Your home on the market is a prime target for thieves, especially at this time of year.

Because when many people go on vacation, the thieves go to work.

Because holiday time is when people are more likely to have more cash and valuable new items at home.

Because even thieves get desperate for more money at Christmastime.

Because homeowners are often too busy to bother with simple safety procedures.

If you need one more reason why it makes sense to stage your home for sale, a staged home looks convincingly lived in and in itself is a deterrent to break-ins.

Here are some other steps you can take to squelch trouble when you are away.

1. Lock up tight. My Daddy always said, "It doesn't cost anything to lock the door." Add windows to his advice. 

2. Create the illusion. Make sure your realtor knows when you are away. Give your keys to a good neighbor or willing friend, and ask that they check the condition of your interior and exterior for signs of vacancy like junk mail deposited on your step, snow piled up around the doors, or mouldy fruit on the kitchen counter (another argument for faux fruit and flowers).  

3. Stop mail. Maintain a lived-in look by having your mail held by the post office or picked up by a neighbor.

4. Frost the windows, secure the garage. Thieves check garages for empty ones. Make your garage windows opaque with this product and disconnect the automatic overhead opener (by just getting on a step ladder and unplugging it). Lock the door between the attached garage and house.

5. Fool 'em. Invest in a few inexpensive timers to turn lights on and off. I always leave a radio set to come on from midnight until 2 a.m.

6. Duh. Don't hide keys under flower pots or doormats, inside an unlocked mailbox, over the doorway, or in other obvious places.

7. Be secretive. Do not publicize your plans. Burglars will scan local newspapers and community list-serves for ads requesting pet sitters and house-sitters. 

Even if you are not going on vacation, a home on the market needs to be protected from troublemakers who might be actually touring your home with a realtor or by a member of your family if you are FSBO. Take these precautions:

• Hide all prescriptions (especially ones with "street value") in a secure place.
• Never stage your home with precious art, expensive rugs, family heirlooms, or easily pawn-able stuff. Large valuables that can't be pocketed can be stolen when you are away for the evening or at work during the day. Be sure your homeowners insurance is current. Does your policy include that new giant flatscreen, for example?
• Keep calendars out of sight because they may have information handy for thieves to know, like when you're away for the evening.
• Don't keep cash on hand. Professional buglers know all the hiding places. Best places to hide cash: in books you have customized to hold a stack of bills, or in fake cans like these.
• Lock away paperwork that would be of value to an identity thief.
• Ask your realtor what steps she takes to minimize the risk of objects being stolen. She should be taking names and contact info from anyone she shows the house to -- before the house tour.  Ideally, two brokers would accompany any party of two or more "potential buyers." Unfortunately, there are dishonest people ready to take advantage of realtors and homeowners at open houses and tours, and they operate like professionals. 

Making your home on the market safe from trouble sounds like work, but once you have these simple suggestions in place, your peace of mind is the reward. Being prepared also means you can return to the proper state of mind for this time of year, namely, " Good will towards all."

Do you want more tips to help you navigate the waters of home selling? Download my $5 eBook, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and for Top Dollar. It mill make your New Year bright by giving you all the tricks, techniques and secrets to success home staging.

Have you ever rented a self-storage unit? I have. A few times. When we were selling a residence.

It's kind of a hassle, but it sure helps your home look more like a model home.

And I was always glad when it was time to actually start serious packing, because the job was already underway.   

Getting the extra furniture, the overflow from your closets, the out-of-season belongings, and all those trinkets with too much personality into an off-site storage place is way-preferable to stacking them in the garage. Or clustering them in the guestroom.

As with almost everything else, it helps to have a plan. Here's mine.

LIST the items you plan to store.  Figure out how you'll pack them.

• Boxes of uniform size are best for for books, clothes, kitchen items, linens, toys.
• Plastic storage tubs with lids can be stacked for fragile items or for long term storage of off-season things like seasonal decorations.
• Awkwardly-sized items like furniture, bikes, garden tools, and sports gear won’t stack but still take room.

PRIORITIZE boxed items you may have to access during storage, so they can be packed close to the front of the unit.

GET your boxes from the paint store. They're free and they are all the same size -- four-gallon. 

PACK  things like dishes and framed photographs between layers of sheets and towels that you're packing as well.

AVOID storing items in containers that don't stack, if possible. Examples would be laundry baskets of toys, shopping bags of toiletries, or bundles of blankets. Boxed items stack straight so you'll fit more things into your space.  Nest together odd-shaped things when packing the unit. 

