Furnishing for a short term rental can be a full time job in itself. The key to success is organization when you are sourcing, ordering and tracking hundreds of items that go into a fully furnished rental. The way we manage it all is with spreadsheets.
We start any furnishing project by creating categories for every single room in the house. Within that room, we then break it down into every single item we need to order for that specific room.
Let’s take the kitchen for example:
Any kitchen is going to need dish sets, silverware, drinking glasses, wine glasses, serving dishes, serving spoons, mixing bowls, pot & pan set, pot holders, can opener, wine opener, paper towel holder, cutting boards, coffee maker, bar stools, etc. Then, based on the size of the house, we figure out the appropriate quantity for the project.
Each bathroom and each bedroom needs its own category. So examples of products that we would source for each individual bathroom would be bath towels, face towels, hand towels, bath mats, and soap pumps. Once you have your list of items completed, you’ll then start moving over to your different rows in your spreadsheet, which would be the quantity needed, an image of the product, the company that you’re sourcing from, the product link for purchasing, any status or notes, and the total cost of the product(s).
Don’t forget the exteriors, garages and other storage type rooms like laundry rooms may need some love as well! These will all be a room on our spreadsheet, and we are thinking of things like lounge chairs and outdoor sofas to make a beautiful and cozy outdoor oasis and baby and pet supplies (cribs, high chair, baby gates, dog bed, dog bowls) stored away and out of sight,
The spreadsheet will make it easy to know which room each item belongs in especially if someone else is helping set up the house. Having it all organized makes furnishing an entire house much smoother, and also allows us to see the total furnishing cost and stay on budget. A beautiful, functional, well thought out, and well designed house equals more bookings and more happy clients.
Download our STR Furnishing Spreadsheet with Expense Tracker here.
And if all this seems too time-consuming or spreadsheets are not your thing, message us here, and we can do all of the sourcing, ordering and tracking of items for you to give you a beautiful, fully furnished rental (and the best part, you’ll receive our trade discount prices on all your furnishings)
