Maybe you’re preparing for listing photos and an open house, or perhaps you’re starting to strategize for moving to your new place. Either way, decluttering is often a top priority for sellers. Unfortunately, with selling your home being a fairly busy process, decluttering can start to feel like a burdensome to-do. Luckily, there are some great tips that St. Louis sellers can employ to make the task a bit easier. Let’s dive into a few:

Grab a Pen & Paper

Before you start physically going through all your belongings, if you have the time, I recommend starting with a more hands-off approach. Rather than diving right into the hands-on work of decluttering, sellers can help streamline the process by doing some initial planning on paper first. A great place to start is by creating a page for each room and listing the things that are most important to you there. This can come in handy down the line when making decisions about what stays and what goes. This pen-and-paper time can also be a great opportunity to plan out the decluttering process and your timeline for the project.

Carve Out the Time

Speaking of timeline, decluttering effectively takes time. If St. Louis homeowners want to succeed here, they’ll need to make time in their schedules to sort through their belongings. One of the biggest stressors when it comes to decluttering is feeling a time crunch. Giving yourself a single weekend to get through an entire home is usually asking for frustration. If you can, spread this process out a bit more so that you can work through it in bite-sized pieces.

Be Systematic

That plan you drew out prior to starting the decluttering can be a great tool to use throughout the process. Maybe you plan to work room by room, or maybe there’s a day where you plan to specifically focus on going through everyone’s clothing. Having some type of framework to direct your focus can really accelerate progress.

Set Some Goals

What are you hoping to get from the decluttering process? Are you hoping to become a full-blown minimalist whose belongings fit into just a few boxes? Are you wanting to downsize a bit? Are you simply wanting your move to feel more organized? Identifying your goals in advance can help keep you on track as you work through the things you’ve accumulated.

Ask Important Questions

What these questions are is really up to you. But decluttering is a very interactive process that requires your focus and honesty. Maybe you ask yourself, ‘does this spark joy?’, or maybe you ask ‘when was the last time I used this?’. Especially if your goal is to significantly reduce what you own, asking some type of question to help you decide which things make the cut and which don’t is essential.

Is decluttering a to-do item on your list as a home seller? Do you have any strategies in place that help you? What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to decluttering? I’d love to hear what you think!