MARK all boxes clearly to indicate contents. Be specific. Write "Stuffed armadillo, ping pong paddles, high school yearbook, beer mugs, tennis trophies," not "family room stuff."

If strangers will be doing the moving for you, do not label boxes with valuables. Too tempting. They may disappear. Instead, number them and keep a master list for contents.

Write on the sides, not the tops of boxes. Mark what is fragile because they should be stacked up high when stored and also when packed for moving. 

ESTIMATE the size of the unit you'll need. Here are rough guidelines. 

•   5' x 5'  unit holds a chest of drawers, a mattress set, and stacks of plastic tubs or boxes. 
•   5' x 10' unit will hold furnishings of a mid-size bedroom, including a queen-size bed, dresser, TV, and a few storage boxes. If you have no furniture, calculate that it will accommodate 100 medium boxes.
•  10' x 10' unit will hold the equivalent of the contents of an entire family room or two full bedrooms.
•  10' x 15' unit will hold the contents of up to three bedrooms. Good for large items such as couches, tables and chairs.
•  10' x 20' will hold the contents of a 5-bedroom house, including a refrigerator, washer/dryer, dining room table, chairs and large boxes. Since you're probably not storing appliances, you'll have that much more room for boxes and furniture.

PROTECT your belongings. Don't take a chance on storing clothing, electronics, upholstered items, art work, musical instruments, or family heirlooms in a unit that is not climate controlled.

CHOOSE a site that is convenient if you might be digging into your stored goods now and then. If you don't expect to need the stored  items, you can probably save money by being able to choose from facilities less conveniently located.

ASK management if your unit will be available 24 hours a day. Is it clean and brightly lighted? Do you feel secure when coming and going? Is it easy to load and unload from your car? 

STACK strong items on the bottom -- things like tables, plastic totes and chairs. Stack to the ceiling if possible to use all the space you're paying for. Leave a narrow pathway so you can easily find items later.

CONSIDER off-site storage for things like an RV, a boat, or vehicle not being used. It will improve your curb appeal.

Every time I've used a self-storage site, I was able to stage my home more effectively, and make our moving day go more smoothly. I hope these tips do the same for you.

Be sure to download my helpful homestaging eBooks for other ways you can make staging a home easier, faster, and more profitable.

If there are garage sales and thrift stores where you live, you can stage your home on the cheap. And be chic about it, too.

To put my own opinions to the test, I challenged myself to see how many times I could stage one table in my own home, using second hand items I'd purchased over the years, along with some things from dollar stores.

Keep in mind that I do not do professional staging for a living, so I do not have a warehouse or storage unit full of props to use. I am not a hoarder, but I don't throw many things away. I don't buy many things either. At least not at full retail prices.

This habit means two of us are able to live in a 1700 square foot home, using all the rooms, and nothing looks cluttered. Even the garage. Honest.

Don't ask about the closets.

Here are the results of my challenge.

I used a table I bought fifteen years ago for $10 at the Tobacco Barn in Asheville, North Carolina. I painted it white and lightly distressed it. Other than the table, every setup here is completely different.   



1. COASTAL DECOR. The thrifted $2 frame holds a print that was gifted to me years ago from my Connecticut sister-in-law. The two glass hurricanes I bought recently for 99 cents each, and here they hold some dollar store polished rocks and dollar store greenery. All three plates are thrifted at 99 cents each. All the shells are either collected on the beach or thrifted. I added some dollar store votives to the clear 49-cent dishes on the bottom shelf. Total cost: about $25.


2. ECLECTIC GROUPING. There's no theme here, just a collection of pretty things. Anchoring the setting is a $15 framed Asian print I was ecstatic to find at Goodwill this year. Ordinarily, I would hang it higher, but I hesitated adding another hole to my wall. Most second hand stores sell hardcover books for $1, even when they are coffee-table size, like these. The plaster obelisk still has its $3.99 price marked on its underside. The orchid was $2.00 at a garage sale, complete with flower pot. Milk glass is plentiful at second hand stores, and the little compote become mine for $1. I've used it to hold a garage sale $1 candle. I love the shiny metal box with a metal bow, especially since it cost $1, same as all the ornaments in the large plastic dollar store bowl. The basket and the tray were each about $3, Salvation Army finds. Total cost: $34.



