The 4 “P’s” of Staging to Live
Staging is not just for before you sell. More and more we have been getting requests from people to “stage” their new house. They want to live the same way as they sold their previous house. What that says to us is that they want a simpler, more organized life that looks pretty and functions well.
We are now offering a new service called “Stage to Live.”
If you are looking to get started on this concept right away we have a few steps you can follow.
PURGE.
Purge. Go through your house one room at a time and donate or sell the items that are no longer bringing joy or meaning to your life. Does the thought of that overwhelm you? Start in your favorite room or in the room you use the least. Typically these two spaces are the easiest places to start.
In your favorite room you typically know what is working and what isn’t. When you have spaces that you don’t use, it should be straight forward because you never use that stuff. So why do you have it? It is easy to know what you should get rid of in that case, all of it! Keeping something because you might use it in 2 years, even though you haven’t used it in the past 5 years will only bog you down in stuff. That is not a healthy way to live. Also, don’t have guilt about purging. Donation centers give people jobs and are a way of recycling your possessions to bring joy to someone else.
PRIORITIZE.
Prioritize. What are the things that are just not working well. Is it mail and bills? Is it your kids art? Is it homework? Once you identify what isn’t working, you can then start to fix it. If you have ideas of how to solve your problem, don’t wait to implement them. Everyday is easier when this is fixed.
If you have no idea where to start, then this is when you should invest in professional help. If everyone could stage their life and their houses, we wouldn’t get all these requests from people to stage their lives. Professional stagers have years of experience and training that makes them good at helping you accomplish this in your everyday life. Just like you don’t hesitate to pay a plumber to fix a problem in your bathroom, you shouldn’t hesitate to pay a stager to help you live your life better. We know HGTV makes it look like we can all do these things, but the reality is it’s a TV show and it is not as cheap and easy as they make it look.
PLAN.
Plan. Ask yourself a few simple questions.
What do I want my end result to look like?
Similar to what I have now?
Completely different?
You have no idea?
Any answer that makes YOU happy, is the right answer. If you want to attempt this yourself, you can use apps like Pinterest and Houzz to help you find what you are looking for. Again if you don’t know where to start, industry professionals have great tools that can help you figure out what you like and visualize the end result before you buy. Again, we urge you to not feel guilty about needing help. We spend our days living and breathing this stuff so we can become experts. We can see your space and give you instant, and affordable results. Believe it or not, most of our clients are real people, with real jobs, and limited budgets. Again, real life is not the same thing as what you see on TV!
PARTY.
Party. Celebrate every thing you accomplish towards this goal. Whether you do it all yourself or hire someone to help, make sure to recognize that you did something different. You could have sat around and kept the status quo, but you didn’t. And don’t discount the size of the change. One box taken to donate and one bag of trash can make a HUGE and meaningful difference in your life.
So start today or hire us to help. But don’t wait another minute to “Stage your life!”
WRITTEN BY AMANDA MOSNESS, OUR UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA STAGER AND HOME STYLIST.