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We went through selling our home in a crazy time (DD was 3 months old), over Christmas/Thanksgiving holidays, with DH in trial. I'm still not sure what I was thinking. Here is what worked for us:

-I bought a million plastic tote bins, different colors
-I prioritized purging first...I purged everything I knew I didnt want/need in my new home. I found a local church that takes all sorts of household items to re-purpose into the community
-Next was packing what I knew we would not need (out of season, etc) into bins. I used a color scheme to pack bins - all kitchen items went in blue bins, all linens went in clear bins, holiday stuff into red/green/orange/etc bins.
-Last was an assessment ... how cluttered did my house still look (mostly closets at this point). I then decluttered the closets, either into more big bins, or into smaller bins that could stay in the closets until it was time to list.

All the big totes were stashed in the unfinished part of our basement, orderly. The stuff I packed last (to make it sufficiently un cluttered) stayed towards the front since there was a chance I'd need it. The smaller bins stayed in their closets until time of listing, then I had DH move it all down to the storage room.

For food, I cooked a LOT and filled my freezer (and garage freezer) so I needed less cooking utinsels/tools to be unpacked.

We hired a cleaning service to come every other week.

I didnt use them at the time, but if I had known about ThredUp at the time I would have ordered a bunch of donation bags and just donated all my clothes that way rather than going to the church with all that stuff!

Good luck...fwiw...we listed our house somewhat on the high side of the market and it sold in 12 hours for 5K over ask. The decluttering paid off big time for us!

We sold our house last summer on extremely short notice and it was really crazy. But our house went way over list, sold way more than the comps in our area, and was under contract very quickly. We listed Thursday, had open houses Saturday and Sunday, had a dozen separate private showings over that weekend, and reviewed offers Monday night.

DH and I took no time off during this process, we had 2 kids under 3, and it was like 115 degrees all summer so it was a lot. The biggest help for us was:

- Our housecleaner, obviously. We let her know the house was going on the market and asked her to really focus on things like cleaning the walls, cabinet fronts, and baseboards in addition to the regular cleaning stuff. She really made a point to keep our windows sparkling too.

- Our lawn service - we also let him know we were going on the market and told him to do what he needed to make the yard look as neat, pruned, and maintained as possible.

- We rented a storage unit near our house. It made packing, staging, and decluttering so much easier because I could just have DH throw a bunch of stuff in the unit (it was like 1 mile from our house) as I packed it or tagged it for donation. We also removed all the excess toys and furniture in our house and it made the place look so much bigger and spacious. We ended up getting a 3 month rental on our unit (it was some special and it was a better deal on a bigger unit) and it was SOOO helpful.

- Did small maintenance/touch-ups like every evening for about an hour. This was stuff like touching up paint, going at scuff marks with a magic eraser, replacing all the light bulbs with new ones to get a brighter light in the house, bigger/newer light switch faceplates, replacing mismatched towel bars/toilet paper roll holders/knobs, etc. I also recaulked all the bathrooms so they looked sparkling clean and neat. We laid fresh bark mulch all over the property. So cheap and easy and made the yards look so much better maintained. The year we sold the house we also took advantage of a Home Depot free install deal and replaced all the metal mini blinds in our house with the cheap 2-inch faux wood blinds. For $600 it made a WORLD of difference and made the house look so much more upgraded.

- Hired a handyman and plumber to come do some smaller jobs that I knew would come up later during the contract period. I didn't want to deal with some long repair list and get angry about it, and it really helped me to stand pat against the buyer when they tried to ask for a zillion things because I knew I had done my due diligence. So we had 2 posts replaced on our patio, I had some some drywall and baseboards replaced in the bathrooms from where there was a little warping from water, and we replaced the sinks/faucets in the master bath. All of our choices were middle of the road, nothing super trendy, basic fixtures/colors.

- We hired a carpet cleaning service to do the high traffic areas of our house right before the open house (so Friday) so that it was clean and perfect for the showings.

- We didn't end up needing it, but we had the number of someone locally who hauled junk so that if we got to a point where we needed someone to just take a truck full of stuff to the dump, they could handle it.

- We ate out or ate outside in the yard a lot. Kept things cleaner and easier. I kept drop cloths under the boy's chairs at the kitchen table so that it minimized floor messes. We took away a lot of their toys and stored them early on so that cleaning up every night was simple and fast.

