Decluttering is always the first step before listing your house for sale. Simply removing excess items can add value by making the rooms feel fresher, cleaner and more spacious. However, you don’t have to be selling to benefit from decluttering. Having fewer belongings that are better organized makes your home feel more peaceful and less stressful. Your daily routine goes more smoothly when everything is in its place and you know where to find what you need.

Autumn is the perfect time to declutter for many people since it is neither too hot nor too cold. These tips will help you get motivated and have your home looking clean and fresh in no time.

Envision Your Home Picture Perfect

Creating a vision of what your house could look like completely organized helps to take the dread out of decluttering. For added inspiration, flip through the pages of a home magazine to see minimalist storage and decor ideas. When you begin the process, focus extra hard on clearing out the clutter from the main focal points of your home.

Imagine walking through your home as though you had never stepped foot inside before. What features do you want to draw attention to? 

You can involve your family members to help. They can help you decide what to keep and what to toss. They may also have ideas on who might appreciate the belongings your family no longer needs.

Whenever you reach a goal, reward yourself with something small, such as a trip out for ice cream or a day at the park.

Looking for even more tips to declutter your home? Look no further!

Plan Before You Start

Everyone has good intentions when it comes to decluttering and getting organized. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always go as planned. All too often, you sort through your items only to get distracted or go on long trips down memory lane. A straightforward plan of action will help you stay on track.

To start, get a package of labels and plenty of sharpies. A stack of clear plastic bins will help as you can see what’s in them without lifting their lids. If your budget is tight, cardboard boxes will do the trick, but everything must be clearly labelled. This stops you from having to rifle through the boxes after they are packed away.

We recommend seven boxes to help you get and stay organized:

1. Things to organize – (For items you intend to keep but need to find a permanent home for.)
2. Think about it: (A “think on it” box will give you time to decide without adding to your clutter.)
3. Repair
4. Recycle
5. Trash
6. Donate 
7. Sell

Decluttering is the first step to preparing your home for a successful sale. Here are some other resources that will help:

• How to Maximize Your Sale with the Help of a Real Estate Agent
• What the Latest Interest Rate Hike Might Mean for Milton Real Estate
• Our Top 7 First-Time Seller FAQs

Take it Step by Step

A slow and steady approach is a surefire way to beat overwhelm. Breaking the task down into small steps makes it easy to fit into your busy schedule. It won’t take long until you notice a difference. Here are some small, daily tasks that will quickly help you cut down on clutter:

• Clean off one counter
• Organize one drawer or cupboard
• Fill one garbage bag with articles to donate
• Throw out one item per week

Get Off the Fence

When decluttering, everyone faces the issue of wanting to hold on to something even though they’re not using it and no longer need it. A few keepsakes are okay here and there. The problem arises when your house becomes full of things you’re just not quite ready to part with. Incidentally, this is also why so many homes have “junk drawers,” closets and sometimes even entire rooms. This is where your “think on it box” comes in. You can put these items you’re on the fence about out of sight until you decide what to do.

You may have useful items that no friend or family member wants, but you know someone in your community can use them. Kijiji or freecycle.org are great places to list these items to see if they get any attention.

If you’re really not sure if you want to dispose of something, put it in storage. If you haven’t gone looking for it within six months, it may be time to throw it out.

Thinking about downsizing? Here are 5 reasons to consider it.

Make a Day of it

A slow and steady approach is the best solution for some people, but everyone is different. Others will get better results with an intense method that gets the process over with quickly. Set aside a weekend and dedicate it to your decluttering project. Go room by room and remove everything from all closets, cabinets, and cupboards. 

Bedrooms: Place all your clothing on the bed and sort by type. Many of your clothes may be seasonal, but if you haven’t worn them in over a year, consider donating them.

Kitchen: This is one of the toughest rooms to declutter because it gets the most use. Going overboard and throwing away too much can leave you searching for items or rushing to the store for a replacement. It pays to dedicate more time to the heart of the house. Go through your drawers and cabinets and sort everything by how often you use them, daily, weekly, or monthly. If you can’t remember the last time you used it, into the donate box it goes!

Pay attention to tables and countertops: If you’re not careful, any flat surface becomes a catchall where mail, flyers and other papers pile up. Keeping an under-the-counter trash and recycle bin can help you stay organized.

