One of the most common recommendations given to home sellers is to stage the rooms. By artfully arranging your furniture, minimizing your belongings, and making sure everything is spotless, potential buyers can more easily see how they would use the property.

Parents with toddlers or other young children might greet this advice with a derisive laugh. Staging might be sound advice, but it seems less feasible when toys have migrated to every room in the house and you're constantly looking out for sticky juice stains or unauthorized artwork on the walls.

Small children can make the staging process more challenging. However, it's not impossible to corral your little one's belongings and give your home a more organized look when it's on the market.

Decluttering

A home sale is a great time to cut down on the excessive amount of toys, books, or other children's items that have piled up over time. You'll want to keep a small collection of toys, including a few favorites, for children to play with while the home is on the market. Go through the rest to see if any might be good candidates for donation or for throwing away if they're no longer usable. Use the same process for children's clothes and other things they may have outgrown, such as strollers and high chairs.

If your child is old enough, you can ask for their input on the process. Corinne Rivera, writing for the home purchase and sale resource HomeLight, says children may be reluctant to part with their items, but you can explain how doing so is a good way to share the things they no longer use with kids in need.

Cut down on large items, such as play kitchens or dollhouses. Larissa Runkle, writing for Realtor.com, says these items can take up a lot of space in the room, diverting buyers' attention or making the room feel smaller.

Put the items you'll be keeping into storage. It's best to use furniture with built-in storage or a temporary storage space. Keith Loria, writing for RISMedia, says prospective buyers will be interested in the home's closet space, and shouldn't open the door to find it crammed full of belongings.

If you've been meaning to improve the storage solutions in a child's room or playroom, now is a good time. A tasteful selection or baskets or bins is a particularly good way of organizing smaller items.

Part of the staging process is to remove personal items, such as family photos. Rivera says you should take down children's artwork from the fridge and remove any similar keepsakes you may have around the home. The real estate site Zillow says you should also remove personalized children's items.

Cleaning

Crumbs, spills, and other messes are inevitable in households with young children. But when you stage a home, it's important to get it as clean as possible. Rivera says a deep clean should hunt for things like fingerprints on appliances or windows and rings left by cups on tables.

Walls may still bear the evidence of crayon drawings or scuffs. Use a melamine sponge to get them clean again.

Dirty diapers can easily leave visitors with a foul impression of your home. Loria says you should try to empty the diaper pail at least once a day to minimize odors in the nursery.

The bathroom can also be a hotspot for messes, such as toothpaste on the counter. Give a thorough cleaning around the sink and toilet, and clean the floor of the room as well.

Before an open house or showing, do one last quick clean to make sure you've eliminated any sticky spots. Runkle says this process should wipe down doorknobs, appliances, and closet doors. Inspect mirrors and glass surfaces as well to make sure you haven't missed any smears or smudges.

Staging a kid's room

You don't necessarily have to clear out a child's room to help depersonalize the home. Plenty of buyers will be looking for a place to raise their children, after all. However, it helps to stage this area as well.

In an infant's room, it's possible to minimize the number of items without making it difficult to care for the child. Loria says a crib, dresser, changing table, and chair will suffice, along with a few small accessories.

If the room has a garish paint scheme, repaint it with neutral tones. Take down posters, children's artwork, or other wall coverings. Zillow recommends avoiding themes or gender-specific décor.

Some sellers, especially those who have already relocated, may want to stage a room as a general purpose area instead of a child's room. Rivera says children's beds can often be large and bulky, so replacing them with a smaller bed can repurpose the space as a guest room. Area rugs, accent chairs, and small desks can complete this transformation.

Proactive steps

Once your home is staged, it will take some effort to keep things looking nice. Runkle says you'll want to avoid potentially messy foods while the home is on the market. It also helps to limit activities that could undo your hard work, such as arts and crafts projects with paints and glitter.

To keep clutter from piling up again, Rivera recommends asking friends and family to limit their gift giving while you try to sell your home. If a birthday or other special occasion will occur while the home is on the market, consider having a party outside the home.

Similarly, play dates can also cause havoc and create more messes for you to clean up. Ask other parents in your child's social group to pitch in until you can find a buyer for your home.

Sellers need to be prepared to leave the home at any point to allow potential buyers to visit, so you'll need to be ready to do so. Zillow says it helps to have hiding places where important items can quickly be stowed and recovered. You'll also want to have a travel bag with essential things so you can visit the library, playground, or other destination for awhile.