Sheron Cardin's Input...: April 2007

Why is asking so difficult? Asking for business...does it feel like begging or a plea for help?

Letting the neighborhood know that you have just staged or listed a home without knocking on their doors is with a beautiful picture postcard. Oh, I know you have thought about that or have done that before. But what better way to get the neighbors over to see the house you just staged in their neighborhood. You know they are all curious and they often come by just to satisfy their curiosity.

This is not an actual sample...just an idea. But the actual photo of the new listing or staged home on the front of the postcard will get their interest because they know the house. A locally designed postcard can turn their curiosity into a referral if done right. Costco can make them for you via the Internet.

Listing agents and home stagers can combine and create a postcard together serving both needs, splitting the costs.

Try something like this...

• List with us...your neighbor did. (Agent) Picture of house.
  

• Come see what a staged home looks like this Sunday from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. (Agent and Stager) Best shot of interior in a corner inset. (Stager)
  

• On the back you can ask "Who do you know that would like to move into your neighborhood? Do you know someone that will me moving out of your neighborhood? Give them this postcard." Then add the address of the listing.
  

I am glued to the TV this weekend watching "Planet Earth" and other shows celebrating Green Day. Our beloved planed is in trouble because of us and we are the only ones who can do anything about it. I have Tivo'd everything I could find. The red light was on last night when I went to bed and on this morning when I woke up. We have come a long way since the first economy car was introduced way back when. 

I am also overwhelmed at how stuck I am to old patterns. I cannot believe that I went to the supermarket yesterday and came home with my groceries in plastic bags again. We have been posting all week here in the rain about what changes to make and bringing my own bags to the market was going to be my big new contribution to my color green. I am stunned how thick headed I am! I completely forgot until I was setting the new plastic bags full of food onto the table.

So...what is it going to take for me? I am posting, commenting, watching, reading, and thinking as green as I can  yet my patterns are still red!

Just like turning negative thoughts into positive living, I am going to have to employ the same techniques...post-it notes everywhere...on the mirror, on the fridge, on the microwave, on the trash cans, on my car dash, on my computer, and so on...

What I didn't know until this weekend is

• 20% of carbons released into the atmosphere come from our homes
  
• A gallon of gas weighs 3 pounds but turns into 21 pounds of carbon gas when used (3 of those pounds are used to create it and get it into your car)
• Laptops use 50% less energy than PC's
• Cutting out eating red meat just once a week will save 840 gallons of water
• Each American contributes 4.5 pounds of trash per day
• You cannot recycle paper that is coated with plastic like wax paper, yogurt containers, etc.
• Junk mail produces 100,000,000 pounds of carbon gas and you can stop them from coming by logging onto greendimes.com
• The average person uses 2200 napkins a year producing 1 billion pounds of paper waste. (Excluding Jeff Turners kids which use that many a month)
• Cleaning solutions around the house can kill you. I keep buying them yet I have a complete section dedicated to safe cleaning solutions to make from ordinary products on my web site.

I am aghast at the complainers I run into...it reminds me of the school yard in 5th grade. There are groups formed at that stage of life that some just don't grow out of.

• There are those that stand on the sidelines and giggle, making fun of and judging others to make themselves feel bigger and better.
• Then there are the ones that wont do anything until everyone is doing it
• How about the group that points the finger and says "Why should I have to do it, they're not!"
  

But for the rest of us who care and that includes you skeptics, here are some additional things we can do. These statistics put it all in perspective for me as to how the little changes by so many people can really make a difference. My apologies to you if you do some or all of these already, but they are a good reminder to take action on Earth Day April 22nd. These statistics came from an article published by the Suburban.com called

Public Eye — Earth Day at home - by Mike Cohen

1. Leave your car at home and try walking or biking, or take public transit or carpool. One city bus eliminates the emissions of 40 cars.
2. Turn off the lights, the computer and the TV when they are not in use. Use only highly efficient appliances to reduce electricity consumption.
   
3. Put a composter in your backyard or use your green bin to reduce household waste. Composting organics has two key benefits: it reduces the amount of waste going to landfills, and when added to your garden, helps nourish the soil and plants.
4. Turn off your car’s engine if stopped for a while. If every driver of a light duty vehicle avoided idling by five minutes a day, we would collectively save 1.8 million liters of fuel, almost 4,500 tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
5. Set your thermostat above room temperature in the summer and below room temperature in the winter. For each degree adjusted, you can save five percent on your utility bill and one percent on your energy use.
6. Replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) that use only 25 percent as much energy as an incandescent bulb and lasts 10 times longer.
7. The amount of wood and paper North Americans throw away each year is enough to heat five million homes for 200 years.

Sunday, I am turning the color of Kiwi!

Lisa Kauffman Tharp was the first person to inspire me to look at new materials when I specify products and take more responsibility with toxic materials. She is doing her job being green with her sphere of influence by bringing what she knows to Active Rain and sharing it with paint, flooring, and much more.

As an interior designer/home stager, I think I have a chance to do a bit more for the environment than the average person when I specify product, or do I?

