Organize Bedrooms

Staging a house properly begins with cleaning, organizing and decluttering all the spaces. Your step-by-step guide to

Step 1. Declutter the Bedroom

We stage bedrooms as bedrooms because they will bring more dollars to your sales price than a craft room or catch-all room.

• Bedrooms should have a bed, at least one nightstand, and a chest of drawers. Choose the best pieces you have in the bedroom and remove everything else. Pay attention to the size of the bed and choose the most appropriate size for the room. You may love your kind-sized bed, but in a small room, it may be overpowering. Scale matters and the room should look like it has room to spare.
• Master bedrooms (if they are quite large) can have a seating area so you can add a chair or two, but again, don't overstuff the room.
• There should be a clear walking path from the entrance to the bedroom to the closet (if it doesn't have a closet, it's not a legal bedroom), to the bed, and to the connected bath if there is one.
• Remove everything from on top of the chest and the nightstand. An alarm clock is OK to keep visible, but everything else should be taken out, packed up for your move and stored away somewhere out of sight.
• Items you need everyday (but that will just clutter up the bedroom) should be put in under-bed storage boxes so that these items are accessible but out of sight.
• Ditto for visible laundry. It needs to be out of sight so putting it on the closet floor or in a visible hamper are not options. A small basket tucked under the bed will work if you can't see it.
• Remove wallpaper and wallpaper borders. We always recommend getting a Wagner steam remover. It it the fastest, most un-frustrating way to remove wallpaper and it is kind to walls.
• If you will be replacing the carpet, then now's the time to remove it. You can replace the carpet after you paint the room. Removing carpet is dusty and you don't want that dust around after you freshly paint the room.
• Window coverings should be removed. If you are going to keep the coverings for staging, then leave the hardware up. Most of the time, however, you will be getting fresh, new coverings so taking the hardware off the walls will make painting much easier.
• If you have a pet, and their bed and toys are in the master bedroom or another bedroom, then they need to find a new home until you move. There should be no evidence that a pet lives in the home if it is being shown for sale.
• Childrens' bedrooms usually always need a lot of decluttering. Toys, clothing and games are the usual culprits. As with closets, try and pack away at least 2/3 of the toys and clothes. The other third should be stored in boxes that will fit easily under a bed -- hidden out of sight. In a perfect world, people would understand the state of your child's room (or teenager for that matter). But we all know better and to sell your home, it has to be head and shoulders above the rest in every category. That's why you are going to all the time and effort of staging in the first place.
• Remove all paintings, posters, photos from the walls. We'll select stage-enhancing art to hang when we stage the bedroom.
• We never stage with fake flowers or plants, so if any these are in your bedrooms, you can pack them up or selectively "prune" your selection. Fake or dried flowers/plants don't add energy to a space, they usually only drain energy. And they definitely don't say "fresh!" to prospective home buyers.

Step 2. Cleaning the Bedroom

Think about the last time you walked into a really nice hotel room. You most likely sensed right away that it was fresh and clean. You will want to duplicate that feeling when you start cleaning bedrooms - after space, it's what potential homebuyers want to see (and smell).

• If the bedroom has carpeting and it is not worn, it needs to be professionally cleaned. These companies can get stains out you won't be able to. Their deodorizers are much stronger and the pros can usually get out the traffic-wear-patterns that most wall-to-wall carpeting shows.
• Hardwood floors in the bedrooms are such a key selling point that you want to make sure they are very clean and just gleam. Our favorite cleaner for hardwood floors is Murphy Oil Soap that you mix with water. Clean, fresh, shiny. Perfect.
• That same Murphy's soap is good for cleaning baseboards, windowsills and doors if these are not going to be painted. It's very gentle on woodwork and leaves a pleasant, not-taste-specific fragrance.
• Now's a good time to clean behind the headboard and clean the headboard itself. Dust really accumulates here and since the bed is going to be moved to paint anyway, you might as well tackle these hard-to-reach places. Ditto for under the bed. Dust skirt or not - dust accumulates here.
• Light fixtures and ceiling fans are easy to forget when you are cleaning, but we'll remind you here that these need to be free from dust and look shiny and well cared for.
• After painting it helps to replace the switchplates and outlet plates. New plates (white plastic ones are usually 60 cents or less) are a cheap way to add a new home feel to a freshly painted bedroom.

Step 3. Organizing

The extra furniture, accessories and items that you have removed from the bedroom need to be packed away for your move. It's at this point when you start to feel that you are getting ahead in the moving game -- a lot of what will eventually need to be packed is already done! Boxes are not inexpensive, and we usually recommend buying in bulk from a wholesaler such as Uline who always has the correct sizes in stock and can get them to you in a day or two no matter where you live.

• Like items should be placed in boxes and labeled as to which bedroom they are from and what items are in the box. You can color code boxes for easy identification, but we find that a well marked box in magic marker works just fine.
• Other items that you intend to keep or use everyday in the bedroom should be stored out of sight. Books, magazines and reading glasses that you might have kept on your nightstand should be kept under the bed or in the nightstand drawer. An under-bed basket that you can easily pull out is a good idea.
• Any vanity-type items on your dresser such as perfume bottles, brushes, loose change, or photos should also be stored in drawers or hidden under the dresser or bed.

The freshly decluttered, cleaned and organized bedrooms are finally ready to be staged. This is where you get to be creative and exercise all those skills you learned back in art class about scale, color and contrast. If you're ready, you can click forward to Staging Bedrooms. Or, if you are on a roll and want to finish decluttering and cleaning the rest of the house, just click back to Step 2. Clean, Organize and Declutter and choose another space. Is it starting to get easier? Hope so!