The living room: For most families, the living room is the second most used room in the house. Luckily, it’s easier to keep organized than the kitchen. Still, small items like remotes, video game controllers, toys, and other knick knacks can pile up over time. When committing to a deep clean, pull out all of the toys, games, candles and small electronics and ask yourself:

• Does it work?
• Is it duplicated? (One remote may work on multiple devices)
• Do I use it often enough to justify keeping it?

Maintain Your Results

Getting your house cleaned and decluttered from top to bottom is an outstanding accomplishment. The trick now is to maintain it. Forming habits like opening and sorting mail and immediately putting your clothes and shoes in the closet will help. Bringing your family together to brainstorm ideas can make the transformation easier and more fun. Best of all, you’ll come home every day to a space that is welcoming and free of distractions.

Is there a move coming up soon? Our webinar is perfect for first time buyers or anyone who has been out of the market for a while. Best of all, it’s free! Sign up here.

During the restrictive lockdowns of 2020, most Realtors® across the GTA and Ontario recognized that they needed to pivot their business to help cater to an increasingly online demographic. Although real estate is considered an essential service and home showings were permitted during the lockdown, many agents decided to take a more digital approach to showcase properties. This meant investing more in high-end photography, video, and virtual tours.

As COVID cases in Ontario decline, many buyers and sellers are feeling more comfortable with the idea of entering a stranger’s home for a showing or an open house. In fact, the province also recently announced that open houses are now permissible under new guidelines, although, our team still prefers to avoid them for now. However, things are not completely back to normal in our area. There are many things we need to do to ensure our clients are safe, comfortable, and confident during showings.

Here are a few of the things we’re doing to make sure your next in-person home showing in Milton is a smooth, enjoyable experience — whether you’re a buyer or a seller.

At the Barnett Real Estate Team, we’ve been following the latest COVID-19 safety protocols since the start of the pandemic. To learn more, read about What We Are Doing To Keep Our Clients Safe here.

We Typically Start Online

For our buyer clients, we suggest starting off your home showing process virtually. We call this stage our Market Education stage, and it takes place after our initial consultation. Once we’ve established a solid understanding of the types of properties you’re interested in, we present the listings we believe you’ll feel excited about via our virtual Market Education stage.

Here, we’ll detail all of the important features of each listing we’ve identified for you during an in-depth digital presentation and discussion. We’ll sort out what you like about the properties, what you dislike about the properties, and further inform you about the current state of the listings market to help you gain a better understanding of what you’re most likely to find available.

Once we’ve found a listing of interest that you want to view in more detail, we’ll book an in-person showing with the selling party. This way, we not only save on time by not having to physically visit each listing, but things are also much safer for everyone involved.

If you’re thinking about buying a home, you deserve to feel confident that your Realtor® is always looking out for your best interests. Learn more about How We Help Buyers here.

Showing Time Slots

No matter if you’re a buyer viewing a home in person or a seller navigating through the home showings process, every in-person home showing must follow a pre-established time slot guideline.

While this is no new invention in the world of real estate, gone are the days of mass open houses (for our team, anyway) and loosely scheduled showing periods. Today, we need to respect rigid rules need for the benefit of everyone’s health and safety.

The new guidelines are simple — there can only be one showing at a time with solely the potential buyers and their real estate representative present. Additionally, the showings must respect a 30-minute time block, with no overlap between showings.

Are you planning on selling your home for the first time? You’ve probably got a lot of questions. Read through Our Top 7 First Time Seller FAQs here, or Contact Us here to ask us anything more specific.

How to Prepare for a Showing for Sellers

When acting as listing agents, our team also insists on conducting a stringent set of COVID safety measures during each in-person home showing. No matter who they are, each person who enters a listing we’re showcasing must follow our precautionary measures.

For starters, face masks are mandatory for anyone on the premises. Additionally, we also place hand sanitizer dispensers at the primary entryway of the home and in other high-traffic areas as well.

Should there be any specific items or areas within a home the seller doesn’t want visiting potential buyers to touch, we place clear “No Touching” signs near or on them.

Selling a home is no easy task, even if it isn’t your first time around. To see how we help make the entire home selling process easier for our clients, learn more about how we help sellers from the link below or via our Seller’s Guide.

• How We Help Sellers
• Get Our Seller’s Guide

Your Home Away From Home

In order to mitigate the number of people present during a home showing, we always require our selling clients to leave their homes while potential buyers are viewing the property in person. Sometimes it’s just for a few hours, or occasionally it can be for the better part of a day or two.

