This article is referring to the class I took last week.

ROCKAWAY TWP. -- More than 50 people bustled around the home at 16 Mohawk Ave. Wednesday, preparing the two-story dwelling to sell.
They were not making sure the family pictures were perfectly placed to make the house look like Ward and June Cleaver lived there.
Quite the opposite.
Any family portraits or pictures of relatives were packed in a big cardboard moving box.
Knickknacks, doo-dads and mementos were similarly relegated to the boxes -- with care, of course.
It stands to reason that prospective home-sellers want their house to look nice. And in the case of professional stagers, less is certainly more.
Stagers, professionals who arrange a home -- making it appear spacious, bright and clean -- in such a way as to maximize its selling potential, have been around for 35 years. Real estate agents sometimes take the training to become one, but it's not required.
Jane Ann Lance, a Mobile, Ala., resident and an Accredited Staging Professional trainer, had 52 of her students staging the Mohawk home as part of their course requirement to become accredited. The hands-on opportunity came about because one of Lance's students is the Realtor whose company is listing the home.
"Basically, decorating is personalizing a home and staging is depersonalizing a home without becoming sterile or too stark," Lance said as controlled chaos swirled around her, with stagers-to-be suggesting the positioning of a tables, couches, chairs, rugs and paintings in every room of the house.
Sellers' control
Lance said sellers have control over two things regarding their home: the price and how it shows.
"The ultimate goal is to show the value of the home," Lance said.
There are three components stagers look for when entering a room: cleanliness, clutter and color.
"We're talking Q-tip clean, we're talking operating-room clean," Lance said.
As for the clutter, Lance said owners are more apt to get sellers who focus on physical attributes of the house, and not an abundance of family photos, or a nice television.
Remove the clutter
Sheri Dirlan, 36, of Florham Park, who's starting her own staging business called "Room for Change," said the first thing she did when entering the home's family room was to look for a focal point. In this case it was the fireplace and the windows.
"We're going to make it more about the nice view, and about the focal point being the fireplace and not the television," she said.
Extra DVDs and videos were boxed up, as were any lingering magazines on the coffee table. She said the large, sectionalized wrap-around couch needed to be taken apart to make for more maneuverability. She also said there were too many bookcases and not enough floor space.
Julie Califano, a realtor with Coldwell Banker in Rumson, who completed the course and was there to offer advice, said that if a home has nice hardwood floors that are covered by a so-so rug, then the rug should be rolled up, exposing a nice selling point.
Lance stressed that the stagers do their job with care, and aren't out to hurt a homeowner's feelings by banishing their belongings -- which the owner may love -- to boxes. She said the way people live in their homes isn't what makes a home sell.
Color is the third aspect of staging. Lance said it helps to have the most appealing neutral colors on the walls and for the hotter colors to act as accents, be they on furniture or only on pillows.
Staggers work in groups