A recent post by contributor Lou Manfredini talked about better organizing your home for the sake of preserving your sanity and increasing your usable space. But there’s another motivation for some people to banish clutter: selling a house.

The Calfinder Blog shares seven tips for staging your house for a sale, and they start with “get rid of your stuff.” Staging, for those who might not know, is the art (or is it a science) of aesthetically preparing a home so potential buyers get the best possible first impression. Clearing away your own stuff — not just the clutter and the nick-knacks, but as much as is absolutely possible — leaves room, mentally and physically, for the potential buyer to envision his or her stuff.

Other tips include:

• Create activity-specific areas
• Let in the light
• Add colorful accents
• Arrange what you have more stylishly
• Bring nature indoors
• Spruce up the outside

Check out the Calfinder blog for more details, and read more about staging at About.com, another outstanding resource.

Photo courtesy of Real Estaging via Flickr