Top tips for decluttering/depersonalising with small children

[helmethead]

I'm putting our rambling 4 bed house on the market in September. We have alot of stuff and are planning to declutter and put things in storage. Estate agents say not to declutter too much as we need to show a family can live in this house comfortably but we have so much stuff. Kids are tiny so very hard to declutter completely they need some toys left!

Can't advise re: toys (no DCs yet)but we removed all photos, and most ornaments (we didnt have that many anyway) except say in the lounge,a decorative bowl on the sidebaord. We got rid of clutter on the kitchen worksurfaces eg:

knifeblock- put knives in drawer instead
wine rack- put wine in garage
mug tree- put mugs in cupboards
cds- put them away
food processor/other gadgets- put them out of sight

Which made the kitchen look a lot bigger

We cleared bookshelves of some books (ours were jampacked) so it didnt look like we were bursting at the seams.

Sooz you been looking in my cupboards ?

If you have a loft, about 70% of the stuff up there will be junk.
We kept putting things in the loft, out of the way. When we cleared out the loft we found:
1)loads of stuff we no longer needed - so binned it.
2) loads of stuff we'd forgotten about / hadn't missed - so gave it to charity or binned it.

What was left, we've put into a small rented storage unit. Now the loft is empty, and when we get a buyer for our flat we will be just about ready to move.

Good point about sorting out the loft there are probably quite a few boxes that could be binned. Not a huge amount of cupboard space to put kitchen things off the surface thats why alot of stuff is going to have to go into storage.

Realised that the bigger the house the more stuff you just accumlate - and we plan to buy an ever bigger house, well at least a bigger kitchen and a garage would solve many of the storage problems.

I found its helpful to take some photos of your rooms - it helps to see them as a buyer would. I gave my kitchen a kind of mini makeover just by noticing the cluttered surfaces, magnet-covered fridge, etc were making it look muddled and tatty. Somehow it was more obvious in the photo. I still have my nice homely things around it's just that you can see them now and they look like accessories, not clutter.

I'd be honest and clear out anything that is a bit tatty/not properly stored, i.e. couple of big baskets of toys in lounge not tottering piles of plastic. Your DC's will live without the huge toys for a few months.

These are all good tips - just don't do what we did when we sold our first flat: stuffed EVERYTHING we owned into the cupboards in the spare bedroom.

The very first viewer came to look round and asked if he could look inside the cupboards, to get an idea of the space available (fitted wardrobe type things) and yes, you've guessed it - he opened it before I could say "Noooo!" and an avalanche of crap landed on his head. I was so . He laughed and said "Plenty of storage space then!"

We have had several decluttering sessions over the last few years. The most successful one we asked the children if they would like to buy a trampoline and explained that by decluttering all the old stuff they no longer wanted and carbooting it they could get themselves one. They loved the idea, so we asked them to put the things they loved best on their beds and then they helped to put the things that were too "babyish" or anything they didn't want anymore into boxes. We ebayed and carbooted and made about £140.00. The trampoline went up in the garden and the house was much more liveable in. Once all the baby toys were gone they had more space to play with the stuff they liked best and learning to declutter aged 4 must be better than learning age 30.....

Toy boxes and regular ( nightly) round up of stuff into toy boxes.
preschool/ nursery artworks on the wall in kids rooms, not kitchen.
Clear window sills of junk. maybe clear it into a bowl if the window sill is THE SAFE PLACE for bits.
If you are into messy hobbies TRY very very hard to keep them to one room or shed.

Wash up regularly.
If you have big infrequently used kitchen appliances on teh worksurface, think hard about if you NEED them or can they go. Losing a microwave gains you Soooo much space. But I won't give up my kenwood as its in use every other day.

Best of luck. We sold a 3 bed house with outbuildings last year. I tended to get agent to do viewings, while I took child out to park.

Oh I must be good I don't put things on windowsills. Am clearing out kitchen stuff and putting it into storage to take some stuff off the work surface.

Thanks for the tips keep them coming.

I laughed when one agent said it could be best if I showed people round, I said with a 1 and 3 year old that could be interesting...

Worried about people wanting to view after 6.30pm as my son often sleeps then - evening viewings very common here.

we found that people respected that our son was asleep and they couldn't see one bedroom if they insisted on an evening viewing. There were ground plans in teh agents info so they could see size of said room ( tiny) and if they were keen they would sort out a 2nd viewing another time of day. Occasionally they would do a bedtime viewing and dh would deal with boy and I would leap frog visitors around them, so we would start down outside while dh did story, then come in and do bedrooms while boy in bathroom and end up upstairs in living room ( it was an odd house layout) once boy in bed and I'd pop in to kiss good night.

Unis I have previously viewed ( and bought) houses where I couldn't see part of the house on the 1st visit, sleeping babies, sleeping nightworkers, lost keys , yes I respected that it was their home etc, but it did get in the way of my viewing and those properties did take longer to sell. Better to take the dc out for a drive in the car and let the partner show the customers around. Having to come back, or not being able to pop back into a room to impress its size etc upon yourself is quite irritating tbh, and I have quite a few children, people without any would be more put out by it.

It is possible to do as you have said, but its not ideal.

We were lucky enough to put our house on the market (and sell it!) while on holiday, so the initial decluttering could get rid of stuff we use day-to-day, like the large and cumbersome coat rack (it's an old bentwood one and looks very messy), DS's toys (packed into storage boxes) and laundry baskets etc. These all went into the garage.

Took all the magnets off fridge (though forgot to remove DS's paintings off side of kitchen cupboard).

Removed all the 'overflow' books from on top of the books in the bookcases.

Cleared windowsills of photos and all but a couple of items.

All my clothes that usually drape over a clothes rail (actually it's a wooden towel rail) in the bedroom went into one of those large zipup plastic bags and into the garage.

Removed one of the large wooden shelf units from DS's small room - moved cot round and it made the room look larger.

We nearly filled a garage-sized storage unit with assorted Stuff from the house and garage (I still had lots of boxes of books there from my old life and job). To be honest, we don't miss most of it!

(Oh, and the idea was that DS's toys came back out of the garage whenever we didn't have a viewing, so we're not that cruel!)

do you have a car? we had a small golf and just filled that with kids toys and drove it round the corner! got the tip from the EA!

Declutter by being ruthless and sell it at a car boot sale! I just filled about 8 bin bags full of stuff and sold most of it (inc some kids toys, they have so much stuff).

And I made £125!!!

I'm going to stick the 3 buggies and a tip from here the dustbins before viewing. Live in an urban area so can't really fill car up to the brim and leave it round the corner - it may not be there when I get back!