How to Keep Your Home Show-Ready When You Have Kids

Your real estate agent may bring potential buyers to your home at any time, so it’s crucial to keep your home show-ready. However, this seems impossible when you’re a busy parent with young kids. How are you supposed to round up toys, polish the bathroom, and wipe down dusty surfaces while getting your children ready for an impromptu outing? Try these smart tips to maintain a spotless and clutter-free home so you’re always prepared to “wow” potential buyers in Columbia, SC.

Develop a Last-Minute Cleaning Plan

Before you start prepping your home, come up with a quick-cleaning plan so you’re always prepared for those last-minute showings. Angie’s List recommends keeping an empty basket handy for collecting toys, paperwork, and other bits of clutter from around the home. As you go, open curtains, flip on the lights, remove smelly trash bags, and close all closet doors.

Make sure this list of tasks is short enough that you can get it done in as little as 15 minutes. Anything that doesn’t fit into this time frame should be tackled during your home staging preparations and daily cleaning routine.

Pack Away Your Clutter

While you’ll be able to store a few odds and ends at the last minute, try to remove the majority of your clutter well ahead of time. If you wait until immediately before a showing, you’ll be forced to stash everything into closets. This is a problem because potential buyers will want to look in your storage areas. Overflowing closets can make your home appear short on space.

But why remove clutter if you’ll be moving all this stuff out of your home when you move? Clutter distracts from your home’s best features and makes rooms appear smaller. Plus, personal items, such as family photos and your cherished collection of trinkets, can make it difficult for buyers to imagine their own lives in your space. Give yourself plenty of time to declutter before your first showing so you can move your items out of the home instead of filling up your closets. For help decluttering the kid’s room, read through this guide from Clean and Scentsible.

Keep a Few Accessories Around for Staging

When you’re removing clutter, remember to hold onto a few accessories for staging your home. Moving.com describes home staging as a method of highlighting your home’s best features and giving your potential buyers an ideal picture of their lives there. It’s important to stage your home before taking real-estate photos since the majority of homebuyers begin their housing search online — you need to make a great first impression with your pictures alone!

Focus your staging on the most important rooms in your house, such as your living room, kitchen, and master bedroom. You can make your bedroom appear luxurious with fresh, fluffy bedding and calming décor. Make rooms look bigger with strategically placed mirrors. Move lamps around to illuminate dark corners. Some new bath towels and a crisp bar of soap can turn your bathroom into a spa. When it comes to staging your child’s bedroom, check out these tips.

Get in the Habit of Daily Tidying

Once your house is clean, organized, and staged, your final task is to keep it that way. Get in the habit of cleaning things on a regular basis. For example, do the dishes right away, make all the beds first thing in the morning, sweep the floors, wipe down your sinks, and keep your toiletries stowed away in a drawer. To cut down on work, close off certain rooms in your home. If your kids are old enough for housework, get them to help out!

Selling a home is hard enough as it is, but when you’re a busy parent, stress is almost inevitable. Prepare and stage your home well in advance so all you have to do is run around and polish up the place when your real estate agent calls at the last minute. When it comes to selling your home quickly and convincing buyers to agree on your asking price, showing off a sparkling clean, and inviting home is indispensable.