What about the grocery store clerk? Can a green store clerk bring awareness to the management to offer more organic fruits and vegetables? Does the store manager know how many greenies there are? Wouldn't it be great if our local store had a green section? Shouldn't we ask?

Can the green gardener use safe chemicals? How about the pest control people...can they make a difference? If those pellets they sprinkle around can kill underground ants...what else? When I inject poison into the ground to kill gophers...am I killing my family? Shouldn't we ask?

When you go to the hairdresser and the smell knocks you over when you walk in...what is that chemical doing going down the drain? Can we ask them to be green? Is there such a place?

Who decided what flavor of paste goes on the back of stamps and envelopes? What is that stuff anyway? Is it bad for our environment? We lick it anyway, don't we? Shouldn't we ask?

Junk mail...are those advertisers wiping out our forests? 

When you go to buy are car, are you asking to see the greenest model they have?

School teachers...are they green? Shouldn't we ask? And if not, should we offer some suggestions and help implement them such as; instead of volunteering for cup cakes and donuts for the party, bring organic snacks and explain why? 

Should we ask our sphere of influence "Are you green? What are you doing to be green? If you don't know will you please find out for me so I can continue doing business with you? I can go on and on.

Ask yourself this: Who am I going to talk to today and what am I going to talk about. Is there an opportunity for me to bring green into the conversation?

If one city block of residents talked green to their sphere of influence for one week, the whole neighborhood would change. If one real estate office made it their goal to talk green for one week, a whole community could change.

It all started for me with Lisa Kauffman Tharp and your neighborhood could say the same about you. Greening your sphere of influence is an MLM worth investing in and you are at the top.  

Every morning I open my Quote of the Day and although I have many aspects of my own life that I can apply this quote, the first thing I thought of was Active Rain...a community that stands apart from all the rest.

As quoted from the realestatejournal.com, First American CoreLogic, a provider of real-estate information, expects to see 1.1 million foreclosures nationwide over the next six to seven years as a result of jumps in monthly payments on adjustable-rate mortgages made from 2004 through 2006.

What does this mean for home stagers? It means that there are some serious challenges to consider and how to position ourselves for the possibility of seriously neglected homes going on the market or newer homes that were never landscaped, or homes that have been vacant and vandalized.

• Putting together packages for those who cannot afford their mortgages: think about it...how are we going to help these people who are trying to hang onto their homes and just cannot afford it...throwing another vacant at us.
  
• Working with lenders and offering options to help ward off foreclosures...could be a great opportunity for lenders to incorporate home stagers as the experts of merchandising into their budgets
• Talking to subcontractors specializing in remodels and property damage.
  
• Setting up accounts with local vendors before you need them...using the information from First American CoreLogic published in this article and others.
  
• Discussing the needs with other stagers in your communities and looking into grouping resources like inventory, leads, deliveries, rentals, etc.

Oftentimes we get caught up in getting the next lead, the next house, the next call from a referral, the next consultation, and so on, and while we are waiting...we need to be planning and preparing for what appears to be a serious reality...bankruptcies, foreclosures, quick and desperate sales.

It is fun to transform spaces into works of art that we are proud of but as time goes on, we could be the professional industry that is the "go to" industry for real help from investors, banks, lending institutions, and homeowners, just as the insurance adjuster calls a company to come out and repair water or fire damage.

Any thoughts?

Look what I just found while decluttering my bookmarks. I have a blog in Yahoo 360 that I started in 2005 with one post and have not returned until today. I thought I would play around for a few minutes and found a blog that led me to this...

This table is only $80.00! It is certainly not my style but for a staged home it works.

The site is called LEJEUNE YARD SALES. The link to this page is here.

I could not believe my eyes...is this table and chair set in perfect condition??? I think so. Have at it. I am going shopping. Let me know what you find. I will let you know what else I find. I don't really have time for this...I am way behind on my comments and other work but what the heck.

If you are like me, I just love before and after pictures so I am going to share a work in progress with you from my own personal library even though the project is not complete. The kitchen was painted the day before I left Seattle so it is not accessorized although the pantries and cabinets are lined and organized. The kitchen was very small...no room for an island at all.

Before... 

I knocked out the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room and the opposite wall holding the refrigerator and upper cabinets...making the kitchen now 27 feet long. It was still very narrow so the challenge was to get enough work space and counter tops without using an island. I marked off the floors to visualize each space. That tape was left there for a almost a year before construction began.

Below is my solution with 2 complete work stations and 3 working surfaces. The left if the chef's station and the right is the serving and clean up station with a shared island between. The dining room is to the right of the serving island and the door to the outdoor barbeque area is to the left.  The opposite wall facing the kitchen houses the pantries and refrigerator. All in all...the remodel of the kitchen stayed true to the original design.

After... 

This shot is taken from the dining room area and the barstools sit where the wall was before.  

I hesitate in showing these photos because there are going to be several professional photo shoots taken in the next few weeks but I wanted to let you what I have been up to. More to come on the rest of the house. 

If anyone in the Seattle area would like to contact me regarding any upcoming design and decorating needs, I would love to hear from you.