Odd angles and empty glasses

We've been to see a lot of houses recently. (Not that we need to. Our house hasn't sold yet, or generated much interest. Ah well, we're lucky that if we don't sell, it's okay. We don't HAVE to sell, we just want to sell).

Anyway, in the process of looking at houses, we've seen a fair number that have obviously been staged, either "professionally", or by someone who read a few staging websites and thought they'd gotten the gist.

Here's my advice to stagers: Putting all the furniture at odd angles is not staging. We're not looking at mansions with big spaces. Having a table screw-jiggy in a rather small dining room is just not a good idea. Placing a couch at an angle blocking off 1/4 of a small family room is not a good idea.

Not to mention the fact that there are a number of left-brained folks who find all these non-right-angles incredibly distracting. Okay, fine, I'm talking about me. When I see these off-kilter rooms, I desperately want to straighten out all the furniture. It comes close to being a physical pain when I walk into a room and see it all out-of-whack.

Second piece of advice: empty martini glasses strewn about is not decorating, even if the glasses themselves are kind of pretty. All it does is make me worried that the boys will knock them over. And makes me wonder if James Bond is expected to visit.

Third piece of advice: setting your dining room table is just weird. Did we interrupt your dinner? It doesn't look homey, it looks like a fake photo-shoot set up.

That is all.

I realize that there are probably plenty of houses that have been well-staged that I don't even notice, and that it's only the badly staged houses that are cracking me up. I do have to say, though, that no staging is a vast improvement over bad staging! Of course, some houses, like the "velvet Elvis" house, could probably benefit from even terrible staging...

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Random unrelated thought: Thank you once again to those of you who gave me book recommendations. I've been starting to crack into the books you've recommended. I'll try to mention it, but if I forget, I'll always have brief reviews in my "books read" section on the right column. Some I may even review on The Book Nook...I have a review of Gig up there today! I also read Other People's Weddings by Noah Hawley, which I found to be a quick read, but didn't love. Anyway, I'm loving all these new books to try out, so thank you!