Shawls, candle, and good as new

MY WIFE and I are considering selling our house, so obviously the first thing we did was go out and buy some shawls.

Our stylist has convinced us that our staging won’t be complete without at least four shawls draped nonchalantly across the arms and backs of our colour neutral modular lounges.

Apparently, without shawls we’d be just wasting our time triangulating our ornament, candle and small potted plant.

As for our Live, Love, Laugh artwork, without a folded coral fleece blanket across the end of every bed we might as well tell the furniture rental guys not to bother taking it out of its bubble wrap.

Actually, I tell a lie. We don’t really have a stylist per se. We have Shaynna Blaze from Selling Houses Australia — along with everyone else in the country who is trying to offload their property.

Don’t believe me? Watch an episode of Selling Houses Australia and then log on to realestate.com.au and scroll through the pictures.

Notice anything? The rooms are all exactly the same. The shawls, the throws, the triangulation.

And not only that, they’re perfect. Now, I can understand how the owners can get their houses looking that way — they hire people to do it for them. What I can’t get my head around is how they keep them so pristine through the sales period.

When the furniture rental people put all the vendors’ stuff in their van and take it off to storage, do they take the vendors with them?

Back in the 80s when my wife and I were inspecting houses around Sydney’s inner-west in the hope of buying our first home, the last thing we wanted was for them to look nice.

The more gruesome the decor and ambience the greater the chance that no one else would want it and it might just go for a price our meagre savings could afford. I remember the time I gingerly edged my way around the termite-holed bedroom floor at one open-for-inspection as my wife came back from the outside toilet with a big smile on her face.

“Good news,” she said. “It’s completely blocked and there are blowflies everywhere.”

And that became our first home. A few shawls and a caramelised walnut and amber jar candle and it was as good as new.