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Tips From Kit -  April 2006

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Simplify to Maximize Your Sale Price

By Kit Davey

Any real estate agent will tell you that a house that looks spacious and uncluttered is attractive to potential buyers.

Getting rid of clutter is one of the cheapest ways to dramatically increase the beauty and function of your home. It's a very simple process, but most people don't get around to doing it. With motivation, a method for reducing the volume of your possessions and ideas for disposing of it all you can reap the manifold benefits of a simplified home.

The Benefits

By purging your home of extraneous possessions you'll:

• Create more space
• Be able keep your home cleaner and tidier
• Know where things are and be able to find anything instantly
• Have more time, as you'll spend less time cleaning, tidying and searching for buried possessions
• Save money, because you won't buy duplicates and can recycle old treasures as gifts
• Make money or get a tax break
• Rediscover the beauty of forgotten belongings
• Know that what you have is what you want
• Make moving house easier and less expensive
• And increase your home's resale value.

Getting Motivated

Want to harvest these tremendous benefits? Commit your time and energy to the process.

• Pick a completion date 1 to 2 months away to work towards. It helps to aim for a social event, such as a dinner party, where you know people will be looking at your decor. Schedule "decluttering" dates (one to two hours each) over that time period.
• Work with a friend. Your friend can help you make decisions, may want some of your old stuff and can make the process fun. If you are afraid you might destroy a perfectly good friendship, consider hiring a professional organizer.
• Use odd free moments to attack a small portion of the overall job. If there's a 10-minute pledge break on PBS, take the opportunity to go through one drawer in the bathroom.
• Realize that this is a very big task that must be broken down into many small bits. Reward yourself for every small step ("Yeah! I went through the top row of my bookshelves!").

So Get Rid of It Already

You will be going through every closet, drawer and bookshelf in your home and deciding what will go and what will stay.

How to get started? "Just do it":

• Pick a room at one end of the house. Set a reasonable goal for the amount of time you have. For example: "I will go through half this closet in two hours".
• Set up boxes or bags in which to sort your effects. Mark them: Garbage, Give away to friend, Return to friends, Garage sale, Charity, To repair, To another room, etc.
• START NOW! Pick up the first object and ask yourself "Do I want or need this? Have I used this in the past year? Do I love this?" Keep William Morris's words in mind: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." If you must keep it, put it back where it belongs. If not, put it in one of the boxes you've set up.
• Stay on track. Do not look through your yearbook, do not read old love letters! Don't start work in another part of the room---keep at it until you've reached the day's goal.
• At the end of the session deliver the boxes to the area you have set aside for their storage until further processing.
• At your next session, start where you left off. Continue through the rest of the house on a regular and consistent basis until you're done.

Disposing of It

Now that you've sorted through your entire home and denuded it of a third of your belongings, it's time to get that stuff out of your life.

Try a combination of the following:

• Throw a giveaway party. Invite family and friends to take what they'd like. Return borrowed items at the same time.
• Sell it at the flea market.
• Give it to charity. Many organizations pick up donations.
• Give to other needy organizations: books to a local school or library, clothing to the battered women's shelter, magazines to a hospital waiting room.
• Set up closet space for gifts. Recycle old treasures as birthday and shower gifts.
• My favorite: put it curbside with a sign marked "FREE".
• Hold a knick-knack swap party: trade trinkets, tapes and books. Leftovers go to charity. Hold a garage sale.

(C) Kit Davey 2006

Kit Davey, Allied Member, A.S.I.D., is an interior designer specializing in room re-design, design consulting, staging and professional organizing. Call her at (650)367-7370 or write her KitDavey@aol.com You can visit her website at www.AFreshLook.net.

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