How to Stage Your Home While Still Living in It

If you are not new here, you know 2022 has been all about getting my house decluttered and staged to sell for the upcoming move.

With six people in the house, we obviously can fill up any space with all kinds of clutter. So much clutter!!!

Well, now it’s time to sell the house, and no one wants to buy a house that looks all cramped.

After months and months of work, we managed to get two of the three floors looking spacious, clean, and fabulous. Then we took all the extra stuff and shoved it in the basement storage rooms.

I’m talking about almost everything that just sits on a shelf, everything off the walls, and any furniture that isn’t one hundred percent necessary. All of that stuff must go! I donated plenty. Then we shoved the rest in bins and stacked them in our storage rooms, attic, garage, anywhere out of the main area.

Sigh. Yeah, those storage rooms I spent so much time cleaning out are now full. The basement took one for the team. Also, we ran out of time to squirrel all those things away more properly.

We even stripped photos off of walls and cleaned off every surface in the house, so this is not decorated for normal life. This is solely for selling the house. It is a staged house for the housing market. Bring on the buyers!

We brought in my friend Emily, who is a professional home stager. She helped us narrow down which furniture to clear out. However, if you don’t have someone like Emily, just clean off the shelves, leaving a little on each shelf, strip the walls, and that’s pretty much it.

Staging is so easy. Make your home look more like a hotel, and you are done!

Take all your extra stuff, most of your decor, and all of your family photos, even most of the wall art, shove it in bins.

Also, if you have too much furniture in a room, stash some of that too. Hallways should be open and easy to walk through. The house is a clean, pretty slate for people to imagine where their stuff would go. However, it’s not so empty you can’t see the possibilities.

I’ll show you all of our rooms, so you can see a good example.

Are you ready to see the final results? Ta-da!!! I give you one full house declutter reveal:

Notice how we left an item or two on each shelf, but we removed anything on top of the fireplace mantle or the very top of shelf systems.

I think I re- de-cluttered this room for staging a dozen times, over and over again. This is the room where our family truly lives. Even looking at the first living room picture I see at least one item that ended up at Goodwill before we finally showed the house to buyers.

The Dining Room:

This dining room is normally a fancy playroom. Kids played xbox in there. The table was where we colored, drew, played video games, and built Lego sets. Back in 2020 and 2021 it was also a virtual school room. This was our lockdown house, so all the rooms had so many purposes.

We are going to miss this house!

I did manage to add a pretty tablecloth before showing day too. We removed a desk and a small cabinet from this room for showing.

The Kitchen We Worked So Hard On:

Notice how there is almost no art or items taking up counter space.

Before we decluttered for staging, those walls above the cabinets were covered with personality. In the end we only left two items on the kitchen walls: the plate rack, and the biscuits sign.

The Home Office:

Our home office is on an open floor plan, so that is how Alan ended up doing his work-from-home time in our bedroom. This room was more like Joshua and Daniel’s office. That roll-top desk is hiding a t.v. and xbox. Ha!! When you have four kids, every room in your house is a playroom.

The Front Hallway

There was usually a skinny set of cube shelves in the hall where we kept our gloves, hats, masks, etc. The hall table was one of the first things Emily noticed we needed to ditch, so down to the laundry room it went. That made the hallway feel roomier.

Powder Room:

This is a room that we re-made during the lockdown. When we bought the house, the walls were peach, the toilet and cabinet were oak wood-grain colored. The mirror was plain, and the hardware and lighting were original gold. Alan painted the walls gray, the cabinet white, and we changed out the lighting, hardware, and mirror for an easy upgrade.

The Upstairs Bedrooms:

This room had dark curtains, so Emily recommended we remove those too to make the room look brighter and happier.

Take note of each window in your home before your showing to see which ones would look brighter, bigger, and happier without the curtains.

My only regret is not getting a good closet photo. These closets turned out to be pretty nice.

The key to making a bathroom look fabulous is to make it look like you own nothing at all. At least, that was my understanding. Of course, cleanliness is equally important.

We kept one towel for each of us under the sink, along with one hand towel, until the pictures and the showings were over. The rest of the towels were in the hallway closet.

Before, the towels were kept on an over the toilet shelving stand. It was one of those you buy at Walmart and put together. Emily said that had to go. It screamed that our bathroom had inadequate storage. Plus, it wasn’t pretty.

I used Dawn, vinegar, and a good scrubbing wand to get that shower door spotless.

I did a quick shower curtain switch in the boys’ bathroom. We traded the Alabama Roll Tide shower curtain for this prettier floral one I had in my spare curtains box. Every military spouse has a Rubbermaid bin of curtains. Each house has different curtain needs or different style moods that you happen to feel…

My #1 Cleaning Tip for Home Staging:

Get a box of Magic Erasers. Run your Magic Eraser under the water to get it good and WET. Ring it out only a little so it’s not pouring but still solidly wet.

Wear cleaning gloves. This is not good for your skin. Take your eraser and scrub each scuff/ pencil mark/ mystery marks/ boogers/ whatever damage your wall has taken off with your eraser. If you’ve never done this, you will be amazed at how much the eraser can do. When you are done, many surfaces will look like you freshly painted them with all those scuffs gone.

Okay, back to business: The Basement

Honestly, we never finished the basement. We ran out of time. I had it fully cleaned out back in early March. But as we staged other rooms, we sent so much stuff down to the basement. It filled right back up. This was the best we could do.

I did manage to organize those unruly bookshelves in the photo before showing. I took the little shelves and moved them to the far wall beside the stairs, so when visitors came they did not see so many things along that wall when they first entered.

Then I stood all the books up and made it more tidy.

Have a place to put all the boxes of stuff and furniture you have decluttered.

For this move we used the basement storage closets and corners of the basement. In other moves we have also used the attic or the garage. People are fine with seeing boxes of goods in those spaces, and they won’t see the attic at all.

The boxes show you are moving, which makes the buyer feel good about you getting out in time too! Once we had to switch our whole plan because someone didn’t move out in time, but that’s another story!

The Screened in Porch

This porch is amazing. I was so excited to find that our next house will also have a screened in porch because we have gotten spoiled to this.

The backyard just keeps giving. After the screened-in porch, there is a deck and a patio. Alan fully re-built that deck last year and re-painted it this year.

We did take down the old rickety trampoline. That trampoline had been with us for three different houses, and it was worn out.

So was all the decluttering work worth it?

It was extremely worth it. We put our house on the market, and we had it under contract in twenty-four hours. Within the first three hours, we had our first offer. This is still a fantastic time to sell your house. It is an extremely stressful time to find a new house though, but that is another story for another day.

By the way, we have sold three houses in the past eight years. All three sold in a day.

Neither of the other two were as big as this one, but we always take the full declutter, donate, and stash approach.

The full house declutter and staging project was worth every second spent. I am so thankful that we did it and that we had the help of our realtor and staging consultant. Even after as many moves as we had, I would not have known to clear the house and walls to this degree.

It feels luxurious to have the house so clean and tidy!