Interior designers and home stagers can supply you with the best ways to care for your home. Enjoy our cleaning tips that will help you make your furniture look it’s best and prepare your home for sale:

Blood - Cover the stain immediately with a cornstarch and cold water paste. Lightly rub the mixture and place the peice in the sun to dry. The sun and starch will pull the stain out. Brush off the powder. Repeat if necessary.

Candle Wax - Soften wax with a warm hair dryer then scrape off excess. Use paper towels, water, and vinegar to remove remaining wax.

Chrome - Clean with a lint free cloth and ammonia.

Cotton Upholstery - Remove soil by rubbing with an artgum eraser, available in art or craft stores.

Glass Tables - To remove small scratches, rub a small amount of toothpaste and wipe away excess. For a natural cleaner, use lemon juice and dry with newspaper.

Glue - To remove glue from furniture rub with vegetable or mineral oil.

Grease and Oil - Pour salt on immediately grease spills to absorb and prevent a stain. Talcum powder or cornstarch can be used  instead but need rubbed into the spot. Let the spill soak into the salt or powder then wipe up or vacuum up excess.

Leather Upholstery - Lemon oil or saddle soap are good cleansers.

Marble Tables - Stains on marble can be cleaned up by scouring with a paste made of baking soda and water. Let the mixture stand for a few minutes then remove with warm water. Or sprinkle salt onto a cut lemon and rub the lemon on the stained area. Rinse with warm water.

For more furniture care tips check out Part 2.

Space sells. In home staging one of the goals is to make small spaces seem more… well… spacious. Here are some tips to make a small room seem bigger.

1. Clear out the clutter! We can’t reinforce this enough. Less is more. If a shelf is completely full then nothing on it stands out and it gives the impression that there is not an inch of spare space. A buyer will think that there is no room for their belongings in the home. Pack up the collections. Create small groupings of two or three items and have tons of free space to show off shiny surfaces. Which leads me to the next tip…
2. Make it shine, all of it. Surfaces should sparkle and reflect light. Pearly or light paints on walls are another bonus. We’ve all heard that light paint makes rooms look larger. It’s tried and true.
3. How about making walls look taller? Make the room look bigger still by hanging window treatments as close to the ceiling as possible all the way down to the floor. It is very dramatic!
4. Clean your windows (everything shines and sparkles remember). Be sure to let in the light and expand the view by opening blinds and curtains during showings. Views and space help sell a home.
5. This is one people have trouble with, make sure the furniture is to scale with the room. Too big of furniture can dominate a room. Too small can look cheap or out of place. Make sure there is space to walk with a good traffic pattern. Professional interior designers and home stagers will choose the right furniture for the room and arrange it in the best way possible.

I got this great little info packet in the mail from The Summit/Akron Solid Waste Management Authority this week and thought I would share. I thought that reading it out loud would reinforce my recycling efforts in my home. I hope these figures made enough impact on my family members and will on you as well.

• Recycling one aluminum can save the energy equivalent to six ounces of gasoline.
• The energy saved by recycling steel each year is enough to meet the annual electric need of 20% of American households.
• Recycling one ton of plastic saves the energy equivalent to 1,000 to 2,000 gallons of gasoline.
• Making new glass from recycled glass reduces air pollution by 20% and water pollution by 50%.
• Recycling creates almost 5 times as many jobs as waste disposal - in fact, recycling supports 1.1 million jobs in the U.S.

Gas prices are high here in Ohio and they have everyone grumbling. The economy isn’t looking too good either. So if we can make an impact on gas prices, create jobs, and make our skies a little bluer, then what are Summit County homeowners waiting for?

Say goodnight to hotel wake up calls and blaring alarm clocks and say good morning to HiH66 by Hotel Technologies.  Alarm clock, iPod player, and radio all in one, now you can wake up or fall asleep to your own music while on the road. Bonus - it even charges your iPod or iPod shuffle when it is docked in one of the stations. Plus it resets daily so you won’t be disturbed by yesterday’s out of town guest’s settings. Similar products are also available for your home without the single day alarm setting. It’s simple, sleek design is easy to use and goes with any decor.

Women are the top consumers, holiday season or not. So well designed stores and savvy salespeople and real estate agents use marketing strategies to appeal to their number one customers… the ladies. Females are responsible for the majority of household purchases (including major appliances) and remodeling and building desicions. Women analyze more when it comes to making a purchase and don’t follow a direct path. Instead they explore their options.

