Home staging is a great career for perfectionists.
After all we make everything “just so” in every room of a house, and sometimes outside too.
We fuss over the precise roll of a towel, the angle of a throw over a chair and exactly how many green apples belong in the bowl on the counter.
But does your own perfectionism ever drive you crazy?
Coming out of Ikea recently (where I’d double checked the item numbers on the cart at least 5 times), my Lil Millenial said, “It must be exhausting being you sometimes!”
She’s right, it is!
My perfectionism serves me well when I’m wearing my home staging hat, but not so well during other times.
I’m always looking for the most efficient route to any goal. More often then I like to admit, I’m fretting over details that aren’t all that important in the grand scheme of things.
And, when I’m trying to delegate, it can be a nightmare.
Maybe the reason it’s so hard for perfectionists to get help is that they expect everyone to do things exactly as they would. That’s simply not realistic and usually it’s also not necessary.
I found this awesome short video by Jennifer Gresham called The Perfectionism Cure.
I hope you like it as much as I did and that you’ll add your comments below.
I’d like to continue discussing the idea of “perfection” and what it means for our lives and our home staging careers!
Perfection can be very expensive when you run your own home staging business.
It leads you to waste too many hours trying to make everything more perfect than it needs to be, or anyone else would notice.
In fact, there really is no home staging perfection because each home stager will come to a different solution.
I love how this video highlights how much perfectionism can stand in the way of discovery and creativity and the peril of prioritizing “performance over learning.”
What do you think? Please add your thoughts in the comment section below.
And if you loved this video as much as I did, please share this post with your fellow home stagers on Facebook or Twitter.
Love this video Debra. In one of my first staging jobs I hired what I thought was a sectional sofa (because I obviously didn’t check it properly!) only to discover it was actually 2 sofas. It forced me to replan the whole living area with a result that was actually way better than I’d first planned. I actually prefer some things to be less than perfect when I’m staging – it may be a piece that belongs to a client that I’m trying to reuse or it might be something I hire (you can’t be too perfect when the inventory is lacking at the furniture warehouse!) This ‘offness’ often gives a better result and is more real and less ‘staged’ Also, something usually goes wrong during an install (last week the chairs didn’t fit under the table) It’s solving problems creatively in the moment and not bursting into tears as this wasn’t ‘the plan’ that’s important.
What fantastic examples Imogen and so well said, thanks a bunch for commenting!!
wow! this is life changing for me! I am that perfectionist! I am comforted by the thought there are others like me, and thankful I can be changed to allow myself to make a mistake today. thanks for sharing
Vickie, That’s fantastic and I appreciate your feedback. I just went on a hunch that there were others like me, and here you are 🙂
I would like to see a nice flow from the entry,rethink the dinning area I can see the dinning chair from the entry,remove some pictures from the wall.
Great staging input Rosemary, thanks for commenting!
Thank you for sharing this video, Debra. Definitely a new note to start each day. I will share with others I care about.
I don’t struggle with perfectionism near as much as I struggle with “good enough”. When I’m overwhelmed and exhausted by the planning, the process and end of task evaluation I often find myself pulling my “good enough” card just to be able to move on. Then, I fuss with myself if I called it too soon. Questioning if my good enough is enough for others? Finding balance in life’s push and pull is an on-going predicament.
You are so right Karla! I struggle with “good enough” too, it just sounds “wrong” to my ears. My inner critic pipes up, “What do you mean ‘good enough’? Doesn’t that make it just ‘average’?” Of course that’s nonsense because a perfectionist’s “good enough” is likely to be head and shoulders above “average”.
I love what you said about “Finding balance in life’s push and pull is an on-going predicament.”
Thanks for commenting!
Perfectionism used to cost me valuable time from unnecessary focus. Over the last year I’ve practiced relegating perfectionism to that of ‘tool’ status. If I need accuracy in measurements for something, then I welcome my perfectionism. But I’ve found a personal artistic advantage in letting go of it. Occasionally I become frustrated when a design idea doesn’t work. If I step back and ponder it, then I often realize that I already have the perfect (excuse the pun) idea all along, and it was trying to tell me. I couldn’t see that it looks better the way it is, not the way I want I want it to look. Those are great anti-perfect moments!
Great examples Alfredia, thanks for sharing!
Your teen and my daughters might be communicating, they acuse me of the same thing :} So I’m trying real hard to take in the advise I received some time ago………Don’t let perfectionism steal ur joy. If things aren’t as good as you want them to be, so what. What will happen? Make ‘good enough’ your new perfect.