My homeowner got a phone call that a house she liked was up for sale. Because of the provisions of the sale, she would need to list her own home soon. She asked for my help to stage her home as we were organizing it.
I’m using these pictures because they illustrate some good staging principles and also because I forgot to take “before” pics of these spaces (oops!!)
In this basement great room, we made sure to clean off the counters to show how much counter top space there is, we also added something to the walls above the counter to take up the dead space. (I think the homeowner eventually put something else in the place, but this illustrates the concept.)
The treadmill was originally perpendicular to where we moved it. The reason we moved it was to clear a space in front of the windows. In a basement, it is important to have as much light as possible so that it doesn’t look dark or cluttered. The homeowner also moved out a big couch and rearranged the two chairs so the space is more open and gives more of a theater look (the wall they face has a projector screen on it)
This space was just a storage area and the home owner wanted to use it as a craft space. Since the room itself is long and narrow, it was important to keep the furniture light and towards the back and left of the door. This helps the eye to widen the space of the room instead of the optical illusion that it is not big enough to be a functional. Again, lighting helps to increase the size and appeal of a room.
I LOVE the way the homeowner made an all-white room for her daughter. It is so elegant. The only thing I had to do with this room was to make sure the walkways on either side of the bed were clear so that it doesn’t look cluttered.
If you are going to put toys into a basement closet, leave room to play in the closet and to get to the items in the back. If you fill the space from side to side, it will seem shallow.
If you are thinking about staging the rooms in your house, or even just rearranging your furniture, I have an exercise for you. Go to the door and stand in the hallway and look through the open door. Don’t look at it as your space, but as if it was in a home you are visiting.
What is the first thing you notice? If the first thing you notice is in the foreground, then you might think about moving it further into the room.
Does the room feel short? Don’t stack things over your head.
Putting heavy things on a high shelf and small things on a lower shelf gives it an inverted appearance. Large things on a lower shelf will anchor the look of the piece.
Notice how your eye is drawn to color and what impression the negative spaces make. If a drawer has something sticking out of it, it will appear overstuffed and small for the space. If you want to hang pictures, make sure they are proportional to the size of the wall you are putting them on.
Try new setups and see how they make you feel.
Most people who know me personally know that after bookcases and craft rooms, my favorite thing to organize is a closet. And it can be your favorite too, because it doesn’t really require a lot of expertise. If you can sort and hang, then you can have a pretty closet too.
My homeowner happened to have a really neat closet! It has a his and hers side. I’ll use it to illustrate the basics of closet organization:
1. Clear the visual clutter.
Hanging storage is great, but nothing should obstruct your first view or it will visually shorten your closet. This one was relocated. Also, try to keep your floor clean as this will also make your closet seem smaller.
BEFORE
AFTER:
2. Use your hanging rods.
If you don’t have that many clothes and you want to use your shelving, use the ones on the bottom. This will make it easier to see and reach your clothes.
BEFORE
AFTER:
3. SHOES!!!
I’m sure most of you don’t need any help organizing shoes, but I knew you’d love to see the shoe storage in this closet. If you have the space, sort by the type of shoe and keep your favorites where you can easily get to them.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
4. Don’t let your closet turn into the laundry room.
Things that can help: don’t unpack in the closet, put a clothes hamper in the closet or nearby, and make a habit to pick up your dirty clothes daily.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
5. Use the same hangers.
Try it and you will see what a big difference this one change makes. Even if you don’t have a lot of the same hangers, you can use one type of hangers for short sleeves, one for long sleeves, etc.
BEFORE:
6. Sort by same style and then by color.
This seems OCD, but it really helps you when you are dressing. Being able to find your favorite shirt or decide which pair of pants to wear is easier when they are all grouped together.
BEFORE:
The answer is one of my #1 tips: when you have a contained space it is so much easier to
DUMP IT OUT
than to root around and try to sort things without a clear picture of what you’re dealing with. This was the guiding principle in these 2 spaces: the master bath and the downstairs closet:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Also try using little drawer inserts to keep your items separated. These will not stay clean (guaranteed!), but it will make it easier to put them back in order when they get messed up.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
I haven’t posted in awhile, so I decided to put my summer project into several posts.
In this situation, I actually begged the homeowner to let me help her with her basement, so we started there.
Most of us start with some sort of organization in our storage areas, but between sicknesses, letting the kids put stuff away, visitors that need a room fixed quick, etc….they usually end up wrecked. So I’ll give you a few tricks that work for me.
1. Start with your pathway:
You’re going to be carrying stuff from one end to the other to put items away into your original systems. I started on this pathway before I took a picture so the “before” is more of an “in between”
BEFORE:
AFTER:
2. Dress it up:
Most spaces are going to be storage spaces, but I’ve always maintained that if you don’t designate a purpose to an item of furniture, then it will turn into a junk holder. Sometimes we have extra furniture and it lives in the basement. My tip is to turn that furniture into a seating area, or craft area, etc…so that it becomes a functional space instead of a stacking space.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
3. Label and coordinate:
Most holiday décor gets put away quickly in the same boxes we got them out of, and with no thought about the convenience of setting it back up the next year. We even buy new cute containers most years and just put our “new” stuff in them. It will save a lot of hassle during the holidays to go through your décor just once and take them by areas they will be put in, what kind of décor they are, etc. THEN, put the different décor in coordinating boxes for each location/use and LABEL. My homeowner really showed me how convenient a label maker can be! Here’s our “for instance”. The homeowner had a Christmas village collection that was displayed some years and stayed stored some years. We put all of these into matching containers and labeled them “village”. We also had matching and labeled containers for the mantel décor, the tree ornaments, Christmas books etc.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
4. Rubber bands and baggies are your friend:
Over the years, I’ve accumulated some different tactics for household items. For cords: I love to use rubber bands. You don’t have to coil them too tightly and you don’t have to try and make a twist tie fit. Another useful tool is the baggie. When you have a lot of small pieces and it would be easier to have them on hand than to sort through a big tub of them, baggies of all sizes come to the rescue. In this instance, her spouse works with a lot of computer items and had a lot of cords of all different kinds. Separating them became a big game and a running joke…and the silly labels are just to keep it a fun experience.
