The last time we sold a house was 40 years ago, so we were unfamiliar with the current concept of “staging a house” before selling it. When our youngest daughter and husband mentioned staging their house, we thought live music and refreshments might be involved. Wrong again.

Staging a house means you declutter, deep clean and enter all your earthly goods into the Witness Protection Program. A second option is to rent a large storage unit.

Staging a house involves removing family pictures, personal mementos, wall décor and all 400 magnets plastering children’s artwork to the refrigerator door.

Bedside tables are cleared, leaving only carefully curated hardback books that make the owners look like tech wizards or movie buffs.

Bathrooms must look unused and sterile.

The washer and dryer can stay in the laundry room, but no dirty clothes are allowed. Some suggest hiding empty laundry baskets so as not to remind potential buyers of unpleasant chores.

Kitchen counters are to be virtually bare. One staging expert claims that visible cords to coffeemakers, toasters and mixers on a counter look uninviting. I don’t know how we live with ourselves.

To keep the house looking neat, clean and unlived-in, our daughter, her husband and three kids moved out of their house and into ours.

Fortunately, our house is not for sale, which means people are free to use the bathrooms, leave sand and dirt in the bottom of the tub, kick off your shoes anywhere, run up and down the stairs while dragging your hands on the walls and weave all the electrical cords on the kitchen counter into macrame plant holders.

Which reminds me of another “must have” for staging a home: a live plant in every room. Who decides these things?

After four days on the market, multiple showings and no offers, our daughter felt we should stop by the house and freshen things up. Perhaps prospective buyers had messed with the staging.

She was correct — a chair had been moved 10 inches from the dining table. The aging carpet in a hallway had a small visible wrinkle in it. The two of us were on our hands and knees pushing the excess carpet into a bedroom, under the bed and up against the wall.

Perhaps the house wasn’t selling because a sofa was on the wrong wall. Careful not to scratch the floor, we picked up the sofa and moved it to an adjacent wall.

Thirty seconds later, we picked it up and moved it back.

Perhaps the bedrooms needed vacuuming. No-line vacuuming is preferred for staging, but if the vacuum does leave lines, they need to be straight. Despite her apprehension about my initial vacuum lines, I soon got the hang of it.

Three days later an offer came through and they moved back home that weekend. The ‘fridge was once again plastered with artwork and handprints, tennis shoes and flip flops blocked the entryway, the dog lounged on the sofa, pots and pans sat on the stove, and dirty dishes stood in the sink.

Home sweet home.

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