Showing And Open House

You’ve decluttered, repaired, cleaned, revitalized, and your house looks fabulous. Now you want to keep it that way while you’re trying to sell it. This is another challenge onto itself: to prevent the house from drifting back to clutter-land after all your hard work.

To reduce the amount of maintenance while the house is on the market we suggest you declare some rooms off-limit from every day use. For example, do you have three or four bathrooms in your house? Pick two that your family can use and close the doors on the rest. Perhaps you have a family room and a living room, use one only and bar the other. Then of course there’s the dining room and the kitchen. Maybe eat in the kitchen from now on leaving the dining room untouched.

You’ll need to dust the undisturbed rooms once in a while but you can see how this strategy ensures your house is always ready for showing with minimal efforts. For the rest of the living space create three to-do lists:

• A weekly must-do checklist
• A daily must-do checklist
• A final checklist before the open house

Copy these checklists and expand on them to fit your needs.  Additionally, showing a house with pets is a special concern so make sure you know how to handle the situation.

More tips from 'Prepare Your House For Sale'