What Do I Do With My Extra Furniture After Staging?

This week we are continuing our conversation on staging so if you missed that post you can catch it here where we discussed whether or not our stager brings in furniture when she stages your home to sell.

This week we are going to talk about what to do with the furniture in the event she recommends you move pieces out of your home for photos and showings.

When you meet with our stager, she will start by going room by room with you and recommending to you what furniture and décor needs to stay and what needs to be moved out of the home for photos and showings.

She’s going to help you depersonalize, move stuff around, and dare I say…… declutter!  Don’t worry, even the best looking homes need a little bit of tweaking because staging a home to sell is completely different than staging a home to live in from a décor standpoint so please don’t get offended.

So the big question is, “Where do you put all that stuff that needs to go?”

The first question you need to answer is are you taking those items with ou to the new home?

Garage

If you are taking the items with you to your next place, then you can totally use your garage for storage. Some people look at me sideways when I say that because they expect me to tell them that their garage needs to be spotless and empty but stick with me.  When I go to a listing appointment and tour the home, I pop my head out in the garage, count the garage spaces, look at anything else that needs to be looked at, and then we move on. Most buyers are going to do the same thing. As long as you're putting your belongings in the middle where a car would be and not up against the wall where panel boxes like the breaker box or sprinkler system boxes are located where an inspector would need to access it at some point, no problem.

Storage Containers

If you are building a home and there’s a time gap from when you close on your existing home and your new home and you’re putting your things in storage, one great option is to have storage containers delivered to your home, load everything in them, and then have them taken away to be stored.  Once you’re closed on your new home, they deliver them to your new home and you can unpack on your own timetable and then they can pick them up when you are finished.

Donations/Trash/Curb

If you're not going to take these items with you this is the perfect time to sell it, get rid of it, donate it, or throw it on the curb and put a “free” sign on it so it can go to a new home. That way, you're not having it hang around and moving it twice just to get rid of it later.  It helps get some of the purging out of the way earlier in the process so that when you do pack up to move you’re only having to deal with the things you are for sure taking with you versus having everything to deal with.

My recommendation is to really be as open as possible to our staging recommendations because we are here to set you and your home up for success!