Dawn Isenhower Sibcy Cline Realtors

So he wasn't the Grinch, but he came to my home with boxes-lots of them. He walked into my home with my Realtor (at that time, I was not an agent), she introduced us, and then she left us to do "our work."

He was "the Stager" and he began by taking a tour of my home. We ended our tour where we began-in the kitchen, and he instructed me to start assembling and filling boxes. He climbed up and pulled baskets, vases, and other trinkets from off of my partition wall that separated the kitchen from the great room. That was only the beginning. By the time he was done with my kitchen, I didn't even have a magnet left on the fridge. It reminded me of a scene from "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" where all of the decorations were gone, and there wasn't even a crumb left for the "little Whos' mouses."

He was in and out of my home in less than two hours. I didn't even have time to feel tired until he was gone. There was not a knick-knack left anywhere in my home. I'm lucky that he left a few pictures on the walls. He had transformed my home back into a house-a product that was for sale.

As shocking as it was, it was one of the main reasons that my home sold. I was stunned, and not very happy about it, but when it came time to unpack everything in my next home, I felt a sense of disappointment when I started placing the knick-knacks back on my furniture. I had come to enjoy being able to dust surfaces without moving things out of the way.

When you place your home on the market, please remember that your home is a product that is for sale. It has to be transformed from your home into a house that you are no longer going to live in. While that can be painful for some, it will definitely go a long way toward getting you to your goal of selling and moving on.