One of the hardest steps in home selling is emotional withdrawal. I don’t mean the numbness that descends after you’ve been spending two weeks solid de-cluttering, packing and organizing, I mean making your home into a sterile, personality-less collection of wood and mortar instead of the home that you have lived in for years. It can be very difficult to say goodbye to a family home and sometimes the pain of loss can sneak up and surprise you. This can block you from effectively staging your home to sell and from enjoying a positive outlook on your new home.
The first step is to pack away everything from your home that personalizes it – pictures of family, graduation diplomas, knick knacks that are more personal than decorative, toys, etc. You may even want to go so far as to remove artwork that has a special meaning. Stage the home with some generic artwork instead, perhaps. Leave decorative items that accentuate the space, like vases of flowers and some good, uncontroversial sculptures (now is not the time to show off your replica of the Venus de Milo) and a number of books, enough to fill shelves, but not so much that the shelves are overflowing.
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