What naice things do you make sure are visible to visitors

I tend to deploy a stunt orchid if the occasion arises. I also casually make tea in a teapot as if that's how I normally make tea.

This is a fabulous thread and has motivated me to go out and buy several Expensive Candles. Just in case.

Got to say though, I have one friend where every time I go around the stunt towels are the same, i.e. never repositioned or moved. As time passes they get dustier and I think she would benefit enormously from this thread.

We had a bowl of green stunt apples out on the table when selling our old house and I'm convinced they made all the difference.

Nowadays I just declutter and buy fresh flowers if someone is coming over. Oh and I get posh biscuits. Nothing as elaborate as the fake washing up area.

Would never do anything different - let it be the mess it always is ... I've never cared what people think and I certainly know I wouldn't look down on someone for a messy/homely/not bursting with expensive items house - I like people for their soul, not their things

I do also 'stage' the sofa if people are expected round, and ban anyone from sitting on it before they come round. So DP, dog, cat and I all scrunch ourselves up on little armchairs and pretend the big sofa isn't there!

So, actually, Gin, the staged washing up area is only a minor foible in the general madness of your guest stagings!

Can I ask what all of your responses are then the guests mess things up by sitting on the plumped cushions, wiping improperly rinsed mucky hands on your expensive white towels, or - the most horrifying, perhaps? - visibly cannot distinguish between the best and the bad, and get up from your carefully laid tea table, complete with Spode and exquisite macarons on cake stands, to rummage in your 'shameful hidden items cupboard' and produce a Sports Direct mug ''cos it's big, innit?' and the Tesco custard creams they brought with them???

Do you bar them?

I light a Yankee candle in a few rooms of the house, buy two lots of expensive looking flowers for the only two vases I own, and get out the Bayliss and Harding wash and moisturiser set!!

Sooooo happy to know it's not just me that does this!

When we sold our previous house, I went to extreme levels of staging and employing stunt accessories to the extent that...

I got my Mum to bake a Victoria sponge (artfully left on kitchen table on a pretty cake stand).

We borrowed a friend's swishy 4x4 to park on our drive (DH's car is nice but is always mucky).

I artfully hung my (one and only) expensive, designer dress on the wardrobe door.

Fresh flowers in every room, and several scented candles burning.

Offered all viewers fresh coffee

It worked. We had 3 offers in the first week

Have to say nothing.

Big not bug

Love the cake stand idea, I buy bug bunches of fresh parsley at the market as well and keep them in washed out jars on the kitchen side, the helmans ultimate mayo jars are round and pretty!

Sorry, our stunt apples definitely helped sell the house-it went in the first morning of being on the market.

We had stunt apples in our fruit bowl-really bright green granny delicious ones that looked fantastic but tasted horrible.

LoodleDoodle, for staging a house sale, you need to bring out the big guns - a pyramid of fresh lemons (or clementines /satsuma switch leaves attached from waitrose) on a cake stand.

Not my home but I do have a cake stand of lemons and limes on my kitchen table as I type. Just not that - ahem- fresh anymore

Gin tickled pink with fake washing up area.

"Overheard" several house guests (usually vists do not coincide) gleefully discussing the terror/horror of my Oh So Special Guest Basket O'Towels that I have faithfully created and lovingly placed in guest rooms for years. Turns out nobody feels comfortable unraveling my lovely (complicated) fold & roll, so surreptitiously use the ones in guest bath already. Hmmm. I confess I do find myself harummhing loudly at DH when he dares to mess up the entire house sit in the perfectly set living room awaiting company

Loodledoodle - get thee to sainsbos! Place stunt pineapple accordingly and report back once the offers come flooding in!

I don't do anything really, but I will be swapping the bog standard liquid soap for a proper cheapo version when ILs visit simply so they have nothing to be judgmental about. They'll have to judge what their DS spends instead

Feck.

Life's too short. I'm a slob and happy to be one. Take me as you find me is my motto.

Oh and a candle burning is essential, to mask the scent of toddler nappy changes.

I am desperately trying to sell my house at the mo, and hadn't thought to burn my Yankee candles. I have en masse viewing tomorrow, shall I rush out and buy a stunt pineapple to see if it works?

Puny my efforts are for overnight guests mainly.
For coffee meet ups it's just stuffing the kids shite in a cupboard, washing up, and trying to find time on my travels to buy a really pretentious cake thing from m&s (as if to pretend that's what we eat all the time, instead of Aldi Jaffa Cakes).

I also like the sofa not to look sat on, so it looks like I haven't been sat on it all day like I really have

I do also 'stage' the sofa if people are expected round, and ban anyone from sitting on it before they come round. So DP, dog, cat and I all scrunch ourselves up on little armchairs and pretend the big sofa isn't there!

Word to the wise, the hand cream goes off after a year or so, so chuck it out if you don't want to get caught coz it'll stink!

Classsssssssicssssss!

This is my absolute favourite thread on MN. I spend a silly amount of time standing / staging the cushions on my sofas. It's simple unacceptable for visitors to walk in and be faced with saggy, crumpled cushions.