Decluttering before you sell: Expert tips and methods

Decluttering your home of extra belongings is one of the most important yet difficult tasks to tackle when selling your home.

Maybe you have a year to sort through decades of memories as you downsize and retire. Or maybe you have a few months to sell and relocate across the country for a new job. Depending on the circumstances of your move, your decluttering methods might vary.

While you might not have control over your timeline, prioritize the decluttering process.

“Decluttering before selling isn’t just about making your house look bigger — it’s about helping buyers see themselves in the space,” said Katy Wells, an Asheville, North Carolina-based decluttering expert and author of the forthcoming book "Making Home Your Happy Place: A Real-Life Guide to Decluttering Without the Overwhelm."

“When your home is filled with your stuff, your stories and your life, it’s hard for someone else to imagine theirs there," she added. "You’re not just clearing surfaces; you’re making space for someone else’s vision.”

If you have a year, you might be able to take more time or plan out how you will tackle each room. With six months, you can start with seasonal items you won’t use until you move. In three months or less, the decluttering process might be more intense, but the earlier you start the better.

Collecting clutter is a natural part of living, but it can easily become a problem when not managed. Professional organizers have dedicated their careers to methods, tips and tricks to help people sort through their life’s belongings. When moving, the level of decluttering will change based on whether you are downsizing or moving to a home the same size or bigger.

What you keep and get rid of is ultimately up to you, but decluttering experts have developed questions to help you discern what is important.

Wells offers some guiding questions to help with deciding what to keep and what to give away.

• “‘Have I had the opportunity to use this in the last six months?’ Notice you’re not asking ‘if’ you used it — you’re asking if you even had the chance. If the opportunity was there and you still didn’t reach for it, that tells you something.”
• “‘Do I expect to use or need this in my new home?’ Not ‘might I’ or ‘could I’ — do you actually expect to? If the answer is no, let it go.”

Dana K. White, decluttering expert and author of "Decluttering at the Speed of Life," likes to ask:

• Does it deserve to take up space?

Focus on each room or category at a time. Start with nonessential storage spaces like garages, sheds and attics, and work your way down to the kitchen and living room.

“I prefer a category-based method: group like items together, assess what you use and streamline from there,” said Bridget Flynn, owner of Divine Organizing based in Westport, Connecticut. “It’s efficient and keeps the process focused.”

A common mistake Christian Pfeiffer, professional organizer at Valley Organizing in Phoenix, Arizona, sees is trying to work in too many spaces at once.

“My favorite decluttering method is to pull everything out of the space, lay it out and sort it by category,” Pfeiffer said. “Start on one end and slowly go through each item, deciding whether to keep, donate or trash it.”

White advises people decluttering to sell and move to limit the amount they are packing by only getting the recommended number of boxes for their next home.

“I call this the container concept,” White said. “It’s that spaces are limited and the fact that they are limited is the thing that frees you from making value decisions about ‘Is this a good item? Should I keep it? Will I use it?’ Instead, you say, ‘I have a limited space. ... Does it deserve to take up space?’”

If you are moving from a five-bedroom home to a three-bedroom condo, then get the recommended number of boxes for the condo. If you don’t declutter enough when downsizing, then you might get stuck with too many boxes and no places to unpack them.

Items with emotional value are often hard to declutter. Wells suggests asking yourself: “‘What’s the story I want to keep?’ Jot it down and then ask yourself if you need the item physically to remember that story. Maybe a photo of the item will keep the memory alive.”

“I save sentimental things for last since those are the toughest decisions,” Pfeiffer said. “I guide clients to keep what they truly need to have physically and take photos of the rest.”

White says she treats sentimental items with the same questions as other items: “Does it deserve to take up space?”

“Sort them last and in small batches. Keep a curated selection of the most meaningful pieces and find appropriate ways to store or display them,” Flynn said.