How to hide clutter in plain sight

Hey there, home seller. Welcome to the Creative Home Staging Show. Come on in. Come in. Come in.

Hey. My name is Kasia. And in this show, we talk about home staging for home sellers. If you are getting ready to sell your house soon, you are in the right place. We cover home staging tips, strategies to help make it easier on you, and ways to influence buyers.

So roll up your sleeves, get a notebook and pen handy. Yes. I do things the old fashioned way, and let’s get your house ready to sell. Hey there, everybody. Welcome to the Creative Home Staging Show.

I’m your host, Kasia McDaniel, and I’m so glad that you’re here because we’ve got a topic that is near and dear to my heart. It is we’re talking about hiding clutter in plain sight, which I think I’m a master of because I’m a mom of 3. And 3 kids can get a lot of clutter around the house. It’s amazing the things that they can do. Right?

So I am actually part of the Clutterbug community. If you’re not familiar with Cass and her Clutterbug community, I highly recommend you join. It’s free. It’s just fun to take a little quiz. And the quiz that I found out that I am is I am rated as a butterfly, which means everything looks great on the outside because there’s nice colors.

The the wings are beautiful. Right? But if you look inside, anything yeah. It may be just kinda things may be stashed away, kinda hidden behind closed doors. Yeah.

I know. Right? So, yeah, that may be something that you may be seeing. Right? So things are put away nicely, nicely stacked, but the clutter is gone.

Right? So you wanna find a home for everything when it comes time to staging your house to sell Because clutter means that it has no home. That’s why it hasn’t been put away. Right? Either it hasn’t been put away because there is a spot for it, you haven’t had time for it, or there is no home for it.

So you’ve gotta make a spot. But when it comes time to selling a house, sometimes it’s just too much, too many things in maybe the living room or the bedroom, and you just need to pack it up and put it away. Okay? So I wanna share some examples of what is hiding clutter in plain sight because, like I said, I’m I’m really good at that, and I wanna share some of those secrets with you this time. Okay?

Number 1, starting in the foyer, if you have an open foyer, maybe it opens up into the living room, you may have a table there, and it kinda collects things like the mail, the keys, the wallets, spare change, those kinds of things. Right? Yeah. This is the time now to get some little baskets, some decorative baskets, and put that stuff in there. Right?

Maybe you don’t have drawers to put in on that table, but you can put a nice decorative basket, and you could just throw all that stuff in there. Right? It doesn’t have to be huge. It can be, you know, a small, you know, 5 by 7, maybe a little bit bigger, 8 by 11, you know, depending on the size your table. You don’t want it to be huge, but you can, quickly put that stash that stuff away in there and still make it look real pretty.

Right? K. If you have room for a shoe cabinet, because I know that shoes tend to collect in the foyer as well, this is a chance for you to get a little cabinet, use a cabinet to store those shoes. Now maybe you have a coat closet. That’s also can be used as well, and that’s where you can neatly, you know, line the shoes up.

But I recommend only putting in the shoes that you use daily, like maybe your dress shoes or sneakers, you know, for the kids. You know, those kinds of things. Right? If it’s flip flops that are in there and it’s wintertime, get those flip flops need to be put away. Just put away in the kids’ bedrooms, for example, or your bedroom because maybe yours are flip flops.

Right? But those are the types of shoes that everyday shoes should only be down there. Any other shoes should be put away in your closet. Now I know a lot of people have a collection of shoes. Maybe you’re a professional and you have to get dressed up every day and go into work, and you have your work shoes versus daily shoes.

You know, limit those shoes that are in there and help you kinda declutter that as well. You kinda put that like I said, hide them in plain sight. Okay. So here on that’s another idea for your foyer. Now if you look behind me, there’s a cabinet there with drawers and and doors.

Right? Now we use that as a shoe cabinet because that was just easiest for us to hide everything in plain sight. We did not have a coat closet in our foyer. We basically had a coat rack, if you will. Now the kids had lots of shoes.

There were lots of little shoes everywhere. And that was my idea and my that we used to hide the shoes in there, and there was a a shelf. So you can basically have 4 sets of shoes. So 1 each person gets their own shelf, basically, of shoes, except for me, basically. But the little shoes, they can kind of fix fit all in there.

