Sure we do. 95% of people selling a house will do quite a bit of cleaning and tidying before getting it photographed for sale.

Take a look at the property photos for some random homes on rightmove - every bed is made, every child's toy put away, every coffee table and nightstand free of books - there isn't even a towel in the kitchen or a toothbrush in the bathroom.

Almost nobody lives that way - they've just done a few hours of cleaning and tidying. Which is completely rational, if you're selling a home for hundreds of thousands of pounds.

> every bed is made, every child's toy put away, every coffee table and nightstand free of books

I think you're under-estimating what 'staging' is. In the US it's common to literally remove all the furniture in the house and to either leave it empty or to fill it with stage furniture. They try to make them look unlived in.

If you go on Zillow in the US and look at some Californian towns it's intense.

But it's certainly not unusual to hide piles of paperwork, magazines, bills and suchlike. Even the comparatively lightweight tidying process we use in the UK generally hides that much.