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The dining room was pretty much the way we had had it. The living room was turned practically inside-out. A huge bookcase had been transported to a different wall and angled into a corner. The armoire, which had held the stereo and a vast collection of vinyl LPs, was likewise turned and angled into its corner. The sofa, once along an interior wall, was now in front of the bay windows (with all sorts of future donations stashed behind it, out of camera range). In place of the sofa was a huge library table, which had graced the foyer.
The foyer was nearly bare, with a small chest in place of the library table and a small rug brought down from the upstairs den. (The foyer was so big that one former owner had kept a pool table there.)
In all three rooms were various inexpensive but photogenic items that our moving consultants had provided - artificial plants, plant stands, small objects. They had also used many of our own things, often very cleverly. A wood box that held fatwood for starting fires in the fireplace now stood on one of the bookshelves, as if it held some family treasure.
Outside on the porch were all the things that wouldn't fit into the scene - packed and partially packed boxes, two cheap bookcases destined for a friend's house, and other stuff.
Staging
Our house had been "staged" for a photo session. Staging is an increasingly popular way to prepare a house for sale. The consultants and experts know what impresses or turns off buyers, and they earn their fee by maximizing what the house will sell for and minimizing the time the house is on the market. When staging works, the results are impressive. Even in a down market, a properly staged house may sell within days of being listed.
One of my first responses to our staged living room was "I can't believe we've been doing it wrong for thirty years." Our consultant smiled. She said, "This is intended to be photogenic, not functional." A friend who saw pictures of it said, "It looks like rich people live there." She was probably responding to how neat everything was; there was absolutely none of the day-to-day clutter that real people create. Real people have no place in a staged house. It's a Potemkin village writ small.
And that's the point of staging. People looking at a house don't want to know how somebody else used the house. They want mere suggestions, albeit pretty ones, that the house is habitable by humans. Beyond that, they need to be able to imagine their own stuff in the house, and their own lives being led. They can project their own personalities and wishes onto this pleasant but essentially sterile environment.
The Bland Leading the Bland
Staging can be useful, both in presenting our house and presenting our self to the world. In both cases, it's a way to be liked. But things can be carried to extremes, with unhappy results.
I know of one house, with lots of character and some lovely antique furniture. The stagers had all the nice furniture put into storage and brought in extremely ordinary and somewhat cheap and clunky pieces. Huge amounts of time, energy, and money were spent spiffing up the house. And it stayed on the market for months, finally selling for much less than its original offer. It's impossible to be sure, of course, what caused this disaster. The real estate agent may have been incompetent. The house may have had a bad location that no amount of charm could overcome. The market may have taken a tumble. Or maybe it was a concatenation of bad luck.
How many of us have our own version of the staged life? We live in our own little psychic or emotional clutter (or messes). We may have a strong, lively personality that we save for only our closest friends and family. But on the street, in stores, or at work, we present our staged self: a Potemkin village, a blank screen, a sterile environment on which others can project their own personalities and wishes.
The danger, I suppose, is that this blandness can become the principal way we think of ourselves, and our horizons contract accordingly. The staged life becomes our real life. We live so as not to offend, retreating from our boldest selves.
Maybe it's time to move some of the old furniture back in and start making messes again.
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