If you’re selling your home, you’ve surely heard the most common home staging tips: declutter, decorate beautifully, and keep your home sparkling clean. When you’re still living in your home, though, keeping it in perfect showcase condition is easier said than done. Here are guidelines for balancing home showings with your family’s everyday life:

1. Make your home available to show as often as possible. Keeping your home ready to show is a challenge, so keep the payoff in mind: The more often your home is available for buyers to see, the faster it will sell. Broker Christine Donovan explains, “If your house for sale is not available when the buyer wants to see it, they probably won’t see it!” She goes on to explain the importance of lockboxes: An easy-to-show house, with a lockbox for quick and simple key delivery, gets shown more often. To sell faster, say “yes” to the lockbox, and keep your home in tidy, showable condition when you leave for work each day.

2. Organize the items you use. You’ve heard about the importance of decluttering, packing up everything you don’t use regularly and storing it until your home is sold. For the items you have left, the ones you regularly use, set up organizational systems. Invest in bins, drawers, and whatever else you need to make sure every object has its place. Make it as easy as possible for your family to keep your home tidy and ready to show.

3. During showings, get out of the house, or at least be unobtrusive. As broker Sandra Halliday points out in this blog post, potential buyers are less comfortable looking over and talking about a home in front of the owners. If you can’t get away during a showing, introduce yourself politely, then stand back and stay as low-key as possible. Give your buyers space to look through rooms and closets, ask their broker questions, and imagine themselves living in the home.

4. If you have kids, keep just a few of their creations on the fridge. Opinions vary about whether you should keep anything personal (such as family photos, kids’ art projects, family schedules, and so on) in a home while it’s being shown. Too much information about your family makes it difficult for buyers to imagine themselves in the home, and it can be a safety issue—these are strangers in your home, after all. This blog post suggests a happy medium: Pick one art project other achievement from each child, and display it in a nice frame. Potential buyers will see that this is a great place to raise children, your kids will know you’re still proud of them, but your home won’t be cluttered or sharing too much information.

5. Be realistic, and let yourself (and your family) live. With this tongue-in-cheek post, the blog Taming Insanity points out how difficult (if not impossible) it is too keep a home in pristine showing condition while a real family with small children lives there. For a perfect house, it suggests, “Do not let the toddler into their room,” “Make the toddler wear mittens,” and “Stop eating.” Don’t worry about keeping your home perfect. It’s still your home. Keep it as tidy and available as you reasonably can, but don’t be afraid to enjoy your everyday life. Buyers will know that real people can and do live in your home.

The Staff at San Juan Realty, Inc.