Yesterday I drove by house that has been on the market for several months now. The garage door was open, and I was amazed with what I saw. The stained concrete oklahoma city was jam-packed with stuff.

It is so important to not forget to stage the garage when you stage your home for sale. For the collector or car fanatic, an organized garage will thrill them and make your home stand out from the crowd. Others will value the storage options, some consider a large garage a requirement, while everyone else will just take note as to whether or not it is clean.

A clean garage should be a high priority. Garages can easily become cluttered, so a tidy garage subconsciously implies to a potential buyer that you take excellent care of your home. A clean garage can also give the sense of “freshness” to a property. If the rest of your house is in pristine condition and the garage is a mess, the buyer will assume that you simply cleaned your home for sale, and that the entire house was in garage-like condition before you put it up for sale.

Buyers want a garage that feels spacious. Home staging is all about showing a house in its best condition. If your garage is organized, it will appear spacious. It really needs to be almost empty. A properly staged home will have less furniture, so a properly staged garage will have less stuff. It’s a big no-no to move extra things from your house into the garage. Buyers will look in the garage, too.

Cleaning out your garage is a hefty project, but it can be completed in one day. There is a limit on how much stuff that will be kept in garage. The best plan is to set aside an entire day, get up early, have some Wheaties, and park your vehicles at the end of your driveway. If you don’t have a truck see if you can swap your car for a friend’s truck or rent one for the day.

Begin by pulling out all the items onto the driveway. Group like items together while you move them. Tools in one pile, car care products in another pile, etc. Then make a “dump” and “donate” pile. These piles should be at the end of the driveway because nothing from these piles will go back into the garage. Place the “dump” items on the truck and get rid of that stuff. Then do the same for the “donate” items. Once the dump and donate piles have been taken care of, transfer everything else into a storage unit. The only items that should be brought back into the garage are vehicle maintenance and emergency home repair items.

The key to staging your garage is to neatly store items. Buyers want to see their storage options. Lumber yards sell last season’s kitchen cabinets for a reduced price and they can be hung even in the smallest garages. Make sure you hang the cabinets high so you can add pegboard underneath. Pegboard is inexpensive and will make a fabulous impact.

Baby food jars are great storage containers. Nails, screws, nuts and bolts can all be stored in them with a label indicating the size. Touch up paint can also be kept in baby food containers. Just remember to label which room the jar belongs to. The labeled paint jar can also be brought to the local paint shop to have the color matched in quart or gallon size if necessary.

Give the garage a fresh coat of paint. Typical colors used in the garage include white, gray, blue, green, and yellow. If your budget allows cover exposed beams with drywall, if not paint the exposed beams. The goal is for the garage is to make it appear spacious, bright and tidy. I guarantee a buyer will make a mental note of a garage that is clean and large-looking. They will be “wowed” with the storage options in the garage. So don’t forget to stage your garage when selling your home!