Things have slowed down a little this past week and I imagine that they might remain a little slow now until the New Year. My feelings about this are rather ambivalent, because I like to be busy, and yet, another part of me is glad to have a little time to catch up and work more on our website, and marketing, and of course, take some "guilt-free" time to decorate the house and get ready for the festive holiday season. (Without doubt, my most favorite-ist time of the year!)
I know that for us, and for many other stagers I've talked to, staging seems to be somewhat "feast or famine." Over this past year, we would sometimes go what seemed like days and days without a single call. Sure enough though, when the phone rang, and someone needed a vacant property "Staged yesterday!" - there were others with immediate needs as well. At one point early last spring, we had to shop for, and stage, three vacant properties all within 8 days. Needless to say, we "tripled up" on our shopping and bought several of the same sofas and dinette sets. We set forth and successfully staged all three properties. We were happy and exhausted, and without realizing it, fell into a distinctive way of doing things. In other words, we didn't mix it up too much! My business partner (also Nancy) and I would arrive at a staging project and we would go off in different directions like clockwork. I would do the bedrooms, she would do the bathrooms, I would hang the pictures, she would start the kitchen.... we worked like a well-oiled machine! That is until we realized that we had fallen into a habitual routine! 
At that point, we decided we needed to shake it up a little!! We made it a point to stop purchasing similar items. Nancy started playing with the way the towels in the bathrooms were displayed and how we put colors together. We re-covered some of the cushions on our dinette sets to add some major color to otherwise blah rooms and I guess it was at this point that we could afford to bring some more expensive artwork into our inventory as well. The result was that not only did we add some major variety to our inventory..... but we had even more fun staging vacant properties!!
I guess when it comes to staging, as with life.... we need to remember that change is good and that nothing ever improves without change.
"If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies" ......Unknown
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