When you are considering putting your property up for sale, we suggest that you consider a “declutter”, even before you call out the agent to value your home.

If you are serious about moving, you will need to go through your items to pack at some point in the near future, so consider this a pre-clean to make the packing job easier.

1. If you have a lot of clutter, at this stage it might be worth considering hiring a skip for a few weeks, that way you can just throw out the items you no longer need, without copious trips to the local dump.  Alternatively, you can usually hire a van for a day or two, but make sure that you have checked with your local rubbish dump that they allow ‘commercial’ vehicles to enter and off-load.

2.  It is a good idea to try and predict a dry day, you might find that it is easier to move items out onto the patio or driveway, so that you can start with a blank room and only move back into the house the items you really need.  At this point, it is worth noting that the more you can open up space in a room, the bigger it will look and the easier it will be to get great photos for your marketing.

3.  Try to keep your surfaces as clear as possible, if you have lots of nick-nacks or you tend to collect paperwork, books and magazine, or you have a myriad of family photos, or a mountain of toys, now is the time to pack those away in a cupboard or into a packing / storage boxes ready for you move.  When people are viewing your home, you will get much better results if they can automatically imagine themselves in your space, so keep personal items to a minimum.

4.  Take a look inside your storage areas.  If you are anything like me, you probably just toss items in without any systematic approach.  I find that every once in a blue moon I tidy up the cupboards and drawers with good intentions to keep them in order, but that quickly goes out of the window!  Most of my storage areas look like junk heaps so I know that now is the time to drag everything out and store it, label it and neatly return it in a systematic way!  I know that once this happens I will 100% find way more space to fill with even more stuff!  Go on, have a go!

5.  It is a great idea to have storage containers on hand when you are decluttering.  My personal favourites are anything stackable, even better if they have drawers to open from the front, and for all of those Seasonal clothes and shoes, how about vacuum pack storage bags which you fill and suck the surplus air out of, making them very easy to pack away in small spaces?

Once you have decluttered and semi-depersonalised your home, touch up any walls which have scuffs and call the agent in for your property valuation.

Austin D’arcy Valuations: 020 8749 6060