3. CONTEMPORARY LOOK. The dollar store frame holds a thrifted black and white print. The lamp is a $2 garage sale purchase. The second hand shade cost me $1.50.  A dollar store charger holds Goodwill wine glasses at 59 cents a glass, and a Salvation Army vase holds dollar store lemons.  The flowers are from the dollar store and the "silver" vase is from Goodwill. An aluminum $3 thrift store platter holds goblets from the same place, plus a gifted bottle of wine. ( I'd fill the bottle with water for staging.) The $4 ice bucket is thrifted, too. Estimated total: $20.


4. TROPICAL COLOR. In this example, I gathered props that reflected the global look I wrote about here. Would you believe that the wall art is actually a wrap-around, cotton, batik print skirt, spray-starched and taped to a thrift store, unframed, painted canvas?  The painting was $4, and I am not going to count the cost of the skirt, because I've owned it for decades, and it was not "harmed during this filming." The Japanese-style, rice bowls were each 99 cents at Habitat for Humanity, and they hold four, $1 candles, stacked to look like two pillars. Love their color because it matches this (inconspicuously chipped) 50-cent garage sale vase I have filled with dollar store orchids. I can never resist wicker baskets like this square, $3 one. The wooden box is a garage sale $2 find. The round basket was $3, and the flowers and plant came from the dollar store totaling a hefty $4.  My cost: $21.50


5. FLORAL INSPIRATION.  The artwork cost me just $4.99 at Goodwill because the colors in the print were faded. I performed surgery on the print, refreshing the colors with inexpensive watercolors and marking pens, then putting it back under glass. Linens like this $1 pink table runner are common and cheap at second hand stores. The wooden candle holders cost me $2 for the pair at a church thrift store. The peonies are a dollar store purchase, and I put them in a $2 clay pot I painted white, on a $1 pink and white plate. The hotel plate serving platter set me back about $5, and the shells together were about $10.  Total: $26.


I hope my challenge and the results give you ideas for staging your own home. Don't turn up your nose at thrift stores. They are treasure houses for the DIY home stager, letting you easily decorate cheap-chic style.  Experiment with whatever objects you've found in your own closets and at garage sales and thrift stores to stage your home beautifully and economically.  


Download my eBook, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and for Top Dollar, and you'll learn other ways to save money when you stage your home.

Home buyers want space for their money. Sure, they look at the numbers -- square footage, number of rooms, dimensions of rooms -- but they are also influenced by how large the rooms feel.

How do your rooms feel? Big or small? Here are four kinds of furniture that make spaces seem bigger.
  
Curved pieces visually expand a room because they force the eye to keep moving. When you are deciding what furniture to store and what to keep for staging, send the square stuff to the storage unit. 



Monotone colors make for a seamless look. When a room is furnished with some painted pieces, color coordinate them so no one piece stands out. They needn't be all the same color, but making them all the same value (on the scale from light to dark) will enlarge the room. If you have mismatched upholstered pieces, dressing them in matching slipcovers will have the same effect. 
 

Low profile furniture lets a buyer take in more of the room at a glance. Don't make buyers' eyes take a roller coaster ride around the room. Not only does low profile furniture make a room look bigger, it makes it feel less formal and more comfortable.


Transparent, translucent, and reflective furniture makes a room feel bigger than it is. There's no surprise here, because you can see right through the glass and Lucite, and reflective surfaces like mirrors and polished metals bounce light around a room to confuse the eye about where a room's perimeters really are.  



I offer lots more tips on how to select and arrange furniture in two of my eBooks, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and For Top Dollar and my book on Furniture Arranging. Think big, and create rooms that make buyers think your home is big.

I wanted to make some handmade Christmas gifts for female family and friends this year. When I saw this tutorial  by Emily at Jones Design Company, I knew I'd found my gift idea. The tutorial was linked by Kristi at Pink and Polka Dot.

But, problem is, I'm not all that crafty. I don't like doing the same thing over and over. I loved the look of these felt flower pins, though, so I pushed myself to do repetitive tasks.

Guess what. I got better with each flower. Duh.

Those of you with Etsy shops know this already.  By the time I had made twenty pins, I had put my own spin on the original tutorial, time flew by, and they started looking so good I hated to say goodbye to them.

Oh, I kept a few good ones for my own coats.

The lesson here for home stagers is that, even if you think home staging DIY projects like making a no-sew pillow, or painting a hutch, or rearranging furniture is not something you do well, just fooling around with it will get you good enough!

