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I would take down all personal photos, baseball trophies and the urn with grandpa's ashes. People buying a house want to envision the house as being theirs, it's harder to do that when there is a lot of personal memorabilia in the house. When we sold our house we rented a storage and put a ton of stuff in it. Closets that are full look smaller than they do when they are half empty. Kitchen cupboards look more spacious when they aren't packed full, etc. The house doesn't have to be empty, but it should be a blank enough slate that a potential buyer can see themself living there. Good luck!
Oh yeah, what do we do with the screws in the walls after taking down pics? Take screws out will leave holes.
If you don't have any extra interior paint you should get some that matches your paint. Take off a light switch cover and with a single edge razor blade or other sharp object scrape off the biggest piece of paint you can that will be covered when you put the cover back up. Take it to your local home depot or paint store and have them match it, make sure they can tell whether it's semi-gloss, satin or flat. You probably will need a quart or less. Patch any holes with spackle, lightly sand it after it dries if needed and then touch it up. You and your partner should go from room to room identifying dirt on the walls or scuffed or chipped paint. One can be the spotter the other can be armed with cleaning supplies and paint to do touch up as needed. Same thing with baseboards if you have them. A few hours of work can make a huge difference in the appearance of your house Make sure there's no grease on the kitchen walls or cabinets too. If you both work and this seems overwhelming look for a local handyperson to do it, you might check nextdoor.com there are usually recommendations for people who do that kind of work by people who live in your area.
Also, clean or at least thoroughly dust any blinds and replace (or simply take down and discard) any that are damaged. I'm real fussy and I have refused to even consider houses that are dirty or in poor repair, my thought was - if they aren't taking care of these basic things, what kind of problems will I find if I buy the house. One other thing, make sure the paint on your front door is perfect, that the knob and lock is clean and shiny. Aside from your front yard, your front door is the first thing a buyer will see!
I depersonalized my house before selling and all photos of us were put away and things on the wall were replaced with generic art from TJ Max. LOL! No reason to let anyone see us or our kids.
If you leave the pictures up, potential buyers will think they will have to fix all the holes and repaint. One more thing to add to their list of things they have to do in order to move in. When looking at well staged homes for sale, you dont see anything on the walls other than fresh paint.
plug them with a wee bit spackle and a dot of paint,easy peasy and worth it.
Unless the paint on your walls has faded or otherwise changed shades slightly, in which case your touch-up paint (assuming you even saved any and it's still usable) won't match and your walls will look like doo-doo.
You should have repainted long before staging. The same with carpets and any visual repairs like busted trim and old screens, etc.
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