Declutter To Sell: Room By Room (Part 2)

Mary Anne Ivison  0:01  
The declutter queen with Avery Cundill,

Avery Cundill  0:07  
Today's episode will address a practical room by room approach to get your home decluttered, streamlined and ready to impress. Last episode, we dove into the why decluttering our homes for sale makes good, practical and financial sense. Ty Mitchell, a realtor out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, joined me for tea and to give us his perspective on why a decluttered home will sell for more in the market. Decluttering before listing your home for sale will also save time later, when you are faced with packing and organizing, you will already have culled through your stuff and only have what you need to pack and take. So if last episode we consider maybe the why decluttering is important when selling perhaps this week's episode can be seen as the how to tackle this kind of decluttering project. Let's walk through every major room in your home and break down what goes, what stays, and how to create space that sells.

Now, obviously each home is created differently, so you may have more or less rooms. But I will provide you with a rough idea on how to apply the room by room approach, and then you can tailor it for your own specific living space.

Unknown Speaker  1:53  
Segment one, the living

Avery Cundill  1:54  
room, okay, so this might be a family room or an other named gathering space in your home, but suffice it to say, it might be a room that is prone to collections, so let's dive in.

The first thing you may want to do is focus on furniture. Remember, you live in the space, so you may want another set of eyes to help you a friend or family member, but the question you may want to ask is, Is there too much furniture in this space? Four couches, three coffee tables, too many chairs, a million end tables. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but you get the point. What about that antique desk in the corner that I rarely use and is collecting dust? See if you can remove excess furniture from this space and store it elsewhere. Remember, we want to see the room open and flowing.

Let's turn our attention to smaller stuff. Are there stacks of books or magazines lying around? Get rid of those. Do you have a remote control chaos problem where you have six random remotes strewn about? Those may be best in a drawer when you think about showing your home got kids, no doubt there will be a lot of bright plastic toys and games lying around these will need to be packed up and relocated for a home listing. This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but hopefully you get the gist, less is more, and that will mean more dollars, too. Turning to knick knacks. Try to keep these to a minimum. I know, I know you love your antique cow set, but if it is taking up a lot of space, you may want to store it somewhere else. Nice, clean surfaces are better than cluttered disaster zones. It doesn't hurt to do a thorough cleaning also. So remember, have your cleaning products handy to dust off any surfaces that may be collecting dirt and grime. Would this room benefit from refreshing the paint on the walls? Go for it. This is a relatively inexpensive way to clean up and brighten a space. This may be something also, as we move on, you may want to do in other rooms of your home, so keep it in mind.

Unknown Speaker  4:51  
Segment two, the kitchen.

Avery Cundill  4:54  
Kitchens are important, I might even say crucial. They're crucial. Crucial to our life, and they're also crucial to prospective buyers. They're going to be one of the most used rooms in the homes, for sure. So some tips in the kitchen may be helpful. This is a pretty easy one, clear all countertops, no toasters, no utensil jars, no clutter. Soaps and spray cleaners that linger around the sink, those get stored elsewhere. Only display one or two. I'll call them lifestyle props, like a cookbook, or maybe have a bowl with some nice lemons in it. You want your kitchen to look clean and ready to be used by the new owners, so no keep your pet treats and your recently baked banana bread out of sight. Another key tip is to empty your cabinets and drawers by about 30% because guess what? Buyers open those spaces too. The more space it looks like there is in your cupboards and cabinets and drawers more appealing to the buyer. We all want more space. Store those extras elsewhere and cull and clear segment, three bedrooms, bedrooms, how, regardless how many you have, kind of the same principles are going to apply. So first thing, remove personal items, photos, posters, laundry baskets with clothes, you guessed it, extra knickknacks, you know, one or two things, okay, but once we're creeping up to seven or eight knickknacks on end tables and on tops of chests of drawers, we're starting to look into that cluttered space. So have a box or a laundry basket handy and remove those personal items you want to make this bed look clean, clear, almost hotel style. So what I would suggest is get yourself some new white or light bedding to improve the room if you already have that no problem. And then on your night stands, a lamp and one item. Maybe that item is a book, maybe it's a plant. But this isn't the time to get creative with stacking things and trying to create an esthetic simple always works best. So yes, this might mean big containers full of stuff. You're just going to have to be up for the task, and when you feel a little bit sluggish about it, just think more money. Segment four bathrooms, we're going to hear more about these same principles, clear surfaces, clean surfaces. So in your bathrooms, you want to clear off every surface, nothing on top of the toilet tank, nothing on top of your counters, maybe one thing of soap in your shower. We don't want to have a bunch of stuff around, so clear off every surface. Only leave hand soap. Store all of your personal products out of sight wherever that may be. Find a different home for them. For your listing, you might want to add some fresh towels, a candle or some greenery, a plant or two. Always look nice again. We're looking for a nice, clean esthetic, and those things add, they don't take away, and they also don't clutter up the space. Second. Segment, five closets. So when it comes to closets, I always say, aim for the boutique. Look space your hangers apart from each other. Pack away 50% now we've got a higher number here, 50% of the stuff in your closet, because that is going to give the illusion of space. So take 50% of whatever you have in your drawers, your closets, whatever other cabinet space you have, clear it out. And also remember floors should be mostly clear, not only in your closets, this also applies to your bedrooms, your bathrooms. Don't have stuff piled up on the floor, even if you think it looks good, I guarantee it doesn't. And I sort of just referring back to my discussion with Ty last time you may need to store stuff off site. At this point you see, oh, I've got a lot of bins and baskets, so find an off site place or in the garage or basement if you have room. But it will pay dividends to make these adjustments before listing your home for sale. And now the queen. Team issues

