Selling a house isn’t all that different from dating in the modern world. A listing with alluring photos and a flattering description aims to entice a suitor with good credit and deep pockets. A showing—like a first date—is a potential slipper that fits, a dream come true, a match made in heaven…or a massive disappointment. Enamored with the beauty and elegance of a home, a buyer might offer asking price; or, disappointed with the humdrum in-person experience, continue their search for better listings.

(By the way, listings and showings only scratch the surface of the parallels between courtship and real estate transactions. For a fun thought experiment, consider also: multiple buyers and bidding wars; contingencies and backup offers; inspection reports and repair requests; and buyer’s remorse.)

Hoping to impress buyers when putting our first home on the market, my wife and I learned about staging, or setting the stage: the art of arranging furniture and decor in our home, making it attractive enough for someone else to want to live in it.

What makes a home universally attractive? Well, nothing. But it helps when a buyer can visualize where they would put all their stuff—couch, kitchen table, vintage salt shaker collection, and so on. Seeing the potential in a property is difficult when looking through a cloud of clutter. In another sense, it’s like trying to think of the words with the radio playing a different song.

Our goal in staging our home was to make it look and feel like we didn’t actually live there, which meant that everything personal had to go. The desk over in the corner had to go. The odd table with its assorted knick knacks had to go. The stack of blankets, the random floor lamp, the bowl chair, the oversized Jenga set…all of it could distract a buyer from envisioning how their life could look living in our house.

Having nowhere to stash our motley assortment of items, we rented a storage unit and started packing. Every carload of stuff subtracted from our home was a carload of space and potential added. After playing Tetris with the last few things we could fit into storage, we returned to our uncluttered home and marveled at the fresh ambiance. Taking the stuff out had breathed life in. Why hadn’t we done this sooner? We staged our home for potential buyers—total strangers—why had we never staged it for ourselves?

The taste of freedom from our own belongings was like a gateway drug. Packing for our move, we jettisoned several carloads of stuff; and unpacking, several more. We discovered that we didn’t need or want most of the things we’d put into storage. Trinkets, books, dishes, clothes, the bowl chair—things we’d been holding onto and no longer using, released back into the wild at a local thrift store. What we couldn’t sell or give away, we threw away. We set the stage in our new home with room to breathe. Not every wall needed something next to it; not every shelf, something on it; not every drawer, something in it. There is liberation in an empty drawer. What initially was a short term tactic to sell a house had become a long term practice to enjoy our home.