BEFORE:
fun with baggies and rubber bands:
AFTER:
I recently got a Costco membership which led to: buying in bulk
which led to: pantry needing to be reorganized
which led to: wondering why my floor cleaners were on the floor of my pantry
which led to: organizing all of my cleaning supplies.
VOILA:
Basically, all of the sinks now have a tub (ideally it would be a caddy) with all of the cleaning supplies needed for cleaning that room, and an inventory on the door so I know what I run out of.
This should help with my overbuying of cleaning supplies.
There was a time (just before medication) when going to the store and strolling through the cleaning supply aisle was very calming to me.
Because of this, I have bought many supplies over the years and have found a few that really do what they say they do.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Lemi-shine: you add it to your dishwasher detergent and it gets rid of hard-water spots (even better than vinegar will!)
Quickie glass and mirror microfiber cloth: I’m still a fan of Windex, but with this cloth, you just wet one corner and use it to clean the mirror and use the dry part of the cloth to dry it off and it looks fabulous!
409: My very favorite counter cleaner. It has a strong smell, but it gets off ink (like when someone puts a printed item on a wet counter and it sticks there) and juice stains, and pretty much any stain I’ve ever tried to get off of a counter.
Scrubbing Bubbles shower cleaner: those little bubbles work hard!!
CLR: In the same category as scrubbing bubbles, but I have white tile and white grout in my shower and have tried pretty much everything to get the hard water and rust stains off, and CLR actually works! It also took out a stain in my kids’ bathtub where the water had been dripping from the faucet for 8 years (yes, it took me that long to get the shower fixed)
Woolite Carpet Cleaner: I was a big fan of a brand called “Folex” for a number of years, but it got too hard to find. Then I became enamored with “Spot Shot”. It definitely gets the stain out, but Spot Shot also has big time fumes and once bleached a spot on my carpet. My new fave is Woolite Carpet Cleaner…been using it for a couple of years now and it is fabulous!!
And for efficiency and convenience, I’m a fan of: Swiffer wet jet, Clorox disinfecting wipes, and the Clorox toilet wand.
Just my opinions, but thought I’d share in case you’re looking for a new cleaner and don’t want to try all the different ones available.
If you love to go to garage/yard sales (junking) like I do, you might call a sale with only clothing a “drive-by”. Usually the clothing is thrown on a blanket in the yard and they are charging too much, and with nothing else to look at it’s not worth stopping the car.
But this summer, I held 2 yard sales that were clothing-only and both were successful so I thought I’d blog how it’s done. All of the clothes were donated for a good cause. The initial bags that were brought to my house took up a large chunk of my living room and spilled over into the front room…
Bags of clothing before sorting….
I knew that the clothing would sell better if it was sorted by size. Even someone like me would stop if I could only go through the sizes that I wanted. With this in mind, I borrowed several tubs from a neighbor and went to work. I love showing “during” photos of my organizing, because I want people to have a realistic idea of what happens while you are working ( everything expands). There was no way for me to do it all myself, but lucky for me, I have a friend who sorts clothes as part of her job. She came over and helped. Then later that night, another friend came over. (yay!!)
Bags of clothing during the sort
All told, we estimated that we sorted 90 bags of clothing (some of those were big yard-size bags). We sorted the kids clothing into sizes 6-8, 8-10, 10-12, 12-14. And put the tubs in long lines. IMPORTANT: leave room in between your totes b/c if you put them too close together, your customers will just mix the sizes up. With room in between, they’ll put the ones they’ve looked at out of the tote, and then put back in the ones they don’t want.
Bags of clothes after sorting.
We also made sure all of the shoes had pairs and semi-sorted the adult clothing into types/styles of clothing instead of sizes. The last few tips are:
1. Price all the kids clothing at a quarter a piece, the adult clothing at 50 cents a piece, and shoes at a dollar a pair….and you will sell tons! The point of a yard sale is to make some money off of things that you are willing to give away, so don’t price so high that you have to make several trips to the second-hand store afterwards.
2. A new tip I picked up from a friend is to make your yard sale signs using black paint and a foam brush. It’s less stinky (fumes) than a big permanent marker, and will show up really well from far away.
I got so busy as soon as I had the clothing out on the driveway, that I never got time to take pictures of the actual yard sale, so I made a diagram of where we put stuff on my driveway. We had a few drive-bys, but mostly people stopped. I had quite a few people tell me how organized it was, and that it was the first time they even considered buying clothing at a yard sale.
Email Me
- Jaz
- I'm a stay-at-home mom of 3 who likes to organize, craft, & read (among other things)
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