The first in what will hopefully be a short-lived series on our house selling and buying experience:
Tip #1 for keeping a house clean for buyers yet tolerable for pre-schoolers: Buckets. Lots of buckets. I favor the 35-pound cat-litter pails from our local warehouse store. (In truth, I’d been saving the empties for a while without knowing exactly what to do with them.) Sort out all your child’s toys into the buckets and stash in a closet. We’re using the bottom of our kitchen pantry since the kitchen is where most of the daily play occurs. You can take out a bucket at a time and quickly throw things back in if a Realtor calls with a prospective buyer.
We even took his precious Thomas train set and put it into a bucket. The train table went into the basement for the duration, but we kept a train play mat rolled up in the pantry. It’s easy to set up a track layout on the mat and break it down in a jiffy.
A few things don’t fit into the buckets. We have a temporary fire station set up in the bottom of our coat closet, with two hook-and-ladders and a pumper truck. So far, our son doesn’t seem to mind the rearrangement too much, and in fact seems to enjoy rediscovering his “hidden” toys. Let’s hope we sell the house before the excitement wears off.
