Many of my students share similar stories of how they always knew home staging was in their blood, even if they didn’t know what it was called.

You know you’re a natural born stager when:

• from a young age you kept decorating and redecorating your room
• you spent more time creating Barbie furniture or decorating her house than playing with the doll
• choosing the right shower curtain and matching towels for your first apartment gave you so much joy your friends and family thought you were weird
• once you get your home decorated the way you want, you feel an urge to move for a new project
• you can find the right color accessory to exactly match something you have at home from memory
• your spouse comes home at the end of the day and doesn’t recognize your furniture
• you can’t walk by an open house without going inside
• you look at real estate when you travel because you want to see how others decorate
• friends and family always ask your opinion on colors or furniture placement
• being in a badly decorated or badly organized room negatively effects your mood
• you can’t help but notice bad or good decor
• straightening pictures and rearranging furniture is like a reflex, you can’t help but dive in

A case in point is Staging Diva Graduate Kathy Vernon of Staged by Dream Weavers (TX). She writes, “we rented a vacation home at the last minute in Santa Fe and when we walked in there was absolutely no ‘wow’ factor. It put quite a damper on everyone’s mood so after the landlord left, I went about “staging” the place.

I rolled the stacked towels in the bathroom, gathered local rocks and gave them a generous oil bath to make them shine before stacking them on the counter, finishing the look with a vase of fresh flowers. I also took a dreary entry table and removed the bowl of plastic fruit and boring picture and replaced them with a tall vase filled with sticks (found in other parts of the house). In doing so, I created a little vignette that drew your eye down the hall and to the gorgeous adobe wall behind it. My husband trimed back some overgrown purple sage and created a flower arrangement that decorated another small patio. He unwittingly created flow and a burst of color! He also bought fresh flowers at the local grocery, and I arranged them in a found vase decorated with a burlap bow I made from the bag of coffee we had just purchased. In the end, the place seemed like ours.”

I love this story as you can see what a reflex it is for a home stager to do what it takes to make things better, often using only what’s immediately available in creative ways. Let’s hope Kathy took lots of before and after shots. These simple changes would have made quite an impact and be perfect additions to her home staging portfolio!

Do you have a story to share?

Do you have an interesting story to share about your life as a home stager? I’d love to hear it and it could potentially end up in my new book which will be published in 2010 and featured on Amazon and elsewhere.

“Life as a Home Stager: An Inside Look at What It’s Really Like in the Home Staging Business” is filled withheartwarming, funny and sometimes shocking stories about what it’s really like being a home stager. Inspiring and informative, this book will give you an honest look at what it’s like to work in this exciting and creative industry.

To participate, you might tell us about:

• a client who was going through a particularly difficult or life-changing event when you staged their home and how you helped them through the process.
• a tricky home staging project and how you rose to the challenge.
• a client’s strange choice of decor and how you convinced them to change it.
• a time you donated your home staging services to help someone in need.
• a funny mishap or a silly mistake you made while staging a client’s home.
• how your home staging career has effected other aspects of your life.

I’ll be including many of my own stories from the past 7 years of staging clients’ homes, but I’m looking for your story too. My goal is to paint a picture of “a day in the life” of a home stager to give aspiring and fellow stagers an opportunity to learn from our experiences and integrate the lessons-learned into their own businesses.

You don’t have to be a professional writer. Anything you submit will be edited, you just have to give us the interesting story to start with. If you’re selected, you’ll get a free copy of the book once it’s printed PLUS the bragging rights of saying you’re featured in a published book, adding to your own credibility as a home stager.