphere of a regular commercial office space.

2. Sanitize Like Never Before
​
Speaking of the pandemic, people have become well-versed at sanitizing frequently over the past year. And since spring cleaning is the one time of year that most people thoroughly sanitize, anyway, everything should fall right into place, right?

Well, yes and no. While scrubbing the bathtub, wiping down the refrigerator shelves, and deep cleaning the oven should still be at the forefront of your sanitation efforts, spend some extra time on areas that may have been overlooked prior to the pandemic, such as doorknobs, sink faucets, and interior handrails. It may also be a good idea to replace these items to give your home some new accents this spring and get a fresh start going forward.

3. Don’t Ignore the Exterior
Most spring cleaning efforts focus on making the interior of the home more pleasant and livable. However, it can be difficult to get into the mood to get the inside of the home looking pristine when the curb appeal is a wreck. As such, make sure that exterior projects are a part of your spring cleaning routine in 2021.

Basic landscaping projects such as thatching the yard, planting flowers, and trimming tree branches that died over winter are a great place to start. For more ambitious homeowners, replacing a cracked concrete driveway or swapping a dinged and dented garage door with one of the sleek custom garage doors popular today can really take your exterior makeover to the next level and set the tone for a spring clean.

4. Spend Time on Windows and Walls
The vacuum and broom are often the first items brandished when spring cleaning begins. While the floors and carpets undoubtedly need to be cleaned, a surprising amount of dust accumulates on the walls and windows.

Rather than start with the vacuum, a better approach is to start at the top of the wall and work your way down so that you do not have to re-vacuum. Use a damp cloth and gently wipe the walls in a downward motion. For the windows, it is best to use a steam cleaner and squeegee as opposed to a cloth. Be sure to pop out any window screens or magnetic storm windows to get any hard-to-reach areas, and try to avoid using any toxic cleaning products.
Get Started Spring Cleaning Today

The spring clean is an important annual event to get the home ready for nicer weather. However, the tall task of paring down a month’s worth of winter accumulation can make homeowners indecisive. Therefore, consider any of the helpful ideas listed above to make your spring clean a success.

For more on decluttering your home make sure to check out i DEAL LiFESTYLE  for more helpful strategies and advice.

Max Shafer is a contributor to the Innovative Building Materials blog. He is a content writer for the construction and home improvement industries with an interest in landscaping, outdoor remodeling, and interior design. Max is focused on educating homeowners, contractors, and architects on innovative materials and methods of construction that increase property value, improve sustainability, and create a warm and welcoming ambiance.

The best strategies I use as a declutter and staging expert are to depersonalize the home, declutter cabinets, closets, and drawers and use good energy and flow principles for opening up each room for a more inviting and inspiring walkthrough.
Taking out some dated, bulky and shabby furniture and furniture placement is essential for the ease and comfort of the buyer. The home should look like a model home, with pops of bright colors like turquoise, orange, yellow, and lime green throughout the property. These colors will uplift the mood, especially against a neutral background, and they are current and ideal for selling to a contemporary buyer. If the client still has maroon and forest green colors in drapery and fabric, I do my best to get those colors out or hide them under furniture coverings.

Hiding offensive artwork or decor, family photos, or costly artwork, clothing, accessories, or personal hygiene products is recommended. Eliminating ANY clutter from surfaces, floor, furniture, and drawers, cabinets, and closets (because buyers will open them) is mandatory. I like to neatly pack the clutter and personal belongings in clear bins and place them in the garage or guest closets. Some of my biggest pet peeves are shabby or stained rugs, furniture, bedding, knick-knacks galore, dated colors and old-style furniture, and most of all, fake plants.
Getting the garage spic and span is also extremely important. There should be no mess at all, anywhere.
I create space in cabinets and drawers for things the owner regularly uses during showings to put things away easily and quickly before potential buyers come knocking.
Whether virtual or live, the rules are Declutter, Eliminate Bulk of Personal Belongings, and Design the Space, so it mimics a model home.
Also if you can't walk the property when considering a purchase ask about the condition and location of the home. These two questions are the most important factor to know for a buyer. Ask about overhead plane noise, noisy neighbors, street noise, power lines, mold and structural issues and get a floor plan and see if its conducive to your lifestyle. For example is the master bedroom privately located away from the kid’s and guest rooms? Is the kitchen Off the garage? And is there a quiet grassy yard for a pet?

Marla Stone, Lifestyle Organizer, Keynote Speaker & Author of The Clutter Remedy: A Guide To Getting Organized For Those Who Love Their Stuff Read Marla’s book now https://www.amazon.com/Clutter-Remedy-Guide-Getting-Organized/dp/1608686299Cell only: 949-709-7000
Skype ID: ideallifestylenow
The author is Zoom conversant info@i-deal-lifestyle.
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I-Deal-Lifestyle Inc. Declutter Your Strategy™
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