a challenge. So for this week, let's start somewhere. I want you to pick two rooms and give them the decluttering treatment. Try the listing for photos. Test. If you took a picture today of these two rooms. Would they look buyer ready? Would they Wow? Try to aim for that in two rooms next time, we're going to talk about how to handle the emotional side of letting go of stuff when you list your house. Because this just isn't about stuff. It's about moving moving on. And now with the declutter queen, I'd like to welcome my nearest and dearest friend, Patricia Shapiro to the show. Hi Patricia. Hi, Ave how are you?

Patricia Shapiro  11:03  
I'm good. I'm so happy to be here.

Avery Cundill  11:05  
I'm so happy you're here too, and I'm so happy you agreed to come on the show. By the way, Patricia and I have been very close friends for many, many years. We've gone through the university years and all life's events together. Yeah, I was

Patricia Shapiro  11:20  
gonna say, you know me well, and you know all my my challenges with organization, but actually I could, if I could just own five things, I would, because that's works for me. I like minimalist things around but I'm married to the polar opposite. You know him well, Randy, and you've seen our house. He's a not gonna use the word hoarder, a collector of many, many, many things, many different things.

Avery Cundill  11:47  
Collector's so much softer than hoarder, hey, like, just collector

Patricia Shapiro  11:51  
definitely, definitely a collector. He likes his stuff, and not just one kind of stuff, like there we're talking about books of all types, history books, politics, he likes one time he got into magic for a while. Music, he's a musician. We've got amps, we've got pedals, we've got, I think we counted one time you were over and we counted like, maybe, like, what,

Avery Cundill  12:12  
60 guitars, at least, at least,

Patricia Shapiro  12:15  
yeah, all of these things are in two different places in my house, like one shoved into closets which we could totally use for their actual purpose, which is to house clothes or linens or what have you. So I've got closets crammed full of all kinds of things in no order, and then we have what really upsets me is like dumping grounds in my house. So like even when you come into my entryway, you can see the first dumping ground, like on this really otherwise pretty table, things can sit there for the longest time. His stuff is just coming in faster than I can do anything with it. And he certainly works all the time, as you know, and doesn't have time to organize his I was almost gonna say hoard his stuff, his collections, is collections, yeah, so it stays there, and I don't move it unless I have to, because, like, maybe someone's coming over or so sometimes I've moved something that is when it'll be like, have you seen my and I'm like, I have no idea where it is. Like, none. So and my kids are doing kind of the same thing, like, they see this, and they don't have as much stuff, but things come into the home, and it's like, no one's got the time or the focus or the energy to find a place for them. So they're like, things get lost and things are everywhere, and it's driving me crazy. And so Help, help me. I hear you, and