So, dig in. Don't think that you have to be experienced, talented, crafty, or artistic to stage your own home.  Take it step by step, fooling around as you go until it looks right to you.  When I globbed too much glue into the center of the flower, I threw some red seed beads into it, disguising my oops. When four petals didn't seem full enough, I started adding another, and then filling in with even more, smaller petals.

Who knew following directions meant you didn't have to follow directions.

My eBook, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and For Top Dollar, gives you simple ideas for dressing up your home, from lamps and pillows, to flowers and paint colors, from light fixtures to faucet handles, and door knobs to bookcases. Try it. You'll like it!

Angela at Cottage Magpie won the Shabby Chic Christmas Ornaments Giveaway.

Be sure to visit Angela's blog, where she's currently deliberating-- with the whole blogosphere watching -- how to rearrange her living room furniture. Who among us hasn't hasn't shoved couches and end tables around, scratched her head, and tweaked some more?  And some more. Go look at Angela's photos and check out her progress. She's a Shabby Chic girl at heart., and she has style! 

Photo: Cottagemagpie.com

What do Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger have to do with selling your home? Remember the scene -- video clip below -- where Tom comes back to his wife and declares his love for her? The way Renee responds is the way you want house hunters to respond to your house.

I did some interior painting this week for a woman who wants her house on the market as quickly as possible. She wanted to spend her money and time where they would do the most good.

I think my client's situation is a common one, and I think the approach she and I decided on is a good one. I'm calling it the "You Had Me At Hello" approach. That's what Renee told Tom.

The idea is to make the first few rooms the prospective buyer sees so enticing that he falls head over heels. For my client, I worked on making the living room, dining room and kitchen --  the rooms that a realtor would naturally be showing first --  as attractive and fresh-looking as possible.

I painted the walls in these three rooms. The rest of the house was clean, decluttered and attractively staged.  The budget and time for painting bedrooms, bathrooms, and halls just wasn't there. The realtor agreed that the decision made sense.

The bathroom walls in this house, as in most houses, had been painted semi gloss, so they were easily washable. Hallway walls cleaned up with a Magic Eraser.

Why didn't I just touch up walls that had smudges? Well, we tried that, and the paint Ms. Homeowner had stored didn't work for touch ups. I tested it in an out-of-the-way corner (behind a door that opens in), and I could tell when it dried that touch ups would give walls a case of the measles. The paint was left over from a three-year old total repaint, but wall paint color can change even over that short a time.

So what if the walls in the kids bedrooms have some smudges and pencil marks, and the master bedroom walls have a few nail holes? Big deal.

By the time the realtor winds the tour through the bedrooms, house hunters will have already decided if this is their true love, based on the space, floor plan and other features.

My eBook, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and for Top Dollar, gives other ways to stretch your painting budget. 

I am giving away four boxes of Christmas ornaments perfect for decorating in shabby chic style. You can win these just by commenting on this post before the end of the day next Monday, December 13. I will mail them directly and immediately to you. Yes, you! So comment now, telling me how you would use these vintage decorations.

I was helping a friend get her home ready for market this week. We decided against a large Christmas tree.  Rather than sell these on ebay, she gave them to me to give to you. As I mentioned once before, Mr. Lucky would not be happy surrounded by shabby chic, so my loss is your gain.

There are four boxes. Two boxes each have a dozen 1 3/4-inch globes. Two boxes have six hand made, teardrop ornaments, each about 5 inches long. Each glass (no plastic here) ornament is unique, and you can see that they are hand made. The round ones are American made Shiny Brite, and the teardrops are "Made by the finest craftsmen of Europe," it says here on the boxes. All the original hanging loops are there, except for two tear drop loops.
  

I hope you can see from the photographs that the colors are beautiful --  mostly pinks, golds, and reds, but also a few blues and greens.

Would you hang these on a tree? Nestle them in a wreath? Pile them in a bowl? Lay them on the mantel? Cluster them in a centerpiece? You can even sell them on ebay. A random number generator will determine the winner.

If you have a blog and you mention this giveaway on your blog, I will enter your comment twice to double your chance of winning. You will will need to email me,  PinkOveralls(at)DIYHomeStagingTips.com, to let me know that you have told your readers about the giveaway, giving me a link to your mention.

I hope everyone who loves holiday decorating (and who doesn't?) will comment and tell all your shabby chic friends about my giveaway. I want these babies to have a happy home for the holidays. They would make a welcome gift to the friend who loves the soft colors and old world charm of old style decorations. Giveaway open to continental U.S. residents only, please.


Good luck to all of you. If you stage or decorate vintage style, you'll be happy to have these shabby chic Christmas ornaments in your collection.

