"Your home will sell fast and for top dollar!"
Doron Weisbarth
Designated Broker/ Owner
Our experienced team will deliver the results and satisfaction that you deserve!
Find out more at Weisbarth.com
HOMEWARD BOUND
More Than Just Real Estate News
SEPTEMBER 2023
VOLUME
ISSUE
VI
9
Start Your 10-Step Home Organization Challenge
If you’re like most people at this time of year, the clutter from summer is building up, and the battle has turned against you. Fall is a great time to take back control of your home, get organized, and simplify your life.
In just ten steps, you can have a clean, organized, clutter-free home by tackling one area at a time. Do one step per day, one per week, or whatever works best for you. The order you tackle things is not important. Just make sure you finish any step you start, so that it doesn’t become another burden. Pick the step based on the amount of time you can devote to it.
Step 1: Paperwork
Gather all those loose papers around your home in one place. Sort it. Stack it. File it. Scan it. Recycle it. This is often the hardest step in the home organization process. Knock this out first and you’ll feel confident about succeeding with the rest of your house.
Step 2: Kitchen
Nothing here is off limits. Clear out the fridge, the freezer, all the drawers and cabinets, the counter, and any display cases or mobile carts. Consider if any old dishes that need to go, and if there’s a better way to arrange your stuff. Then pack it all back in.
Step 3: Laundry and Mud Room
Consolidate open containers that have the same product. Assess any items or half-finished projects you’ve tossed in these areas to ‘deal with later.’ This is the day you will deal with them. Place products you use the most in easy to-reach areas. Storage baskets can be quite helpful to
prevent the room from devolving into chaos again.
Step 4: Bathrooms
Look critically in the cabinets under the sink, drawers, and shelves, and make a plan to use these spaces more effectively. Look for unnecessary duplicates. Again, storage baskets, bins, and drawer dividers can be very helpful. Some items may go better in the laundry room.
Step 5: Closets
Sometimes it’s just easier to toss things into a nearby closet, just to get it out of sight. Whether it’s a linen closet, hall closet, coat closet, storage closet or whatever closet - pull everything out and sort all the items. Some can be given, donated, tossed, or placed in a better location. If it goes back into your closet – make sure there’s a good reason for it to be there, and not just another round of getting it out of sight.
Step 6: Primary Bedroom
What’s on top of your dresser? Is your closet a horror show or a pleasant, functional room where everything has a place? Can you actually see your nightstand, or are you operating on the theory that it’s probably still there somewhere? This is a process of deciding what you need, what you don’t, and where everything needs to go. There are fewer thrills better than retiring to a clean, organized bedroom, truly!
Step 7: Other Bedrooms
Depending on your kids’ ages, this can be a touchy subject. With younger kids you can
still have a good deal of say. But as they get older (teenagers – I’m looking at you!) this can be very tricky. There are volumes written about how to handle teenagers and their room. All I can say is: do your best, and good luck!
Step 8: Family Room/Rec Room
You may need to get some shelving for this room if you don’t have any now. Games, books, toys, musical instruments – all sorts of things could be in this room. Assess how this room
gets used, and figure out what needs to go where so everyone can enjoy it.
Step 9: Other Spaces
Figure out which room needs to be tackled first. Is it your home office? Media room? Project room? Storage room? Garage? By now you know the drill – pull everything out, assess what you can give away, donate, toss, recycle, etc. Use shelves, boxes, carts, and other organizers to make sure that things will stay in order.
Step 10: And…That Other Thing
Even after going through all the rooms, there’s probably some other item you weren’t able to deal with. Sorting old photos, boxes from your last move, stuff your parents or friends gave
you to store at your house or ‘thought you might need.’ It could be anything – but if there’s an item or challenge that didn’t get covered by this point, make that your final step.
Good luck and let us know how your project worked out!
Always Looking for New Ways to Help Kids
No one has figured everything out when it comes to helping kids who have been abused, neglected, or born into challenging situations. That’s why Childhaven is always trying out new ideas and methods from research and the experiences of other organizations.