Avery Cundill  13:35  
you know I was going to thank you for mentioning the kids, because I was going to make sure that we added in Patricia has three kids, three teenagers in that in that age group. So they're gonna, they're joining in, you know, and monkey see, monkey do. So, you know, you see parents and other people in the house kind of just doing certain things, collecting, just leaving things around, and that gets passed down to them. So it is more than just partner. It's kids too, and it's, it feels like a losing battle, I'm sure, a lot of the time, because it's just one person interested in decluttering. And I, by the way, I hear this from a lot of people. This is, this is a common problem. So, you know, if misery loves company, you've got a lot of company. When I was thinking about, you know, because we talked about, we know your possible question before, and I kind of have some strategies, and I'll send you all these later. So don't worry about, like, taking notes now I'm going to send you everything in a text later. Okay, so the way I would approach this is step one. And Step one, I love my list as you do step one. Step one is start with what is 100% yours. So when you're starting to declutter, think of it as my category, because that, as you said earlier, I could have five things. So let's multiply that by 10. You could have 50 things, but starting with what is yours is. Safest win. Okay, so your clothes, your bathroom items, your books, your hobby items, things in the kitchen that you personally use, decor, things that are all about you. Okay, so you start with your stuff, because that's kind of like a no brainer, you're allowed to, you're not allowed. You can do it without checking, without maneuvering other people's things or worrying about other you just do you Okay. And does that make sense to start like, just do you? Yeah, that's easy.

Patricia Shapiro  15:35  
You're close enough your shoes, you're okay.

Avery Cundill  15:37  
And one of the things that sometimes happens, and I this is not a guarantee, but sometimes, when you start doing this, you'll see progress, and this will motivate you in everything else, so you'll start to go, Oh, I got rid of, I just did this. Actually, I got rid of, like, 10 pairs of shoes. I don't know how I have so many shoes, but 10 pairs of shoes, do, do, do, do, do, don't, not wearing them. So you will get that motivation and it'll be okay. Now I can tackle the rest is, you know, it's sort of like if you think of weight loss, weight losing that first five pounds. Mo, we talked about this the other day too, but Patricia and I talk a lot if you don't get the gist of that, but if you lose that first five pounds, now you're motivated to go to the gym and do all those things. Okay? So make sense? Start with you absolutely okay. Now step two, so obviously, it's going to be a natural, you know, movement into the rest of things. So my next suggestion is to start managing the neutral zones. Okay, so what's a neutral zone? Zones that everybody uses, like, example, a kitchen counter, a guest room, the entryway, okay? And, and if it's helpful, you can, you can even say, you know, I'm decluttering the entryway so we can find our shoes. So, oh, where's I can see one of your kids running around. Oh, I can't find my shoes. Where are my soccer cleats? Where's my boots I'm going to or and that kind of will, oh, great idea, mom, because everybody wants to find their shoes. So guest room. I need the guest room usable. This is a neutral zone. We need it organized. Nobody's gonna you're not gonna hear a peep out of anybody about that. Yeah, do the do that for sure. Kitchen counter, I gotta cook. Do you want to eat? Gotta have, you know. So those are those neutral zones, not necessarily just yours, but where everybody's managing, and you just start doing the table in the front. You know how we're gonna we're gonna leave our whatever here. You're gonna have your space here. So now we're creating zones that everybody would appreciate having organized. Okay, okay, okay, makes sense. So far, so far, so good. And one of the things I would really encourage you is to focus on use rather than possessions. So it's rather than saying you got to move your shoes, it's like, why don't we create a better space here, so we can all find our stuff? Okay? And whether you verbalize that or just think that way, the approach is not get your shoes out of here. It's we need to fix this problem. It's a problem that needs to be solved, and we continue on our little journey Patricia into harder things. Okay, okay, it's a journey. It's a journey. Collectors, and we're never going to use that word hoarder. We're going collectors. You know, it's the difference between like, could and should. Somebody once told me that when you say, well, you should do that, that sounds so punitive, but you could do that is so nice, right? So collector better than hoarder. Now, Randy has, and I can attest to this, Patricia's husband has a lot of collections spanning different music, motor vehicles, you know, other kind of vehicles.

Unknown Speaker  19:09  
That's right, forgot about the fight.

