Home Stager Meets Grieving Homeowner

A few weeks ago I posted a home staging business dilemma to my blog
asking what home stagers would do if they walked into a home staging
consultation to find a nightmarish scene with cat fur-covered
furniture from the 70s - the place where knick knacks go to die.I
asked what readers would do, knowing that the woman is a widow
grieving not only the loss of her husband but also the loss of the
home they'd shared for many years.As a home stager you must be
comfortable dealing with a grieving homeowner - not necessarily
someone who has lost a loved one, but someone who is having to give up
their home. It really can be a grieving process.This situation, like
many others, requires you to trade your home stager hat for your
therapist hat and respect the emotions of the homeowner. One of the
things I recommend is that you begin with a walk-through of the entire
home before making specific recommendations in any one room. There are
several reasons for doing this, but one of them is that if you keep an
eye on the body language of your client, and listen to what they say
in each room, you'll have an idea which rooms are more sensitive than
others.For example, I was doing a home staging consultation for a
widow who was moving to a new condo. When we got to a study filled
with books, she mentioned this was where her husband had worked and
that this was his library. There was no point in my jumping right into
editing and telling her we needed to style the shelves. She would not
have been responsive and it would have put her on the defensive
throughout the whole staging consultation. Instead, I left this room
until last. By the time we got to it, I had built up a rapport with
her and I could then more gently ease her into the need to pack up her
late husband's books "in preparation for her upcoming move."Here are
other suggestions you can make for the inevitable challenges you will
run into staging a home for a grieving homeowner:Rather than telling
her the knick knacks are tacky, you have to remember they were
probably gifts from grandchildren that have been cherished over the
years. Tell her that because you would hate to see anything happen to
them, you think it's best to pack them up and store them somewhere
safe while the house is on the market.Instead of making a big deal
about the cat fur everywhere, tell her that some buyers may have
allergies to her beloved feline and he should go somewhere else to
stay while the house is being shown.If you have no room in your budget
for rental furniture, tell her how nice it will be to have freshly
cleaned furniture to bring with her to her new house or to hand down
to her grandchildren and suggest a good professional steam cleaning.