“How am I going to get rid of all this stuff?”

October 26, 2010 By
This is the question that I most often hear when I meet with home staging clients and help them prepare their house to be in showing condition. Unless you are a minimalist, and most of us are not, we accumulate furniture, accessories, grandma’s old antique clock, and children’s out grown items. You name it, I’ve seen it in someone’s, garage, closet or basement.
We hate to get rid of these possessions, but we don’t use them any longer, and you hate to just throw them out. A yard sale is not an option due to time, energy or enthusiasm and you really hate to donate some thing’s, when you know that you may be able to sell these things and put a little bit of “green” in your pocket.

One solution to this particular problem is to contact a consignment shop. Located in Historical Newnan, GA, next to Scott’s Bookstore, you will find one of the most charming shops on the square. Owner Janet Elliott Cantrell will make it easy and take the take the drudgery out of selling your unneeded items in her shop, Encore Decor.

I sat down with Janet to ask her a few questions about how all of this works;

Who is your buyer or seller? My seller is someone needing to downsize or either they are remodeling or moving. The buyers are usually new home buyers, newlyweds, anyone furnishing 2nd homes at the beach, lake or mountains.

What are your best selling items? The best selling items, without question are the accessories and home decor. We sell a great many items as gifts for birthdays and weddings. Furniture usually involves return visits for measurements, etc. We offer gift registry for brides and also keep individual gift cards for our regular customer to include in the gift.

Where do you find your merchandise? 90% of our merchandise comes from consignors. I can either go see what they want to sell or they bring items to me at the shop. The shop was full when we first opened with consigner items. People would stop in when they were walking buy and ask what we were doing and they started bringing their treasures in for us to sell.

How does it work? commissions? etc. If someone has enough to warrant a personal visit to their home, I’ll go and choose the higher quality items or they can bring things to the shop. It’s helpful if the seller knows how much they want to net off of a piece. If I think that I can bring it back and sell it, we offer a 50/50 split between us and the consigner.

Give us a good example of comparing consignment shop purchases to regular retail. With consignment shop purchase you’ll find unique items not found at retail stores, or the prices will be greatly reduced from anywhere to 1/3 to 1/2 of retail. And with consignment shop items, there’s always a story behind every piece. In Newnan, people will make purchase on items just because it used to belong to someone special that they knew in the community.

How is this different than say, a flea market or yard sale? The main difference is the setting of the store, the way everything is displayed in an appealing manner, we’re located in Historic Downtown Newnan and a lot of my customers are walking around our beautiful town and stop in to see us …..I wouldn’t get near the traffic that I do if I were on Bullsboro or a busy road somewhere.

What are you looking for when you take on a consignment piece? Unique items that can either be updated with a fresh coat of paint or stain, one-of-a- kind pieces that you won’t find in retail stores. We also have great local artist work in the shop. We are the exclusive shop in Newnan that offer one artist unique pencil renderings of Historical Newnan or Atlanta landmarks.

So the next time you either want to unload unwanted furniture or find that special piece at a fraction of what something would cost new, go see Janet at Encore Decor.

To see how you can furnish an entire room using consignment furniture and accessories, be sure to visit the:

Decorators Show House
November 20th
74 Jackson Street
Newnan, Ga 30263

Filed Under: consignment shop, de-clutter, Encore Decor Newnan, Georgia, Historic Newnan, home staging client

Good News, Bad News

April 9, 2009 By

Good News: Spring is here! The flowering trees are gorgeous and the birds are building nest for their babies.

Bad News: The pollen is intense and the birds often build their nest in areas where their not welcome, such as at the front door or in the garage.

We have to take the bad with the good, don’t we?

When you begin the process of placing your house on the market, you have to take the bad with the good. The house will be listed and marketed by a professional agent that you chose to suit your needs, however you have to start working to get the house ready. And let me tell you, it can be a daunting task.

Staging your house to sell is more than just cleaning and de-cluttering, although that is a huge part of preparation. Its about being “cut to the chase” honest with yourself and making the decision to edit the things in your space that make it feel like home.

Once you decide to sell the house, it stops being your home. It becomes a commodity that you are selling and you have to make it as appealing as possible to attract a larger pool of buyers. That means removing personal photos, changing that themed “Star Wars” bedroom to a more neutral palette and hiding the daily signs of everyday life in the kitchen, bathrooms and laundry rooms. It means that the furniture will need to be re-arranged to show off the selling features of the room, not leaving it where it is because it works for you.

Having a third person come in (professional home staging consultant) and look at your space objectively is more affordable than one would think. Most staging companies offer a variety of services at different price points for potential clients. Most consultants offer a “walk n talk” consultation beginning at $150.oo and the home owners do the work themselves, or they can hire the consultant to do the work for 1/2 day, full day or what ever it takes to make the house marketable. Consultants can take the home sellers accessory’s and arrange them so that once a buyer walks in the room, there will be an emotional connection. This is often a skill that the average home owner doesn’t have because it is so difficult to disassociate themselves from the home where they have built memories.

It is well worth the investment to hire the services of a home staging consultant to help you with the preparation of your home. Why wouldn’t a home seller want to increase the chances of selling their house by making such and investment?

Filed Under: cleaning, de-clutter, editing, home seller, Home Staging, Home Staging Newnan, re-arrange, real estate agent, selling features

Happy New Year

January 3, 2009 By

It’s time to pack up the Christmas and Holiday decorations, get organized and live in a less cluttered environment. While you are putting away your decorations, consider going through them and culling out the ones that you haven’t used or put out in a few years.

If your house was on the market during the holidays, this is an excellent time to start packing for your move. Go through and ask yourself if you have used them over the last few years and if not, get rid of them to show off the “great storage” space that your home has to offer a potential buyer.
Donate decorations to local charities so that others may enjoy them over the next years. If you have been saving your adult children’s “special” ornaments over the years, it’s time to let them have the decorations for their homes and families.

My sister, who is great at cleaning out her closets, basement and such, suggest creating a memory box. Each member only gets one box and once your box is full, you have to get rid of something before you can add anymore “memories”.

So, push up your sleeves and get in there and start organizing and de-cluttering. You’ll be so proud of yourself when you see how much easier it is to get to the decorations next year.

Talk later,
Nan

P.S. Why is it so hard to get motivated to un-decorate the house for the Holidays than it is to decorate it?

Filed Under: de-clutter, holiday decorations, Home Staging, organize, storage