You should expect potential homebuyers to comb through every part of your property when your home is on the market, especially storage in the kitchen. This means your cabinets will be under scrutiny. Before listing your home, consider these two important things to toss from your cabinets to showcase storage space and a fresh appearance.
Take-out menus, old mail, and condiment packets
From time to time we all develop a junk drawer in the kitchen. That one drawer that won’t open without a strong yank because it’s filled to the top with a vintage collection of take-out menus from an untold number of Saturday nights, game nights, and movie nights of ordering in. The drawer where you stash all of the mail you say you’ll look at later—but not right now. Well, your home is about to go on the market and it’s time to jettison the junk.
Here’s what to do. Since most restaurants have an online presence simply check out their menus online and discard your old paper menus—along with any new ones if they arrive with future deliveries.
While you’re tossing those menus, take a look at all of the pieces of mail you’ve amassed in that drawer. If those unopened items have gone unread for months, chances are most are probably irrelevant by now and need to become acquainted with a paper shredder.
And, while you’re at it, toss all of those long-forgotten packets of ketchup, mustard, soy sauce, mayo, and jelly that are probably clogging some other drawer. Don’t worry, you’ll get more—but you won’t get another chance to make a first impression on buyers.
Old dish rags
If you keep your day-to-day dish towels visible—some people drape them over a cabinet door below the sink or thread them through a cabinet pull—and they are dingy, swap them out for new ones.
When your house goes on the market you don’t want details like tattered dish towels and grungy sponges to undermine an otherwise clean and attractive kitchen. So before your home is listed, invest in new dish towels, sponges, and other such items, and keep the others out of sight.