One recent effort came from the Frontiers of Innovation, a research grant that allowed Childhaven to partner with Harvard, Berkeley, and UW. The research explored how to help kids get more out of educational games. Most games require skills like taking turns, solving problems, waiting, and listening. These skills are harder to learn when a child isn’t emotionally stable, or struggles to focus.
Childhaven used this research partnership opportunity to introduce mindfulness exercises that should help kids get more out of the learning games they were already using. For example, they had kids lift and lower a parachute, and talked about how breathing is like what you see the parachute doing as it rises and falls.
These sorts of activities help kids become more aware of how their bodies and minds work, and make it a little easier for them to focus on solving problems, staying calm, and following directions.
These sorts of activities help kids become more aware of how their bodies and minds work, and make it a little easier for them to focus on solving problems, staying calm, and following directions.
Our donations to date for Childhaven!
Your business and referrals help
the kids at Childhaven
A portion of every sale from
Weisbarth & Associates is
given to Childhaven and in the
past 5 years we have donated
over $250,000 to them.
DORON WEISBARTH
Designated Broker/ Owner
206.779.9808
Doron@weisbarth.com
Weisbarth.com
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Through all of COVID-19 the Childhaven staff continues to care for every child, delivering counseling, developmental therapy, wrap-around
supports, home learning, meals, family meetings, and much more. Every referral you send our way helps the kids at Childhaven, because we donate a substantial portion of our income from every home sale to this amazing organization. If you know anyone considering buying or selling, you have three options:
1. Send an email with your referral’s name, phone and email to refer@weisbarth.com
2. Call me direct or pass on my number - 206.779.9808
3. Go to our website at Weisbarth.com/refer
It’s a Sellers’ Market! And It’s a Buyers’ Market Too?
“Hold on a second Doron,” you might be thinking. “Real estate markets always lean toward either buyers or sellers, but not to both. It’s a continuum, right?”
Well, that generally is true. But 2023’s oddness continues to express itself in ways that we’ve never seen before.
On the one hand, sellers have a terrific opportunity to sell: prices are trending upward; inventory is much lower than normal; and there are still way more buyers than sellers. Combined, this should lead to more competition and greater leverage for the sellers. In fact, right now, homes in Seattle and King County are selling quickly for these reasons. And it’s true – when these conditions have existed previously, such as in 2017, 2021 and the beginning of 2022, we saw bidding wars that pushed prices higher and higher.
On the other hand, buyers aren’t acting with the kind of urgency as they did back then, which is creating a very interesting dynamic that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before.
During similar market conditions in the past, buyers would fall over themselves trying to snatch every last available home. But now, we see some homes that continue to sit on the market for a long time, even if the owners drop their prices. The emphasis here is that it’s only ‘some’ homes – not all of them. Buyers are demanding that the homes be not just move-in-ready, but also have a layout that is open, inviting and functional.
Oddly, many of the new construction homes, those tall skinny ones that you might see all around, are just not attractive enough to many buyers, even if their prices and location should be very attractive! I find many of these homes have layouts that are just not functional. For example, many have no natural place to put a TV and a couch. How are you supposed to relax at the end of the day, or have friends over, if you don’t even have a comfortable, cozy place to sit?
And so, as new construction homes become a growing share of the overall number of homes for sale in our area, we see that the number of homes available for sale is slowly growing, despite the number of new listings that have gone decidedly down.
So yes, as odd as it may sound – it’s a great time to sell AND it’s also a great time to buy! If you have a good home that is well priced and well marketed, you’ll get a good price for it. And if you are a buyer looking to buy a good home, even if you encounter some competition, it’s not nearly as fierce or prevalent as it used to be, so good opportunities are definitely available.
If you know anyone who is looking to buy or sell, please refer them to us by phone, email, or they can fill out a form on our website: weisbarth.com/refer. Our team will make sure they are educated and prepared correctly, with absolutely no obligation. And remember that your business and referrals help the kids at Childhaven.