s/o showing a house with pets

[hokiegirl82]

Reading Sally's thread about getitng a house ready to sell made me wonder how people who have pets have handled selling showing their house for sale. We have 2 labs - a black and a golden - who shed CONSTANTLY and it basically feels like no matter what I do my house is never really clean because their is always fur somewhere, even after a good vacuuming. We are hopefully going to be putting our home up for sale next spring, and I'm trying to figure out what ends I'm going to have to go to to keep the house ready for show. We will always have to have advance notice before a showing simply to get the dogs out of the house, but am I going to have to suck it up and basically vacuum and dust every single day while the house is for sale? I am willing to do it, just not really looking forward to it. I will most likely hire a cleaning company to come in on a weekend to do a very thorough deep cleaning before the house goes up and then I guess I can try and keep it clean from there, maybe with maid service every week or 2 while the house is for sale. Anyone have advice on keeping your house show worthy while having pets living there?

[Deleted]

If you're in an area where homes sell fairly quickly you could board them. I was lucky and my parents took my pets while we were for sale. I still did a quick clean before each showing but it was easier.

[emjacobs]

I would have someone in to do a deep cleaning and then every other week. Keep sheets over everything that you can between showings. Restrict pup access to as much as possible without being a cruel animal abuser. If you can I would vacuum in the morning and in the evening, keep things containerized (food, food bowl, etc) so that your house is never more than 10 minutes away from being showable. Dog toys can go in a basket, water bowl gets dumped and put in the dishwasher, food container goes in the pantry, run the vacuum, pull the sheets off, and take the dog to the park.

We had a friend that had cats and scheduled certain rooms to be morning clean and the others to be evening clean so it wasn't so much at one time. She changed her litter boxes to shallow rubbermaid containers so she could snap a lid on them and hide them. It was amazing how the house could go from normal with 4 cats to a "pet less home" in 15 minutes.