How to Survive Selling Your House with Kids

Selling a house is never easy, but with kids it can be even harder! We did it, and have tips for how to survive selling your house with kids.

From what to do with toys and how to clean fast to getting your house to sell quickly so you don’t have to go through it for long! These are the things that got us through all the unpredictable showing and keeping our house clean and sanity in tact with kids!

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It has been two years now since we first decided to sell our house. How does the time go so fast!? I still feel like we just moved into our new house!

I think I had been thinking about moving since our kids were born. We lived in a small rambler that I bought just before my husband and I got engaged. Three years later, we had five of us living in that little house.

Finally, we decided to have a realtor over to let us know what we could sell our house for after all the improvements we made. The answer was enough to have us start the process that same day. What a whirlwind!

Moving is not an easy process – although, I did learn some tips for moving, making a small house look bigger, acing a home inspection, and small fixes to help your house sell fast.

The most difficult part about the process was doing it all with kids!

Everyone’s life is thrown into a bit of an upheaval while you’re decluttering, packing, and staging. The kids still make a mess regardless of whether you have a showing in the next few minutes. In addition to that, those showings can be sprung on you so fast! We all know it’s nearly impossible to get kiddos out the door quickly, not to mention leave the house looking spotless as you go out the door. Don’t worry, I have a tip for that! 

Also read: New House Sneak Peek Tour!

How to survive selling your house with kids

Keeping a spotless house and leaving at a moments notice can seem incredibly daunting when you have kids, but it is possible! You just have to have a few things in order and a couple tricks up your sleeve.

Find a storage space

The best tip I can give for anyone selling their house is to make arrangements for storage of a huge portion of your stuff. Clutter – even if you don’t think you have much – kills the look of a house to potential buyers.

If you are selling your house with kids, chances are you have a lot of stuff. It’s just a given!

We rented a semi-trailer and completely filled it to the top before our house was listed. It was so simple. They dropped off the trailer, picked it up once filled, and delivered it to our new house when we moved in.

You wouldn’t believe how much of that stuff you don’t need. Hello, Marie Kondo! When the truck was delivered to our new house I almost didn’t even want to bring that clutter back into the house.

Also Read: Moving Must-Haves: tips and tricks

Create a catch-all box

This is the absolute most important tip I can give parents to survived selling your house with kids! Find a large box or laundry basket and have it ready at all times.

Then, when you get the call that someone is coming for a showing in a half hour you can get the kids ready and throw everything in that box and take it with you.

Any toys the kids were playing with, any bills dropped on the counter, electronics, papers from school, even the lounge clothes you just changed out of. Throw it in the box and deal with it when you get home.

Speaking of electronics and bills left on the counter… I always had a bag or box of personal items I didn’t want left in the house during showings. We carried around our mail and other day-to-day things. We also left important documents and jewelry or expensive items with my parents.

Toy Rotation

With all the clutter cleared out a toy rotation really helps. Keep a small amount of toys at home during this time. Keep them organized in boxes or bins for showings.

It can really help to keep the toys up in the kids’ closets or somewhere out of reach and only bring out a few choices at a time. Then, when the kids are tired of those, switch them out for a couple others that seem new again. It’s so much easier to keep on top of the cleaning this way!

It’s amazing how much more the kids actually play with their toys when there are fewer of them! Also, the other things they’ll find to fill their time! It’s another one of those things where you may realize less is more and you’d like to keep things this way!

Also read: Staging tips to make a small house look bigger and sell!

Plan a lot of outings

The easiest way to get out of your house each time there is a showing is to just plan to be away from the house more often. You can’t mess up a house that you don’t spend any time in.

During the time that your home is listed, make more plans to be out of the house. Go out to eat more often, visit relatives, spend time at the park… It can be so difficult to go through the upheaval of short-notice showings, getting the house clean after the kids play or dinner is made, and going about your life. Making plans outside the home just makes it easier overall.

Also read: 5 Steps to get your house ready for a home inspection

Do everything you can to help your house sell fast!

We were fortunate enough to only have to live this way for about a week. We listed our house quickly just before the weekend, had one open house and many showings, and we had four offers by the time the weekend was over.

The reason we didn’t have to go through this process for so long is because we worked really hard to have our house ready for someone else to move in. I talked about this in more detail when I shared our tips for getting your house to sell fast. Essentially, it comes down to clearing out nearly everything, having your house in good shape by anticipating and taking care of problems buyers may have, and just looking at your home through buyers’ eyes.

The more you can do before your home is listed, the less time you have to spend in limbo. I don’t know if any tips I could give would tell you how to survive selling your house with kids, if you have to go through this process for months! I couldn’t do it!

The key is to have your house as ready as it can be so the selling process and all the showings are over before you know it!

Also read: Small Fixes to Sell Your House Fast!

Have you gone through the process of selling a home before?

How about selling your home with kids? Tell us about it in the comments! Share your tips for how to survive selling your house with kids!