But what’s a stager to do when there’s a view from the window that doesn’t exactly help sell the property? Neighbors with ugly yards, a factory, the back of an apartment building, a busy road, or a construction site are all common problems.

Need a seasonal decor item that's not pricey but looks fancy-schmnancy? Think DIY topiaries. Making your own is easy! I'm kind of a topiary nut. I'm fascinated by the big dose of style one little topiary adds to a room, a garden, a mantel, or a tabletop. And when there's a pair of topiaries, I'm swooning.  You can make a topiary this attractive to use as a  staging prop, in an hour. I'll show you how.  Topiaries are perfect home staging props. They look fresh, and they look tidy -- just the impression you want your whole home to have. Technically, topiaries are plants that are shaped by careful pruning over time, but they can be artificial as well, and crafted from silk or real leaves, flowers, or fruits. I love the rosemary topiaries we see in garden centers every December. They have the added bonus of fragrance, and they are so easy to decorate like miniature Christmas trees, just right for a dining table centerpiece in the staged home. A topiary can be formal, whimsical, rustic, glitzy, shabby chic, or homey. It all depends on the container and the shape of the plant. I'm partial to topiaries with a visible central stem, but I'm smitten with cone shapes and spirals as well. What's not to love?

Pyramid topiaries can be fashioned from cones of floral foam or cardboard, using  all kinds of materials, from candies to cranberries. Photo: Askmissa.com.

Even if of the greenery is fake, if the trunk or stem of a topiary is real,  the effect is more natural. Weathered pots help create a sense of age. Photo: Ballad Designs.

A rosemary plant makes a beautiful and fragrant topiary that  can be planted outdoors in early spring. Photo: Meredith.com

Although topiaries are decorative all year long, they're especially popular at holiday time. Real greenery or fake, they give us DIYers an opportunity to gussy things up without much work. Even those of us with no floral arranging skill can make festive topiaries suitable for home staging.

Make Your Own Topiary 

Today I made a pair of topiaries. Watch how simple this is. Here is what you'll need:

• A container. Almost any vessel will do -- small buckets, clay pots, vases, pitchers, ceramic planters, wooden boxes, metal wastebaskets, wicker baskets, or even cloth wrapped around plastic pots. 
• Floral foam, enough to fill the container and make the form for the greenery to stick into.
• Sharp knife to cut the foam.
• Greenery. If you can prune your own shubbery, that's ideal. Some evergreen clippings like boxwood, cedar, pine, spruce, fir, rosemary, mountain laurel, and euonymous manage to stay fairly green for a month without water. If you can't get free greenery, there's always the florist or garden center. Or, use silk greenery.   
• A stick for the stem or "trunk." If you don't have access to natural branches, craft stores carry suitable sticks. You can use a dowel, painted brown, black or gold, or a plain bamboo stick. 
• Floral moss, also called sheet moss, not spaghnum. 

What you'll need.

Cut the foam.

Trim your floral base.

If your floral foam is not a sphere (it's cheaper to buy in squares than spheres), trim the corners off a square of foam so you have a rounded cube.

Insert twigs into base.

Begin sticking the stems of greenery into the foam, starting at the top and working down. Face the leaves all in the same direction to imitate the way twigs would grow. Cover the cube with greenery. You can omit the back if it will be positioned against a wall, and you needn't cover the bottom of the cube unless it will be placed up high.

Continue adding  greenery.

Insert your stick into the bottom of the cube. Insert the other end firmly into the foam in your container.

Add the stem.

Insert stem into container.

Add moss to container.

Cover the foam in the container with floral moss. This is when you get to see how professional your work looks! You can decorate your topiary with ribbons, lights, small ornaments, tiny toys, charms, or sprigs of holly with berries, as I did.

I made a second topiary just like the first one. Using dry floral foam, the little trees made of boxwood stay green for a month.

If you want more reasons to make a topiary, visit Save-on-Crafts.com and be inspired by their topiaries made from nuts, pine cones, candies, orange peels, and flowers. I'm seriously considering the Jordan Almond Pyramid Tree! You can order all your supplies from them.

My eBook,  DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and for Top Dollar tells you how to decorate tabletops and mantels, and every other corner of your home for a look that buyers love. And you don't need to spend a lot of money!

A topiary -- or two -- could be just the ticket for giving one of your staged rooms some decor pizazz. Wherever you place these darling trees, they earn their keep. Now you know how easy it is to make a topiary of your own for staging.