If you've ever had to take over tidying a home to get it ready for a showing or an open house, you already know how challenging it is for sellers to get a home ready for sale and keep it that way.

While it certainly seems easier to just bulldoze many homes and start over, a major clean-up makes most homes look fairly attractive and presentable.

The idea is to get buyers to look at the home, without being distracted by clutter, smells, and other horrors.

Unfortunately, that clutter and those smells are often unnoticed by your sellers, so you have to make a specific list of things they should do to make their make-ready tasks easier. Tell them it's time to spring-clean, and help them organize ways to do it.

What might using the term spring cleaning work? It conveys a fresh start. It's work the seller might have done anyway, should he ever get around to it.

You have to help sellers focus on the fact that before they move to that bigger home or that snazzy townhouse, they have to organize what to throw away and what to clean, just like anyone does while spring cleaning. And there are only three ways to do it: keep it, donate it or throw it away.

Why not sell it? Conventional wisdom suggests that encouraging a seller to have a garage sale will appeal to their entrepreneurial side and need for cash. All it really does is give them something else to organize, which could still leave them with a lot of junk to donate, give away or throw away. A garage sale can also delay getting the home on the market as your seller waits for the right weekend, the right weather, etc. So, don't waste your time or theirs. If they do want to sell stuff, that's their business, but don't suggest it.

Here are some tips you can share with your sellers to help them get organized:

• Start with the new place in mind

  If you are going to downsize, redecorate, or make other big changes, you will have a lot of stuff you don't need or want anymore. This will help you organize items into your three useful categories: keep, donate, throw away.

  Ask yourself as you handle each item in your home from old clothing to tabletop nim-nims, do you really picture that item in your new home? Is there a place for it? Isn't the move a perfect excuse to get rid of Aunt Betsy's cross-stitch sampler "Work Is A Virtue"?

• Eat an elephant a bite at a time

  Start with your least favorite, or messiest room. Start with a list that you can go through systematically, like: tabletops, closets, under the bed. That way each one can be checked off with a satisfying flourish as you make progress.

  Clear all tabletops first, using your keep, donate or throw away rule. Next, clean out the closets, and so on. Throw away as you go along by actually taking bags of trash to the dumpster. That way you won't be tempted to keep things that should be ditched.

  Nothing worse that guilt-jerking inanimate objects, anyway. Don't you have enough relatives to do this?

• Ask yourself, "Do I want to pay someone $25 to move this?"

  This question is enormous help when weighing sentimental items, or items you think you might need but don't use very often.

  By the time movers calculate the number of floors they are moving you in and out of, the size of your rooms, weight of your furniture, and the number of boxes you'll be packing away, $25 per item may not be that far off the mark. Little things add up to boxes and boxes add up to labor. You want to move as few boxes of belongings as comfortably possible.

  You'll be surprised at how much you own that isn't worth $25.

• Use the one-year rule to get rid of clutter

  It's hard to predict what you are going to need, but it's very safe to assume that if you haven't worn an article of clothing, or read that paperback in a year, that no harm will come to give it away or throw it out.

  Ignore Murphy's other law that as soon as you throw it out, you'll need it. Murphy will hit you with "what can go wrong, will go wrong," anyway.

• Leave little or nothing on tabletops or counters

  It may take some time, but you can get used to clean counter and tabletops. Train yourself to throw out junk mail and old newspapers and magazines. You'll be surprised at how liberating it is.

• Pretend you're a spy; no personal possessions to be left sitting out

  The assassin from M.O.V.E. has found your lair - or did he? Leave no personal photos or mementoes sitting out, and he'll never know. Personal possessions are a distraction for buyers. Don't give them unnecessary information. Need to know basis, only, eh, Bond?

• Clean thoroughly

  That means windows, doorways, and other cobweb traps, and you're done.

So how is it that make ready is like spring cleaning? They're identical. The only difference is in make ready, you add repairs. When the repairs are done, the house is ready to present to the world.

Sometimes all a seller needs is a plan and some encouragement along the way.

Published: April 1, 2004

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.