Moving Part 2 - Prepping

What does it take to sell a house? We've watched a lot of those HGTV TLC shows about house flipping, sales and the like. So we felt reasonable prepared for what would be expected of us. Our first plan was to complete the work before our trip to California, and let the house show itself without us in it. It as a good plan. Sadly we completed our work well before, and figured we might as well start showing immediately.
Here are the top ten bits of advice from HGTV:

1. Make the front entrance inviting. ------------> Added a nice flowering plant to patio
   
2. Clear away clutter.------------------------------>Did we mention the 70% house clearing?
   
3. Clean the house thoroughly.------------------->Two kids.
   
4. Freshen the appearance of rooms.------------> New paint, throw pillows (why do people want these pillows that you don't even use?)
   
5. Arrange furniture for spaciousness.----------> Like a roller rink in our house.
   
6. Do all you can to reduce odors.--------------->Did I mention our cat has chronic diarrhea? Originally, the plan was to kennel him while we were gone, and the house was being shown.
   
7. Perform all minor repairs, if necessary.----->We dropped a clock on the kitchen faucet trying to spruce up the look, and that took way too long to fix. And then there was the closet maid shelves that picked this week to collapse.
   
8. Replace outdated light fixtures.--------------->Ironically this had to be reversed. We added fluorescent bulbs in most of the house, but because many of our switches are on dimmers these bulbs would hum or make other odd noises. So, for now we had install old fashioned incandescents.
   
9. Clean the carpeting.----------------------------->Originally, when we were quoted $800, we'd planned on replacing the carpet left in our house (mostly laminate wood floors). But when that price nearly doubled, we opted for a Drycleaning service instead. It isn't perfect, but hey.
   
10. Don't forget the garage and basement.--------> I forgot. We have neither.

So we are in pretty good shape. At first we needed a good hour to get the place in order to leave and let people look at it. Now, we've got it down to about 5 minutes.