However, in some instances, when our selling clients have an extensive amount of home showings scheduled over the course of a short period of time we’ll extend our services to find more comfortable accommodations for them that better suit the time period which they’ll be away from home for.

For example, should a selling client need to vacate their homes for a weekend, we would explore the option of putting them up in a hotel room nearby for the duration of their showings. We find this not only alleviates stress levels for our sellers but also allows us to not have to worry as much about timing issues from visiting buyers.

From a health and safety standpoint, knowing our selling clients are far away from any potential exposure to COVID during their home showings also offers us a lot of peace of mind. And from our client’s perspective, they’re able to enjoy the convenience of staying in one stable location during the showing process, which is especially meaningful to them if they have kids, pets, or work from home.

At the end of the day, it’s our goal to ensure all of our clients feel as safe, satisfied, and happy when working with us a possible.

Whether you want to buy or sell a home, the job of a professional Realtor ® is to make your entire experience as easy and enjoyable as possible. Learn more about Why You Should Work With a Realtor® here.

Milton has long been known as one of the fastest-growing communities in the country. Why are so many home buyers flocking here? It could have something to do with the picture-perfect mix of homes, or the area’s natural beauty. It could also be Milton’s ultra-convenient amenities, or its friendly sense of community. The truth is, there are so many reasons to move to this corner of the world—and every new resident has their own!

Learn why living in Milton just might be the perfect option for and your family in our guide to the town…

Milton at a glance

If you’re looking to put down roots in a quiet, family-friendly community, Milton might be the ideal fit. First off, there’s the quality of local education. There are some top-notch learning environments in this town, including Anne J MacArthur Public School and Guardian Angels Catholic School (both of which receive high rankings from the reputable Fraser Institute).

Along with fantastic local schools, Milton is home to impressive library branches, a fascinating museum, a well-attended farmers market, and a handful of must-attend events (like the Downtown Milton Street Festival).

Town amenities

One of the best things about living in Milton is the convenient lifestyle it offers. Whether you’re looking to furnish a home office, buy some fashionable new duds, or simply stock up on supplies, the conveniences you need are just a short drive away.

In the downtown business district, you’ll find everything from ice cream shops to hair salons to jewellery stores. The Milton Mall, which boasts a variety of well-known retailers, is another popular option. At some point, you should also visit the outlets, which offer everything from high-end luxury to day-to-day essentials (you’ll find many of them along Steeles Avenue).

When it comes to dining out, you won’t be disappointed. Milton’s restaurants offer consistently tasty fare—and plenty of atmosphere. Standouts include Pasqualino’s (for from-scratch Italian dishes made with seasonal ingredients),, the Green Eatery (for flavourful vegan), and Luigi’s Lasagna and Pizzeria (when only comfort food will do!)

Outdoor spaces

Milton residents are blessed with easy access to some pretty incredible outdoor spaces. A fifteen-minute drive away, you’ll find Crawford Lake Conservation Area, home to 232 hectares of pristine forests and waterfront. Hilton Falls Conservation Area is about the same distance from town. This stunning jewel in Halton Region boasts attractive trails and magical waterfalls.

Other places to get up close and personal with nature include Kelso Conservation Area and Rattlesnake Point. If you’re looking to get outdoors but want to stay closer to home, visit one of the many green spaces here in Milton (such as McDougall, Livingston, or Coxe Boulevard Parks, among others).

Getting around

Quick access to the 401 and 407 allows Milton residents to travel with ease. Between the two of these highways, you can connect to the GTA, Mississauga, Burlington, Oakville, London, Kitchener, and many other communities in this part of Ontario.

If you’re not a motorist, you’re still in luck. Whether you need to get around Halton Region or go further (to Toronto, Hamilton, or elsewhere), Go Transit can get you there. Head to the local station on Main Street East to catch a ride, and check out the map to see the many places served by this convenient commuter train line.

Milton real estate

If you decide to buy a home here, you’ll find plenty of options. From the historic houses of Old Milton to the shiny new-builds in Harrison, there are many well-appointed living spaces to choose from. If you’re looking for something at a lower price point (or you simply don’t need all the space that a single-family home has to offer), consider a local condo or townhouse.

Typically, single-family homes in Milton are above $700,000. It’s true that the average price is rising, and many beautiful local properties now hover around the $1 million mark. That said, your money will still go much further in Milton than it does in markets like Toronto or Vancouver—which is worth keeping in mind if your family could use some extra space to spread out. When you’re ready to find the right home, neighbourhood, and price, a knowledgeable local agent can help at every step.