Avery Cundill  19:11  
There may be no category that he doesn't collect. Maybe he doesn't collect kitchen dishes, but he's got a lot of collections. Okay. Now, with collectors in general, containment is always better than confrontation. Okay? So when anybody, not just you, when anybody is tackling their husbands collections or wives collections, it can go either way. A good strategy might be to find one designated space in the house where all of these items live. And if it's not one, it's two, but it's not 12, so you give the items a clear physical boundary. And I think we talked about this last time I was there, where. Let's say your partner collects magazines, and the magazines are all and by the way, to have a collection stay intact, this is a really good strategy, because things can get damaged, wrecked, spilled on so let's say there's paper magazines that somebody collects, or comic books, or whatever it is. I'm just making an example. Having them all in clear bins stacked in your house is a better strategy than having them everywhere for the collector as well. So the declutterer benefits, but the collector also benefits, because all their stuff, they know it's safe. They know it's housed. They can actually find what they want, because you can organize these bins. So this is comic books from these years. This is photos. This is, you know, fill in the stamps, whatever it is. The attitude is, I'm keeping everything of yours together so it doesn't get lost or damaged. That seems good to me, you know, as if I was a collector, I'd be like, that sounds great. Oh, I think

Patricia Shapiro  21:07  
he'd love that to be able to, like, yeah, stare in awe of

Avery Cundill  21:10  
his things. And so this is going to take some creative thinking. And I think we've talked about, you know, places in your house that this could happen, but a designated space, and then the right bins, the right way of organizing the stuff. It could be clear bins. It could be something else, all organized, labeled. And in effect, it's like, ready to go. Should you ever move? For example, everything in the bins just moves, rather than going on a, you know, a scavenger hunt to find all these things. Where are they? You know, I know he's a collector of old entertainment, old media. Great place to put them, cassettes, DVDs, VHS, all that stuff. Really nice way. So the idea is, get those bins, find a space and organize. And the thinking behind it is, everything's together so it doesn't get lost and damaged. And once a container is full, then you go into this kind of caps, the growth, you know what I'm saying, like, Oh, hey, we have no more room here. What should we do? And be like, Oh, well, you could probably get rid of that, that that, like it might actually spurn a little bit of decluttering. Okay? Maybe we put that as a possibility. Maybe we can hope, yeah, and you know, one of the things that I think that this strategy can do, and it's not just for partners kids too, is it's relocation, not removal. So ideally, you might be saying to yourself, but declutter queen, why are we not decluttering? Getting rid of this is decluttering. It's just a different way. So okay, relocating helps that person who's a collector not completely lose it, because you're just moving things out of the shared spaces. So when you're just changing the address of the items, we're still decluttering. Because when you walk in and a lot of decluttering is like visual I walk in, my shared spaces are now clear, and if something comes up, let's say, Oh, he goes and buys 10 comic books. I'm just exampleing, but they come in, Oh, guess what? You have a bin in the basement for comic books. They go right downstairs into the bin, but still findable, still accessible, but not in your face. Yeah.

Patricia Shapiro  23:38  
So it's just going to take a bit of work to sort of figure out a place, ideally, one room, but, you know, there's only so many bedrooms.

Avery Cundill  23:47  
But, yeah, I know. And you know, I think basements are good. Like, you know, if you have a basement, I think, and if you have a basement that you can visualize, like, it sort of might be smart to begin the process and then announce it. So, oh, look at this. I bought a bunch of these clear bins. I organize, measured, I organized, so almost like a, I visualize it. I have a little visual, you know, the room I'm thinking of in your house, like a U shape, you know,