- We designated ONE bathroom to use in the 2 weeks leading up to list because the master bath had a big spa tub and a glass shower and a lot of counter space and I didn't want to constantly clean that area up. So we used our tub/shower combo guest bath for all of us and just kept all the bath products and toys and stuff focused in that one bathroom.

- We were a family with 2 kids and we staged the house appropriately for that. People want to imagine themselves living in a home and we knew it was a perfect place for a family with kids, so we focused on that demographic. We put all the big toys outside on the patio arranged in a little play area, we had our high chair out, and we had a toy sorter with neatly organized toys visible. We had our boys' rooms staged to look as cute and coordinated as possible.

- We decluttered our kitchen the most. Big kitchens sell and we just grabbed everything out of the cabinets, kept the counters as bare as possible, and kept it gleaming.

- We kept the living areas pretty "adult" - meaning we didn't have a LOT of kid stuff out there visible and just staged our furniture in a way that was inviting. We also took down overly personal photos and things like that and just left up artwork.

- We bought cheap hand towels, bath towels, and kitchen towels from Walmart and hung them to give it that hotel fresh feel. Everything looked coordinated and neat.

- We got some plants to spruce up the house. Nothing big, but just a small potted succulent made our dining table look so much more inviting.

People asked if our house had been professionally staged, so I took that as a huge compliment. May is a great time to sell so I'd just try to get in whatever maintenance and updates you can do now (take advantage of that nesting urge) and purge all the things!

I haven’t done this myself, but my parents had an Air BNB in backup just in case they couldn’t get into their new house on time. That way you don’t have to unpack dishes, furniture, linens, etc and come in around the same cost as a hotel. They rented these storage cubes that in your case could be left on your new land. Also holy cow to how quick that close process could be. Ours was considered fast on the second house we bought at about 70 days. The first was 4 excruciating months.

We are building a new house that will be ready first week of July. We spent five days getting our house "show ready." I mean "show ready!" We put 70% of our house into storage. We deep cleaned. We touched up little paint spots. Listed February 19, had five showings, and accepted an offer 5 days later just before the open house. The buyers wanted us to cancel our open house. Nope. Full list no closing costs. The absolute key was packing up 70% of our home. We also cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed, and made the beds each day. Leave the fans on low so the house feels open and breezy. I did not light a bunch of candles or have home scents. Oh, and we made our dogs disappear lol. No evidence whatsoever that we own dogs.

Oh yeah, also we painted the whole house pencilsketch grey by Behr about three months ago. I painted it with the idea that we would be selling soon and buyers love their greys. I'm in a townhouse community in the DC suburbs where townhomes are a dime a dozen. Why buy your two year old townhouse when I can buy new! That's why I had to try to make ours stand out as something move-in ready and like new (ours is 2 years old) that is also nicely decorated.

Best of luck! Declutter!!!! We also emptied out the garage. One thing with townhouses is they're always lacking storage is a common complaint. Ours is 2400 sq feet and we have the same problem. Storage room!

Check out this blog post. She just did this and it has a bunch of great tips:

https://www.younghouselove.com/2018/04/staging-tips-for-selling-your-house/

@autumn865: Yes, for sure about photos! Our realtor had a real photographer come and he took amazing photos in great lighting for our house. The listing looked great and really made all the hard work we put into the house shine.

Another thing we did was we actually made tags and labeled all the fruit trees in our backyard (not relevant to everyone, I know), but apparently it was a hit with the people at the open houses. We had one lady apparently actually start weeping that she wanted our house SO bad because it was everything she had dreamed of (dramatic much??)

We went through a 2 part move while I was pregnant. My suggestion is to try and make it a single move. You can make that part of the contract that you won't close until x date or that you will close and rent it from new buyers for a certain amount of time. And hire movers whatever you do. My husband thought it was a good idea to try and do the first part with a friend. It was not. Hire movers!

@Ms. RV: I bought a Groupon for carpet cleaning. I outsource things like that. I probably *could* have rented one from the store and did it myself, but I didn’t want to.

Now, when my dog shit on the carpet two days before our appraisal, I did clean that myself.

@Ms. RV: Unfortunately, we couldn’t take off work either. I have zero leave or flexibility at the new firm I’m at. It sucked but we did it all at night when DD went to sleep or early morning before work.

@MrsSCB: that’s exactly what we did. We did a rentback and are currently renting our house. It’s weird lol

@Ms. RV: Good luck!!!!