After pricing, preparing the home for listing and maintaining the home for showings are the most important functions of the homeowner.  The process is often overwhelming, even for the most efficient homeowner.  Thankfully, there is an app for that! 

HomeRoutines is an app for scheduling household productivity and closely follows Flylady methodology.  If you are unfamiliar with Flylady, the site can be overwhelming.  The HomeRoutines app breaks it down and makes it easier to follow. You clean/purge/organize “zones” of your home each week of the month, in 15 minute increments — every month.  Flylady also encourages morning and evening routines to keep your home organized and clean.  These philosophies adhere closely to those of  home staging and organizing.  The end result is that your home is show-ready at a moment’s notice. 

I’ll break down how to use the app by sharing the 4 sections I primarily use :

#1.  You can enter any daily reminder in this section.  Once entered, it will reset itself each week.  Or you can set new reminders. I’ve chosen a laundry schedule — and who doesn’t battle the laundry beast?  If you choose to tame it by doing a load or two daily, my schedule goes like this:

#2.  These are the ever-important (customizable) morning and evening schedules:

Notice the 15 minute timer at the bottom.  The theory is that you spend no more than 15 minutes completing each task.  Realistic? Not always, but you will often have time to spare.  Also, when a task is complete, clicking the star to the left of each task marks it as “done”.

#3.  This is the zone of the week.  Again, completely customizable to your home and needs.  I’ll show you more of this in a bit.

#4.  “All Zones” is somewhat self-explanatory.  This is simply the section in which you list your zones.  The beauty of this is, you set it up once and each month it resets itself — whether you accomplished a single task the month before or not.   If you miss something one month, you can pick it up the next.  These are mine:

Lastly, these are the task details for each zone as mentioned in #3:

 
Oy, I see that much of these screen shots were cut off in the grabs, but you get the idea.  For more detail, check out Flylady’s Fly Zones, Morning Routine, and Evening Routine. Again, the site is messy and cheesy — which is only slightly ironic for an organization site — but it has fantastic systems.

Disclaimer #1: Do I actually follow this to a “T”? No. But I’ve been a Flylady fan for 10+ years and know that my life flows more easily when I do.  Do I suggest that home sellers follow it to a “T”? Yes. Or a close facsimile. In a hyper-buyer market such as we’re experiencing, showing notices are shortened drastically. I’ve not delved into the psychology of it much, but buyers are not being overly considerate. It’s imperative to have your home show-ready at all times. The purpose of Flylady is to avoid “CHAOS — Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome”. Your goal is to have ANYONE over at ANYTIME.

Disclaimer #2: None of these ideas are original to me or blountology. Even the laundry schedule was copied and improvised to suit my needs. All good Realtors® understand the need for systems for success — some of us need a little more “assistance” than others …