Right? But the mail, the keys, the wallets, all that kind of stuff could fit in those drawers as well. So that’s another play to hide things in plain sight. Now moving on to the living room, if you have a storage ottoman, maybe you have, you know, a place where instead of a coffee table, you have an ottoman. Right?

Maybe it’s a little side thing, with a door or cabinets. Those are great places to hide some things that maybe too much clutter. Maybe you don’t you know, you wanna keep them, but you haven’t packed them up yet. Right? So that’s another place if you have, also those built in cabinets, drawers, or built in shelves, sorry, with shelves and then there’s doors underneath.

Great place to hide things like board games and toys and things like that that you just don’t wanna, you know, show everyone that you have all that stuff there. Right? So storage ottomans are a great place to hide, like, remotes, extra blankets, toys, those kinds of things to put those away. The TV console, if you have 1, I know some people put their TVs over their fireplace, but, if you have a TV console, they have drawers in there as well, sometimes sliding doors and things. Great place to hide DVDs.

I know I’m dating myself, and you’re probably wondering why would you have DVDs? Well, we live in rural North Carolina where the Internet well, it used to be spotty. Now it’s more definitely much better than it was. But sometimes on your favorite subscription channels, they don’t have your, you know, favorite movies that you wanna watch. I just wanna watch this 1.

I’m in the mood for this 1, but it’s not showing anymore. I know. Right? So I just scroll on my DVD player, go pop that in, and go binge on that. Right?

So if you have a TV console hiding all those DVDs, maybe you don’t have too many DVDs, but, again, there’s extra drawers, again, hiding things like remotes and other things in there is a great place to hide things in plain sight. Now I do wanna share with you a Black Friday deal that’s coming up that is yes. It’s coming up already. I can’t believe it’s the November, almost. And there’s some things that I’ve got going on, and I wanna share with you this 1 particular 1, and it’s called my home staging squad.

It is a private Facebook community that’s gonna be starting to meet Jan. 2, so in the New Year. But this is a chance for you to get on the wait list now, and there’ll be a monthly fee for founding members. That’ll be a low, low fee right now, and they will increase later on. But if you join the membership, we you get to meet in a private Facebook community where you can ask any home staging question.

You can post pictures. You can just ask a question. You know, even a video if you really want to. Right? But that’s your opportunity to ask your home staging question.

Whether you’re a home seller or a realtor, you know, this is your chance to ask me questions. And then once a month, I will answer your questions live. So maybe you maybe you want to, you know, show off a room behind you and say, hey. What do I do? Is this color okay?

Is this tchotchke? Is this picture okay? You know? Those are the types of things I can answer those types of questions live in that Facebook community. So if that’s something that you’re interested in, I’d love to see you on the inside in the home staging squad.

Again, there’ll be, a wait list that you sign up for my Black Friday deals. If you wanna take a look at my website, it has all the details on there under bluediamondstaginganddesign.com forward slash black Friday deals 2024. So that way you can see there’s five days of deals. This 1 starts on the and owns only available on the to sign up for that day. So mark your calendars, get ready for Black Friday week with me starting on the and this 1 for the, home staging squad opens up on the It’s only good for one day to join at that low, low price.

Now back to other staging, tips that you can have on hiding clutter in plain sight. So another thing is maybe you’d have too many things out in your living room. Like, for example, I love gnomes. We have lots of gnomes, all different sizes. But, yeah, they’re like dolls and kinda kinda creep out people.

So when I have to stage my house, those gnomes have to go in a box. They will all be put away when it comes time to staging my house. So those will be in moving boxes that I will neatly stack in the garage, and you can totally do the same exact thing. Right? If you have some things that you’ve packed up because of clutter, but you wanna keep it, pack them up, put them in moving boxes, and stack them nice and neat in your garage.

It’s perfectly fine to do that. Okay? My kids, when they have to declutter their bedroom, they’re gonna have to pack up a few couple boxes. Not very many, but there are things that will help sell the house faster. Right?

So they’re also gonna get a box or 2 to declutter their bedroom and put away neatly and get it ready for the movers to pack up when it comes time to do that. K? Another, thing that you can use to help you hide clutter in plain sight is if you have a maybe a credenza in your dining room or another, you know, basically a a cabinet, a long cabinet with doors or drawers. You can hide extra China ware in there. Holiday platters.

