How to Live on a Stage

We have already established a difference between decorating a home to live in and staging a house to sell. In staging, there will likely be a lot less "stuff" around than in decorating. Multi-purpose rooms will show as single-purpose rooms. Personal identifying items and objects are gone, and the decor reads "generic." How are you supposed to live in a place like that?

First, remember that, though it might be inconvenient, you are living on the stage with the intent to attract your buyers to the house. Know that the stage is a temporary situation. As a matter of fact, taking into account the Law of Attraction, the more you tell yourself that it's temporary, the more temporary it's likely to be.

Also remember that, more than just living on the stage, you need to maintain the stage. That means everything has a place, and everything must be in its place. Picture every item on the stage with an imaginary footprint line drawn around it. If you move something, put it back in the outlines. If you unfold a towel, fold it back. If you use the coffee maker, clean it immediately and put it where it back on its footprint.

Here's one trick that I used to make life on a stage a bit easier. I put out "show towels." Nice, fluffy, beautifully presented towels arranged artfully on the towel rods. We never used them. We used our "B Team," working towels for showering and drying our hands. Whenever we left the house, the working towels went into the dryer, and the show towels were always there, ready to wow our buyers with a feeling of, "This isn't a bathroom; this is a spa!"

The Power of Scent

So many home staging and house selling tip sites and books will tell you, "Bake a pie. Bake some cookies. Bake some bread. The smell will drive people wild and make them whip out their checkbooks on the spot." I admit it, it is possible that the majority of buyers out there might like to smell pie upon entering a house. But I submit, friends, that we are trying to reach the broadest range of folks possible. Statistics show that less than 1% of sales come from Open Houses, so most sales come from individual showings. In a perfect world, we would have prior notice of showings, but in today's world of tons-of-houses-for-sale, we're lucky to get a phone call a half hour before a Realtor shows up with a potential buyer in tow. Hardly time to throw the laundry into the washer and turn on all the lights before you have to skedaddle, let alone bake a pie.

Well, okay, how about candles? Unattended candles, hmmmm. I suppose you could light them and then blow them out right before you leave, but then the house would smell like wax. You could use some of those plug-in thingies or one of those remote spray jobbies, but who knows how many people really want to walk into a house that smells like a Mai Tai or a laudromat?

So, what's a seller to do? What worked well for me was a combination of air sanitizer in a neutral scent with a fabric refresher, again, in a neutral scent. I wanted the house to present as blank a canvas as possible--for all the senses. I wanted the potential buyers to be able to project their lives onto the stage of the house, and that included their being able to decide what they wanted to bake, not being forced to think "If I live here, I must bake bread and drink umbrella drinks." Maybe an extreme view, but, again--I wanted to appeal to the broadest market possible with potential buyers being greeted by a non-specific neutral, clean smell.