Women like to talk about what they want. Figuring out her preferences - whether you are selling her a home, redesigning her home, or buying her the perfect Christmas gift - is easier than you may think. Pick up the hints… What is behind her purchasing decision? What is her lifestyle? What magazines does she read? What emotions can you appeal to? Does she use the internet to shop online? 

Use these clues to help buy the woman in your life a fabulous gift or to sell to your feminine target market.

Many sellers and buyers are ready to downsize. Some do it because they are empty nesters or single and don’t need that much house. Others don’t want to deal with the maintenance. And some do it for health reasons, moving to wheelchair friendly or one-story homes.Whatever the reason is, downsizing can be a challenge. Homeowners are faced with many decisions and finding a new home is just one of them. They must evaluate their lifestyle and plan for the future. They must make decisions on what items to take from their home and what to leave behind. We can help them decide which belongings are best to keep and where all of their favorite items should go in their new home. We can also help them find resources for the items they no longer want. Staging to live and interior design are just some of the services we offer to help downsizers move along.

Add this to your bag of tricks - a nutcracker! It is the perfect addtion to your tool or craft box. Why? Because it is an ingenious way to open stuck glue bottles, paints, nail polish, and other tough caps. So spare your teeth and use a nutcracker instead.

Staging a rarely used room sounds easy, right?  Not so when it comes to dining rooms.  This room presents beauty, but is plagued with excess baggage.  Like too many chairs around the table and extra ones in the corners, lots of storage in the china cabinet, extra furniture, too many plants, toys, etc. 

When selling a home there should be only four chairs at the dining table.  Move all extras to the basement.  If the china cabinet is a catch-all for collections, art the kids made, stacks of dishes and one glass after another, you need to pack all these items and then “merchandise” your shelves with only a few large items.  Usually items that are solid as opposed to glass.  Glass pitchers and goblets in front of a mirrored backgroud, sitting on a glass shelf, and displayed behind the glass door lose interest.  You can display a dinner plate in the groove provided for this purpose in each “quandrant” of the cabinet and accent with goblets or tea cups and saucers in front.

Removing all extra furniture (tea carts, small chests, etc.), toys and storage, minimizing wall hangings, removing any tablecloth, placing a nice bowl of fruit or vase of flowers and setting the table for entertaining will entice buyers to imagine a calm, romantic dinner.  Your staged dining room with be briming with beauty - without the excess baggage.

Who doesn’t love HGTV for DIY? We’ve got a direct link to HGTV’s advice on:

- 10 ways to increase the value of your home anytime

- 10 ways to get the most money for your home when you sell

- advice on finding and buying the home of your dreams

- making your kitchen ready for homebuyers

- beautiful curb appeal

- and much, much more,

Find HGTV’s real estate tips and tricks here.

Leave it to New York to come up with a way to design your sleep time.  Yelo, a corporate wellness center, allows you to “design” a rejuvenation session by scheduling reflexology and/or a power nap during a busy day.

Nicolas Ronco, the entrepreneur that opened Yelo earlier this year, said it is ”for people who are overstressed and overworked.  For lawyers or brokers who abuse themselves, a power nap is a way to recharge naturally without caffeine.”

An interesting article published in the Columbus Dispatch and written by Natasha Singer of the New York Times News Service, March 8, 2007, noted, “Sleep is the new bottled water.  Although it can be had for free, it is being marketed as an upscale amenity. Now when people can’t sleep for a couple of nights, they think they are part of a national sleep epidemic and there should be something to fix it . . .You can buy sexual arousal, a new shape for your face, a skinnier silhouette, so why shouldn’t you be able to buy sleep?”

Even manufacturers are getting in on the sleep deprivation craze, trying to sell sleep.  Dove offers Calming Night, a line of soap and body wash to help induce sleep.

Sleep aids are another way to buy sleep.  They work if used as directed, however, I’ve heard of people who wake up in the middle of the night and take over-the-counter or prescription sleep aids.  When the alarm goes off a few hours later they are still groggy.  The sleep aids warn that they cause sleepiness for 8-9 hours.  This means that they are driving to work in a daze (scary) and have an unproductive morning.  

Sleep is valuable if we want to be healthy and productive.  If New Yorkers can’t get a good night’s sleep at home, they can stop by Yelo where they can design the perfect relaxation and rejuvenation session.  Check it out here.