The First Step To Selling: Cleaning Your Home

Getting your home ready for selling requires a lot of cleaning. Add kids and pets into the mix and the amount of housework required increases exponentially. It can be really hard to get your home cleaned up for when the first prospective buyer walks through the door! But there are a few tips for making cleaning at least somewhat fun.

~First of all, put on some music. It has to be upbeat, but even a fast classical track will do. Anything that gets you up and moving. If you're listening to music that you really enjoy, it makes the task more enjoyable. The time you spend cleaning might go by faster. And don't be afraid to sing along!

~Get, or better yet, make, some non-toxic cleaners. Maybe the reason you feel so icky when you clean the house is all the chemicals in your average store-bought cleaning products. Vinegar may not smell like roses, but it cleans mirrors, shelves, counters, floors and even toilets just fine. A recent study indicated that salmonella bacteria was significantly reduced when exposed to vinegar. Vinegar even kills mold. For more light duty cleaning, dilute it with water and use it for wiping any surface you want to. If the smell turns you off, try adding a few drops of a disinfectant essential oil like tea tree to some water and use that instead.

~ Baking soda makes a great a mildly abrasive scrub, and mixed with vinegar it creates a powerful foaming action. Hydrogen peroxide will bleach out stains on fabric as well as counters, and also kills any germ it comes into contact with. Just be sure to rinse it off within ten minutes or so, as it can start to weaken surfaces.

~Don't let yourself get overwhelmed by looking at the whole house at once. Focus on one area at a time. If it takes you all week to clean the entire house, so be it. That's better than getting overwhelmed and avoiding the task altogether.

~Allow yourself some down time. If you want to enjoy the day outside, give yourself just 20 minutes before you go out to focus on an area that needs cleaning. You can even split that up and do some in the morning and some in the evening if that suits you better.

~If your house is too full of stuff it can make it hard to clean—not to mention stage for would-be buyers! Maybe you skipped spring cleaning, but whatever the season, if you haven't done it in a while, it's always a good idea to go through your things and pick out what you just don't need anymore.

~This includes paperwork. This is a good time to make sure that all of your papers relating to the ownership, repairs, and maintenance of your property are in order. Make sure you keep these handy. If you really need to save old bills, receipts or other mail or paperwork, and you tend to be a "piler" instead of a "filer", you may have to get over it. Get a simple filing container, lable different sections and then fill it according to category. This gets the papers off your desk (or table, or dresser, or counter) while keeping them handy for future reference. Then those surfaces are clear to wipe clean!

~ Get the whole family involved. Done alone, cleaning can be a bit depressing and slow-going. Done with your spouse, children or the whole family, it can be a fun family affair. So much more gets done in the same amount of time! Plus, when everyone's doing it, you don't have to feel burdened with all the responsibility. If you kids are young, just give them a really simple task, and leave them to do it their own way. If they don't do it to your standards, either leave it alone and practice the art of acceptance, or go along later (preferably when they aren't looking) and touch it up a little.

Staging your home for selling can mean that you spend a LOT of time cleaning and de-cluttering. Hopefully, these tips will help you to get things cleaner faster and enlist the entire family in the home selling effort.