The Next Stage: making your environment fit the new you!
Updated: Feb 12, 2018
To my surprise, staging became the solution for people starting a new stage, or season, of their lives. Empty-nesters, couples who were “retiring and retreading,” people starting a new career, a person who may be new to physical challenges – many people are changing in so many ways but they want to stay in their current living space.
How? By coming alongside them and staging their homes with a fresh eye on their surroundings, their belongings, and their new needs.
Two Examples
A couple worked for 40 years in typical industries. As they approached retirement, she, overweight and fearful, found a way to overcome that fear, lost over 100 pounds, and then wrote and published a book. Now, in demand as a speaker, she and her husband travel during the week and want their home to be a place of respite, not maintenance.
As a stager, I show them how to rid their home of clutter, reclaim spaces for new uses, and re-color their home with their favorite shades of their most restful vacation spot, the beach. Of course, we do not resort to theme-based ideas, just the ambience.
I also help them learn that they can keep their collections of small items of sentimental value (like shells, vacation souvenirs, porcelain figurines) but just pack them up and rotate one out at a time.
Their home becomes a welcoming retreat from the road, they are re-energized and not exhausted upon entering their home, and they get to live in a more maintenance-free place so that they do not feel guilty about unfinished repairs after a long week on the road.
2. A single person just graduates from college. He is leaving his college roommates behind in the rental home they al
l shared (it still looked like a dorm room!), with piece-meal furniture, music instruments in the family room, two sectional sofas in the living room, and a foosball table in the dining room. We see that he is renting a home for a year or two with a roommate, while they both
get used to a new career, schedule, and lifestyle. I take their new rental space, analyze their needs, use what I can of their old furniture and linens, and help them create a cost-efficient, cohesive home with very little time and effort. I also work with them on a maintenance routine that they share, so that they do not spend a lot of time on keeping their space beautiful. As well, the two young men are shown how they can use these starter pieces of quality furnishings now, and later, mix them
with new purchases for a cohesive, stylish look. Result: they now get to live in a much more stylish space, worthy of the new “grown-up-with-a-career” that they can be proud of. Entertaining is now a breeze, and their living space is finished so that they can concentrate on their work, travel, and friends.