Unknown Speaker  24:14  
the one, okay,

Avery Cundill  24:16  
yes, yeah. It's almost becomes more like, you know, when you go to shows and they have, like, a booth, so it's round. It's not like, jammed in there, but it's rounded around, stacked with pulley drawers, so it's easy to get out when somebody wants their stuff. It's not like, Wait, is that now I can't find anything so easy to find, and that's the system. And then the stuff goes into the system. Okay, I like it. I already have this spot in mind. I think, you know. And I already have, I know at least three different categories that would easily go in there. And so, you know, it's just about going around. Okay, wait, what do I need for these items? These items, you. Measure, and then you go, Okay, well, this fit in here. Let's say it's records. You want to have clear bins big enough for the records. But decluttering is not about throwing out our partner stuff, or even getting them on board, or even getting our kids on board. Although kids might be a little easier, I feel like when kids see it going on, they go, oh, wait a second. Mom cleaned out the front entry. I can find my stuff. I want to do this in my room now. And they might go, Hey, can you help me? And then we've won. Yeah. And, you know, look, it's not a daily it's not a daily thing for kids. Things might pile up during the week, but then you take a day at the end of the week. Okay, everyone things about it got out of control this week. Let's now get everything back in and if you have the right system, it's easy to fix. It shouldn't take more than a half an hour to do almost everything, as long as you have the system already in place. The Sunday reset.

Unknown Speaker  25:55  
We try to, we try to do

Avery Cundill  25:56  
it the Sunday reset. But you know what? We've we've covered so much. I think that you just go with your, you know, and I'll send you this all as sort of the, it's the strategy, but the first thing is just you, and you'd be amazed how long it takes just to organize ourselves. I'm always doing

Patricia Shapiro  26:13  
it, yeah, I'm not, I'm not totally innocent either, like, absolutely, yeah, definitely. It takes, it

Avery Cundill  26:20  
takes a village, and it takes a village, right? It takes everybody to get to that place. And so how, what

Unknown Speaker  26:26  
do you think any questions or anything that you think you're

Avery Cundill  26:31  
not really, hmm, okay, or does it sound kind of doable?

Patricia Shapiro  26:35  
No, I think it sounds, it sounds doable. I have to sit down. I love notes. I love, like, seeing it visually, like, I need to kind of figure out all the different categories of things I think like, and then try to figure out, okay, how do I house these items and what, you know, storage, whatever I'm using for storage, what fits and what makes sense to Do?

Unknown Speaker  26:59  
Yeah, I think what

Avery Cundill  27:00  
I would suggest is to start off with a list, and I would go around the house and and make a list, number like all of the things that need containment. And once you have that list, you're already going to start to feel better, because you go, Okay, I got the list. This is what I'm this is what I'm dealing with. And then once you have the list, you can start looking on whatever website you like to look at containers, and even if it's an in store thing. So if it's records, you know you're going to have to accommodate this by this. If it's something else you want it to fit. So and then you kind of say, Okay, how many of those will I need? If I have 100 records, I need three. If I have 50, you need two. So that's kind of the legwork that I would start to make some pretty good notes so that you know where you're going with the project once you get there.

Patricia Shapiro  27:55  
But first, start with me. Start with you.

Avery Cundill  27:57  
Absolutely. Start with you. I mean, you know what? This is a project that you can work on, you know, until, like, the goal would be, Oh, my God, it's spring, and I've done so much, and it's a great Saturday in February project to start with. And once you have the lists that could be motivating too, and remember, you're starting small, so your bathroom, stuff, your shoes, your stuff, and it kind of snowballs. That's the one thing I find about decluttering is once you start doing it, it becomes a little addictive, in a good way, and you're motivated to do another space and another space and

Unknown Speaker  28:30  
another space. I could see that,

Avery Cundill  28:33  
yeah, you already know you want, what you want and what you don't want. Go Big. Go everything, from your bags, from your luggage, from the bathroom, what have I not used in makeup? Boom, boom, boom, boom, go through it. Go through it, right? Anything that you can manage that's yours. And then you go to step two,

Patricia Shapiro  28:53  
okay, can you come over and help me with all this?

Avery Cundill  28:57  
I always will, you know, I will Patricia gets some special service from the Queen, if I might say so myself. So, yeah, exactly amazing. And I'll send you all my notes. And of course, I'll be checking in with you all the time on our new Oh yeah. Projects. We've got several projects on the CO Patricia and I, decluttering is just one of them. Oh my gosh. And thank you so much for coming on the show. So good. Thanks for having me, and I'll have you back. We'll have to get a progress report. Oh yeah, let's do that. Okay, great. Hold you accountable. I need it.

Mary Anne Ivison  29:34  
Thanks for listening to the declutter queen with Avery Cundill for more decluttering tips and tricks, go to the declutter queen.ca produced and distributed by the sound off media company you.