Decluttering is a vital process to go through when selling and staging your Wellington home – it definitely makes the moving loads lighter, and it’s helpful if you don’t have a sea of clutter around when you go to start the home staging process in your home. Buyers can see the magic in your home much easier when it’s neat, organised and looks ready to be lived in.

There are lots of perks to decluttering, but an issue many of us face is that we wouldn’t know the first thing about where to start! Marie Kondo has become incredibly famous over the past few months with her bestselling book and Netflix special ‘Tidying Up’. If you don’t know who she is, you must have been living under a rock all of this year – and that’s not great value property so it’s time you crawled out! Marie Kondo is a professional declutterer with some excellent tips to help you have a home that both you and potential buyers can breathe easy in.

Here are a few of the best things we’ve learnt from the Decluttering Queen herself:

Find Joy In Your Items

One of Marie Kondo’s main messages is that everything you own should ‘spark joy’. When decluttering your home, try to hold each item close to you and think ‘does this item spark joy?’ If it doesn’t bring joy to your life, it doesn’t deserve to be kept.

Kondo believes that this simple action should take priority when you are deciding what to keep and what to toss. Even if it is a practical item or you feel it’s something you ‘should’ be keeping, if it doesn’t make you happy – toss it. The only exception to this is necessary items that may not bring you joy but have an important role in your daily life – such as uniforms or tools. These items should be respected and praised for the role they play in your life.

Declutter by Categories

Marie Kondo uses a specific sequence to what order you should use to declutter your home.

First, you should start by decluttering clothes and books, as they are the easiest to part with. Then move on to all your papers and documents. Thirdly, you should declutter all the miscellaneous kitchen, garage, bathroom and homeware items in a category Kondo refers to as ‘komono’. Leave your sentimental items such as photographs and mementoes until last, the theory being that by the time you get to these items, you are in a better mindset to holistically think about what ‘sparks joy’ and what you don’t need to keep.

Make A Mess Before You Clean

This one may come as a shock, but it’s a vital part of the decluttering process. Marie Kondo suggests when cleaning your clothes, take all your clothes out of your closet and put them in a big pile in the middle of the room. This will help you to realise just how many clothes you actually own and make it much easier to get rid of some of them. When cleaning other categories such as komono items or books, she recommends you do the same, because even seeing a stack of kitchen items all together can be incredibly motivating when you see that you own four different sieves you didn’t know about and probably don’t even need!

Find A Place for Everything

This one is vital, and it’s one every home stager lives by on a daily basis. Everything in your home should fit away in a cupboard, drawer or closet – anywhere as long as it has a home. This way, when you take something out, you know exactly where to put it back and it doesn’t get left on a surface. The goal is to have all of your items tucked away to give the illusion of a wonderfully minimalist home, and only have aesthetically pleasing items out on the surface, such as vases or decorative pieces. This should be your ultimate goal, especially when decluttering for home staging purposes.

Get On To It!

We can read all the articles and watch all the Netflix specials we want, but nothing is going to happen until we get up and start decluttering! Marie Kondo recommends to get up and go: dedicate some real time and do all the decluttering at once, instead of dragging it out, because you’ll never get the same level of organisation by doing it in small parts. So, what are you waiting for?

Achieve Maximum Value with Home Staging

Decluttering your home is an important process to go through, but it’s definitely not the end of the road when it comes to getting your home ready for selling. If you want to deliver maximum value to potential buyers, hiring a professional home stager is an important step in the process. Talk to us today about full or partial home staging that will place your home in the best light for buyers.