Tips For Selling Your House With Kids

Selling your house with kids takes a lot of work. How do you find the time to stage your home when you have kids running around and making HUGE messes!? Keep reading!

This past spring we put our first house on the market and I was somewhat overwhelmed with how much went into it. If you know me personally you know that I’m not the neatest person ever. My mom claims it’s a choice (and maybe she is right), but for whatever reason clutter and Lauren seem to go together.

When we first put our house on the market, I thought how am I going to keep this house clean and clutter free with a toddler?! Being on the other side, I can now tell you it is possible. But like anything else, it takes work.

5 Tips For Selling Your House With Young Kids. Tip number 2 is a game changer!

Here are 5 Tips For Selling Your House With Kids:

  • Declutter Before You Sell: Through this process, I’ve learned we have way too much stuff! It’s almost sickening. Before we officially put our house on the market, my parents came to help us declutter. We donated multiple bags to Goodwill and threw away junk. If you haven’t used it in a year, you most likely won’t use it. This made the cleaning up process before a showing so much easier because there was less stuff in our house. We also removed some of Izzy’s toys for the time being. I couldn’t part with her toys forever, but we picked 3-4 of her favorite things and put the rest in storage until we sold our house.
  • Use Your Car for Storage: We bought three large laundry baskets and kept them in the back of our car during the selling process. We typically received 3-5 hours notice before a showing which gave us plenty of time to declutter. I would bring in the three baskets and load them up with all of Izzy’s toys, clothes on the floor and one time a dirty pan I didn’t have time to clean. It’s a quick way to get stuff off of your floors and counters.

5 Tips For Selling Your House With Young Kids. #2 Use Your Car for Storage with Laundry Baskets. Heart of Deborah

  • Get Professional Photos: Our realtor used a professional photographer to take photos of our house. I think this was huge. First impressions are big and you won’t draw anyone to your house if the photos online aren’t enticing. According to a study by Redfin, homes with professional photographs were found to be viewed 61 percent more online than others. Even better, homes shot with a DSLR camera had a 47% higher asking price per square foot.
  • Make a List: I wrote a list of things to do before a showing. This kept me on track and helped me remember everything I needed to do to get the house “ready.” Some items on my list included: remove toys, take away toaster oven (it was really dirty looking), remove dish drying rack, wipe counters, etc. Your list should be specific to your house. The list made the getting ready so much less stressful.





To do List for Selling Your House

  • Consider a Storage Unit: As I said before, we put some of Izzy’s toys away until we sold our house. I personally think houses with less clutter look bigger and are more appealing to a buyer. Less stuff equals more room. Thankfully my parents let us put some boxes in their basement. We cleaned out some of our kitchen cabinets and our closets. You don’t want a closet overflowing with stuff. Since we were moving in the summer, we put a lot of our winter clothes in storage.

So what about you, have you moved a lot? What did you find worked the best when selling your house with kids? Did you use a storage unit? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

What did you find most helpful when selling your house?

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3 Comments

  1. We just sold our house in December, and I can definitely relate to this. I am also not a particularly tidy person, and struggled to keep the house ‘minimalist’ looking while it was for sale. I think your idea about putting stuff in laundry baskets in the car during a viewing is a very good one, and better than shoving it all in cupboards (ask me how I know!)

  2. Thanks for all the tips! We are listing this spring and have 3 kids under 5. I love the basket idea, it will work well for us!

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