Maybe you have extra table decor that just doesn’t go, you know, out for where you wanna show it off. Right? That’s another place to hide things. An armoire, if you have 1 for your kids. We used to have a big 1.

Again, IKEA is my favorite big place to find those types of things because it doesn’t cost too much, and it’s so useful and functional. The 1 that we got was, like, a double door type of armoire, and it had drawers that you could pull out, especially for the kids when they were little. And mine, in there, they had dress up dresses and gloves and shoes and necklaces and fancy things that they just love to have in there along with stuffed animals and toy trains and things like that. So each drawer had its own thing, so they knew where to find things. Not necessarily where to put them back, but they knew where to find them.

And so, again, if that’s something that you can, you know, find and put in a big armoire that you have, that’s also just fine to have. Just close the doors, put things away nice and neat, you know, board games, things like that. Right? And then the last 1 I have for you, to hide clutter in plain sight is if you have 1 of those cube storage things, like, you know, maybe it’s a 6 cube or, you know, if it’s really tall, maybe it’s a a 3 by 3 or even bigger. I have multiple sizes for different things.

I have 1 in my craft room, and then we have 1 in the playroom for toys and board games and things like that. And then I have bins that fit in there and fit exactly in that square. And so you bill literally have to pull out the bin to find, oh, that’s Barbie dolls or Barbie doll clothes or toy cars or whatever it is, but it’s put in a bin that looks nice and neat. Right? So that’s another thing that you can do to hide clutter in plain sight.

Right? So that’s just a couple ideas for you on that to help you get your house sold faster. Now let’s move on to the moving tip of the week. And this is 1 that I do every time whenever we sell our house, and that is interviewing real estate agents. Yeah.

Now I’ve made a lot of real estate agent friends. I have many different ones. But what I do is I actually sit down and interview them because I want to know how I’m gonna communicate with my real estate agent. Are they the kind that like to text? Are they the kind that like to call?

Do you prefer calls or texting? You know? Depending on your generation, you want different things. You have different expectations, and that’s the time to set those expectations to see if you guys are a good fit. Because if you’re not gonna be talking to each other very well and you’re frustrated because you are miscommunications or whatever it is, that’s not gonna help you sell your house.

It’s gonna frustrate you even more. So definitely sit down with a couple of them. Ask friends for ones, you know, who they worked with, why do they like them. You know? Are they extra peppy?

Are they the slow and you know, I like to think things a little bit slower. Maybe they have a different marketing strategy. Whatever it may be, definitely ask those types of questions and see if you guys are a good fit because you don’t wanna be work walking around on eggshells around your real estate agent, and they don’t want to either. They wanna have open communication with you as well. You guys are a team.

You need to work together, and that’s why I highly recommend re interviewing. Sorry. I can’t spit it out. Interviewing your real estate agents just to get an idea, especially because each one’s gonna have maybe a different professional team that they work with. And maybe you have different photographers.

Take a look at how do they market your home. What is it they recommend you doing to get it ready to sell. Right? Those are the types of things that you need to ask and feel comfortable with your real estate agent because your house is a really big investment and you wanna get it sold for the most amount of money. Right?

So that’s my moving tip of the week. I hope you learned a lot from finding how to hide clutter in plain sight and gives you some staging tips on how to sell your house and get it sold faster. I hope you guys learned something from this week and can implement it, and I will talk to you guys next week. Talk to you later. Bye.

Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Creative Home Staging Show. I hope you got some good tips in this episode, and I hope you come back and listen for more. If you wanna connect and want to take action, there are some ways you can stay connected with us. Number 1, you can watch this episode on my YouTube channel at Blue Diamond Staging and Design to get more visuals. I like to share some short videos there as well, so take a look at my channel there.

Number 2, you can also leave a review. Your feedback helps this show grow. You can go to the show and tap the 3 vertical dots to open a menu and hit rate the show. Number 3, you can also find custom playlists from older home staging episodes that I called home staging do’s and don’ts, as well as pre home staging playlists for those of you who are new to home staging. And number 4, if you have any questions about today’s episode or need some home staging advice, you can go to blue diamond staging and design dot com forward slash chat and contact me via email or call me.

I hope that this podcast is just a way for you to get to know me and how I can help you. Remember, you can do this, and staging is temporary. Keep up the good work, and I can’t wait to connect with you more.