Keeping a Home Show-Ready When You Have Kids
What’s more stressful than trying to keep a house clean when you have kids? Well, trying to keep your house show-ready while trying to sell… with kids!
With potential buyers coming in and out of the house, it can be hard to find balance. Kids need to be kids, but at the same time, potential buyers may not be impressed with legos and toy cars strewn about.
So, how can you keep your home clean between showings? Keep reading to learn more…
Have an Emergency Cleaning Plan
Sometimes your agent needs to show your property and can only give an hour’s notice.
Depending on how desperately you need to sell your home, you may not have the luxury of pickiness when it comes to showings. To avoid showing a messy house, set a plan for quickly getting the house ready before potential buyers show up.
This could be as simple as having a bin that all of the kids’ toys get thrown in so they’re out of the way. Or, you could create a speed-cleaning cheat sheet. The cheat sheet could be a list of tasks that can be done in an allotted amount of time.
Use your resources, availability, and family to decide on a plan that will get the house show-ready quickly! Too busy to clean? Hire a cleaning service. They’re lifesavers!
Tidy Up Daily
While it can be hard to find time to tidy up every day when you have kids, this is a simple way to make pre-showing messes more manageable.
To avoid having a messy home that seems impossible to clean before a potential buyer arrives, try to do a little bit every single day. Daily tasks could include:
- Going through the home and picking up clutter
- Vacuuming high-traffic areas quickly
- Washing dishes (even if they need to be handwashed because there aren’t enough for a full load)
- Wiping down counters
- Wiping down door knobs with disinfectant wipes (this is a great habit for the sake of hygiene if you have people coming in and out of the house!)
- Doing a quick sweep in the kitchen after meals
- Empty garbages
While this task list may sound daunting, if you keep up on these tasks daily each one should only take a couple of minutes.
Pack Up Personal Decor Early
When you have a home for sale, it’s best to take down personal photos, name signs, personalized pillows, and blankets, etc.
While personalized decor is precious to a family, potential buyers want to envision themselves in the house. It’s more difficult for someone to envision themselves in your home if the walls are covered with family photos.
Aside from making the property neutral, it’s important to remove personal decor for safety reasons. With the entire internet having access to your home’s listing, the last thing you want is for your children’s photos to be in the real estate photos. This increases the chance that strangers can gain access to your family’s private information, like workplaces, schools, clubs, etc.
So, take some time before the real estate photographer comes to take the photos down and do a de-cluttering of your decor. Safely pack these up and store them until you’re in the new home.
Instead, use minimal, neutral decor that complements your furniture!
Is Your Home Show-Ready?
Trying to sell a house is stressful enough, don’t add in the stress of making a messy house show-ready in 10 minutes!
By adding a few simple tricks to your day, being ready for potential buyers to view the house is so much easier. Need real estate photos, videos, a property description, or drone shots? Reach out to us today to learn about our marketing services!