Tips for Decluttering, Moving, and Packing While Selling Your Home

If you are selling your home, you find out fairly quickly that it involves a lot more than simply placing a FOR SALE sign in your front yard. One of the tasks you’ll need to take on is packing so you can move out of the home you are selling. There is no better time to declutter the items in your home than when you are selling and moving out, for two reasons: you’ll have less to pack up and move, and it will help in preparing to stage your home to show it to prospective buyers.

Many people don’t know where to start when thinking about how to prepare to sell their home and move to a new one. Here are some helpful tips to get you started.

1. Declutter, declutter, declutter

Just thinking about decluttering your home may give you feelings of dread, but it’s the first step you need to take in this process. To keep yourself from feeling overwhelmed, go room by room systematically. Go through every drawer, closet, shelf, and box—anywhere that a potential buyer might see your clutter. Then inventory what you find. You can decide what to do with each item by thinking about these points:

• Pack away seasonal items, like winter clothes and holiday decorations. Store them in an attic or offset if necessary.

• Organize into Sell and Donate. Items you no longer use or haven’t in 6 to 12 months but are still in good shape should be sold or donated. Decide which items go in which category, then immediately act on what you’ve decided. Take those donated items to a local charity and have a garage or yard sale for the rest.

• Throw out or recycle items that are damaged, broken, stained, or otherwise unusable.

1. Pack up personal items

Eliminating clutter from your home will help buyers focus on your home’s features and selling points and not your belongings. Your house is likely filled with family photos, mementos, kid artwork, souvenirs, and other personal items that have great meaning to your family but won’t to potential buyers. 

Removing these personal items will help make your home appear like a blank canvas so that buyers can envision how their personal items might look when they live in your home. Keep in mind that all personal items should be packed up and stored. This includes family photos, so be careful when packing them for storage or moving. 

1. What NOT to pack

When decluttering and packing the items in your home, be sure to leave out items that can be used to stage your home for sale. Staging refers to arranging furniture and decorative items in a specific way to make your property desirable. 

Successfully staging your home is typically a balance between making your home look and feel cozie and homie while allowing a buyer to envision their belongings in your house. With this in mind, don’t pack items like these, because they can be useful in staging your home:

• Candles
• Area rugs
• Throw pillows and blankets
• Lamps
• Towels
• Artwork
• Mirrors

Don’t pack items that are neutral in color and style and complement your home’s color scheme so that a wide variety of buyers will find the combination appealing.  Mirrors can make rooms feel larger, as can smaller pieces of furniture.  A scented candle gives a nice look and smell, but be sure to pick a neutral scent.

1. Self-storage is your friend

Once you’ve eliminated unwanted and unneeded items by decluttering process, and your boxes are packed with your items you won’t use in staging, you’ll need somewhere to store it all during the selling process and until you are ready to move into your new home. While you may be able to borrow unused space from family or friends, this may not be an option, especially if you have a lot of belongings to store. 

A self-storage unit can be a great option here. Self-storage is secure and allows you to access your belongings whenever you need to. Consider renting a unit that is close to your home for convenience and with more space than you think you’ll need. This gives you room in case you underestimate how many things you have to store and also lets you maneuver around inside the storage unit more easily if there is a bit of extra space. 

Note that if you plan to store electronics, expensive artwork, or other sensitive items, be sure to look into a climate-controlled storage unit, and storage insurance may be a good idea for you as well.