Have you heard it all now? Staging the refrigerator?
The 'fridge, medicine cabinet, pantry, under the sinks, closets, and the other nooks and crannies that a homeowner and you may overlook are fair game for buyers to inspect and draw conclusions on the home, what it will store and how it has been cared for over the years. It will also tell them a lot about the homeowners.
You've done a beautiful job of staging the home. It passes the checklist of things that need and should be done. Nothing looks dated; the house looks clean and neat. But open up the refrigerator and oh, my!
And buyers WILL open the refrigerator. It is part of the house and they want to see how much it will hold. If the first thing that hits them is the odor, that spells trouble. If the second thing they see is the jumble of leftovers, sticky jelly jars, forgotten fruit in the crisper that now looks like science experiments gone bad, and anything else that may cause queasiness, that may spell disaster!
They don't know, nor do they care, that this may be a temporary situation that came up because of a hectic schedule or kids putting things away that should be cleaned off. They may see G-R-O-S-S in big letters and wonder why the rest of the house is so neat but a place where cleanliness is so important, isn't. What else don't they know about the house? Have the homeowners only recently cleaned up the place to sell it? Maybe they should look a little more closely for other flaws. Maybe they should leave and look at another house...
Pity the poor homeowner. They have enough on their minds (was going to say plate) and now they have to keep the refrigerator clean and tidy along with the other spaces mentioned. That's where they may draw the line. You can hardly blame them. But in a slower market or when the inventory of homes for sale is high, this kind of thing can be what buyers use as a yardstick to measure one house against another.
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That is one thing I would have never though of. Makes sense.