There's a sign in the yard...

Well, that's that. The realtor has been here and our current house is now on the market. The MLS listing goes "live" on Friday night, and then I'm sure there will be a parade of lookie-lous in and out of here. I'm not looking forward to the Saturday morning tire-kickers coming through, but in this economy, I have to accept just about any appointment that comes our way. Maybe we'll be very blessed and the first few people through will yield an offer.

I can hope, can't I?

I spent the last two days cleaning like a crazy woman. I don't mind admitting that I'm completely exhausted. I've scraped, shoveled, dusted and decluttered until my eyes are crossing, but we did get some very nice photos of the main rooms for the MLS. Now we just have to keep it this clean, and not only that, but finish cleaning the rest of the rooms that haven't gotten the whole treatment yet.

A house for sale needs to be "staged" to show it off best. It needs to have enough homey touches that a potential buyer understands the purpose of the spaces and feels comfortable in them. But you shouldn't have a lot of personal items around. You want the potential buyer to imagine *their* stuff in the space, not look at yours. I completely understand that.

And yet, I can't quite get past the thought that the house looks so... sterile. Many of the things that make me smile are headed for boxes, not to be seen again for three months at best. So, I've got to get creative, and make my smile objects look unobtrusive enough so that I can leave them out.

They can be our sneaky little secret, okay? Okay.