We listed our house for sale today on Zillow.com. Not that we expect anyone at all to see it there. We do intend to try selling it ourselves on CraigsList and/or other FSBO web sites. Given that I will be doing a virtual tour as well, it might just find a buyer that way.

But before anyone comes over to take a look at the place, we need to stage it. To this end, we've made numerous trips to Lowe's for paint and many other fix-it-up supplies. We've also rented a storage unit and have been packing up stuff, stuff, stuff.

For you see, we need to de-clutter and de-personalize, but not desert the house.

I've been reading about these things and much to my surprise have learned that an empty house does not seem larger to most people. Or rather, it might seem larger, but that's not relevant. People need to be able to visualize living in the house, and many have real problems doing that with large empty spaces. It's much, much better to leave typical furniture in a room so that they can see that theirs will fit, and to see what each room can be used for.

Staging also means that you remove all personal effects from the house - things like family and vacation photos, collections, gadgets, etc. - and make it more generic. People need to be able to get a feel for the space, but not for *your* space, for what will become their own space.

We have much to do yet, but we have made much progress in clearing out clutter. Some 30 boxes have already gone to the storage unit this weekend and we've at least that many more to go next weekend. We're number all the boxes, though, and keeping track of what's where so we can extract stuff if we need to get something particular.

Right. Off to the airport at 4 am tomorrow for the flight to Ithaca. This could be the first day of the rest of my life.