Sorry to give you the bad news, but cleaning the bathrooms every other week, while fine for you and your family, is not enough to give the best impression to buyers. Twice a week cleaning would be much better. One of the most effective things you can do, besides decluttering, is to clean all the windows in the house and keep them sparkling. It's a nuisance, but it makes a huge difference to the atmosphere of the house. Finally, if you can stand to polish your wood floors, do so. Gleaming hardwood floors can take years off a house's age.

It's awful having to do all this, perhaps for weeks, but it is worth it.

K, no family here, just a singel, fussy, woman, so my home could be considered almost squeaky clean by today's standards. LOL Keeping bathrooms clean is not an issue, nor are windows.

My floors are new(2 years)and it's the engineered variety, so the finish 'is what it is'. In my case it's a matte finish, no high gloss, and NO polishing is recommended per manu'f.

As for de-cluttering, i've already started with that, and am also 'de-accessorizing', as I tend to like a lot of 'stuff', and wouldn't want to diffuse a pontential buyer.

I'm game to doing my own house cleaning, but was wondering what the 'pros' could do that I couldn't. ;o)

patty_cakes

I've worked in the cleaning field for a few years, and used to work for a realtor. She'd send me out to houses that needed to be kept up for whatever reason or cleaned out before people started coming in. I actually met my current husband cleaning for him while his house was for sale 10+ years ago. He's a truck driver that was hardly home but needed the woman's touch a few times a month.

I feel that if a realtor is saying you might benefit from a pro cleaning, perhaps there is something that you missed, and she's trying to nicely tell you. Ask her exctly what needs to be pro cleaned, maybe she'll give you a hint. With my house, I know my cabinets could use a wash down, but since having back surgery I haven't been up to the job yet. Maybe she's talking about windows, or washing down molding.

When my parent's house got listed it was in bad shape. My mother who swore all she did was "clean" in reality pushed around a cleanerless sponge on her counters and thought that did it. Sad yes. The house had cigarette residue all over the walls & woodwork. I spent a good month cleaning the house. When the realtor came by to list it, she was pretty shocked to see the difference between before me & after me.

If you have the time and energy to keep your home clean without hiring someone to do it, keep it clean yourself. The pros don't do anything you're not capable of doing on your own. Some people just don't have the time necessary and that's why they hire the pros, not because they do it better.

We never hired cleaners while we were selling any of our homes until move out day. My husband's relocation package included professional cleaning after move out and I always availed myself of that service, simply because it was one less thing for me to handle on move out.

The pros may be able to clean faster then you do... maybe dust all the casings and tops of the doors and lights every time rather then just every other week. Probably a deep cleaning of your appliances. Dust webs from the corners, thoroughly cleaning your chandeliers, wash your sconces as well as vaccum your furniture. Maybe a few other items you may not regularly do.

Have the "real estate people" recommended a professional cleaner to you after seeing your home? Or, was just a general statement? If the recommendation was after seeing your home, give it serious consideration. You may not be doing the job you think you are. If on the other hand, it was general advice, ask your realtor. It may not apply to you.

I go into super clean mode whenever we're selling. That means top to bottom Spring Clean (all the standard cleaning plus windows inside and out, cabinet interiors, all the doors, casework, and moldings dusted and cleaned w/ Murphy's oil soap, wiping down all the walls, hands-and-knees grout scrubbing, clearing out all the furniture to really wash or clean the flooring, and carpets steam cleaned). The I still clean the baths and floors everyday. Fortunately for me, our houses have always sold in a week or less!
We hired a professional cleaning service once. This was after I'd already cleared out and done a routine clean up. I wasn't at all impressed. It took 2 people 3hrs to clean our house. I could have done it better myself in the same amount of time. After they left, I cleaned again.
I'm not a fastidious person at all. I usually need at least 30 min warning before company comes, but all that changes when the house is on the market.

I used a professional cleaning crew (2 people) when I was selling our house last fall. I was ill and still working full-time and my DH had moved onto the new state ahead of me.

The house had sold but then fell out of escrow so I wanted to just hire a crew to spruce things up. I planned on having them in twice a month but then the house went under contract before I needed them again.

I was spending whatever energy I had in packing and decluttering so hiring the pros was worth it to me. If I had been able to do it all myself I'm not sure if I would have spent the money. It was over $200.

And we were able to tell buyers that the house had been professionally cleaned, so maybe that made a good impression, I don't know.

Pros can do the work faster, just because its usually a team (2 or more people). But all the stuff they do you can easily do yourself, but it might take longer to do.

The house I sold about 3 yrs ago, was cleaned by pros, just because I was moving somewhere else and I couldn't do both homes on my own. If I had time and another set of hands, I would of cleaned it myself.

Good luck-
maria

I think it's worth having your home professionally cleaned before putting in on the market.

In my case, I had a wonderful cleaning service once a week for the 10 years we had lived in our old house (built new, so they were there practically from day one) so it was very well maintained. However, when we moved out, obviously that stopped. Then we had the floors refinished and the dust was un-friggin-believable, so we hired a service to do a deep "move out" cleaning.

If you've had RE agents in to assess your home to set a selling price and they've told you to have it professionally cleaned, no offense, but that's a nice way of them saying that you're missing things that they consider important when people are viewing your home as potential buyers. That is TOTALLY different than having friends in for coffee!

Some things that come quickly to mind that you may be missing are: windows, window ledges (inside and between the glass and screen), tops of doorjambs, door hinges (where the graphite collects) baseboards, shoemold, cabinet fronts, top of the fridge, behind the toilets, grout in tile floors and/or shower walls.

That said, you would need to let the cleaning service know that you want a "deep cleaning", not just a regular maintenance cleaning. And be specific about the things you want done. This is usually double the price of a regular cleaning, but (imo) worth it.

Good Luck!

Roselover, as a professional cleaner, do you have any favorite products? I pretty much just stick with Clorox, but am curious as to what you recommend. Thanks!

I found some really great products while cleaning my parents house - one is greased lightening the other Krud Kutter - great for heavy cleaning, even used it on the bad ring on the toilet. Murphy's Oil Soap is my fave for wood, unless it is greasy, I either use one of the 2 above or Dawn dish detergent. Clorox Cleanup has to be my number one cleaner, but for something you don't want to use bleach on, White Lightening makes an antibacterial that works great.

I then follow with a nice scented candle, nothing too stinky, favorite is white lilac or honeysuckle.

Thanks everyone. For the record, i've not had an agent come to my home yet, but have been told by various people that's what I should consider befor putting it on the market. These are people who do not personally know me and my cleanings habits, except for one who is an agent.

I'm thinking they may be recommending a service such as Laura has suggested, not your typical vacumn/light dusting 'housekeepers'. Someone who will actually do more than spray a little Scrubbing Bubbles on the fixtures. Cleaning windows is a totally different service which will do inside/outside~have used before as I have 'upstairs windows'. Price isn't a consideration as much as the quality of the cleanig service is. ;o)

patty_cakes