I need advice / recommendations. I have questions.

I need advice / recommendations.  I have questions.

How do you sell a house?

What are the benefits of going through an agent versus doing it yourself?

If rooms need painting, or the yard needs some landscaping, or whatever along those lines should we do it before putting it up for sale to increase the value of the place or leave it undone so that the new owner can choose how they want things?  If we use an agent do they take responsibility for any of this?  Our house in Anniston is in good shape and we've done some upgrades in the time we've been there, but my living room is not exactly a neutral color and Shaun painted his entire bedroom black.  😂😂😂

Obviously, we will clean the place but how do people get houses to look so perfectly clean in the photos?  Does an agent (if we use one) hire someone to deep clean or is that a thing we just need to do ourselves or hire someone to do out of pocket?  I'm not sure how much time I can personally invest in this because I need to be studying for my certification and looking for a job pretty soon so I'm trying to get an idea of the amount of work that needs to be done and how to best tackle it.

Also, we were planning to let the kids live there until the house sells.  Is that a thing we can do?  Like, say that the house is for sale but that we need a certain number of days to get them moved out?

Thank you in advance for any advice you may have!