Your experience of house clearance? Cost?

[SheepAndSword]

Elderly relative (mother) had to go into care home, I'm a bit overwhelmed by being abandoned with her place.

I've taken all essentials to her but obviously cannot take any furniture.

If you have had house clearance, do they help you pack up surface mess for the skip/sale? How much did it cost? Sibling has MH issues so I don't have help.

Call charities close by first, they will sometimes go through what's there and take away anything they can resell. Also your local council may have a free reusable furniture collection service. Sorry unsure of house clearance prices otherwise.

Oh that's a good idea, thanks

Where are you geographically?

We paid £2000 in 2020 and this was a friend who my DH used regularly. It’s quite brutal in that they broke up all furniture, all kitchenware, cutlery, plates, glasses etc were put in big plastic tubs, they said a local charity would take it all to put in shops. As it was during Covid lockdown we didn’t have much choice, but if we were to do it again, I would try and give away items on Facebook marketplace as there was a lot of stuff that still had life in them. I would also fill up the bins as much as I could each week and take stuff myself to the tip. They cleared the house in one day, they did 2 trips back to their yard. They came back to clear work shop and garage, this was another £250.

I put a lot of the smaller items on Facebook and took to charity shops. I also asked the buyers if they wanted to keep any of the larger furniture - they did. The house clearance then cost £750 including 4 beds and mattresses, a freezer, sofa, dining table and chairs among other things. I chose the firm based on recommendations and they claimed to try and recycle as much as possible.

SW England - I've now requested a quote from BHF when they open.

Good idea about using something like NextDoor, the chest of drawers is nice.

@Mindymomo £2000 is steep, was that a full house? 😬

This is a flat so hopefully won't be that much.

Feel a bit more positive about it now.

I do house clearance. I give 50% to the client of what I take instead of charging a flat £1-3k to take everything away. People like it as it gives them some £ and I try and do it in an ethical environmentally conscious way. It is insane what some house clearances charge I also can provide a cleaning service and garden clearance service.

We paid £1k 13 years ago. We left them to it and went out for the day (couldn't bear to see items being destroyed).

We found the charity shops pretty useless. Hardly took anything despite items being in very good condition.

I did my Mum's flat myself. It cost me about £200 (cost of a skip, cost of storage boxes for bits I wanted to take. Plus petrol for ferrying things to charity shops.)

My advice:
Rope in a sympathetic friend or a sibling to help. It can be an emotional day.

Ease yourself in, start with the places that have least emotional attachment. For us it was bathroom, linen cupboard and shed. Chucking a bunch of clean towels into a charity shop box is not that tough.

Phone places like YMCA, Emmaus, Salvation Army etc for furniture - they usually will be able to bring a van to collect.

If it feels too raw and you can't decide what you want to keep, either box it up for your loft or hire a storage unit for a few weeks until the dust settles. I felt overwhelmed with the responsibility of what to giveaway and what to keep. But having a bit of time and perspective helped me. Quite a bit of Mum's stuff sat in my brother's garage for 2-3 months and then eventually I felt up to the task. In the end, I only decide to keep about 3 boxes of stuff and a small table.

If you are overwhelmed with photos, digitise as many of them as you can or have them made into photo books.

If you have other family members or close family friends nearby, once you've taken what you want to keep, invite them to take something. Feels easier gifting things to a close friend than getting rid completely.

Good luck, OP

Some charities now charge (quite a bit) for collection.

When my mum died i made a list of everything big or anything useful, with a rough price, and stuck the list with photos on Facebook and advertised it as open day bereavement sale.

I got rid of probably 90% of the stuff in one day, made over £3,000 for guide dogs for the blind (I have a gorgeous hardworking loving very funny guide dog and appreciate him so much) and the rest was picked up as a job lot by a local carbooter.

It is overwhelming, but make a plan how to tackle it - it's too easy to stand in the house and cry feeling overwhelmed.

I did this a couple of years ago. I’d highly recommend a company called JustClear. They specialise in hoarding so it was useful for me as the house in question belonged to a hoarder. I think they’ll clear houses for non-hoarders. It was around £1000 but they cleared everything and I mean everything! Then we paid £650 for a full house clean from a local cleaner. So it cost £1650 for a literal hoarder house including a carpet clean and an oven clean.

A few things I remember from my experience:

British Heart Foundation charge about £5000 and will barely take anything so I’d say that’s a bust!

If the tip near your loved one’s house is in a different authority to where you live then you can show the death certificate (which has the local address on) and they’ll let you in.

I’m not saying you’re not polite but if you are polite and nice to service staff you deal with then they’ll help you loads. There’s lots of sympathy with bereavement and they’re there to help. So it’s definitely worth hiring services. I couldn’t have done it without help.

Similar to PP, paid £2000 in 2020 for a house clearance that was hundreds of miles from where I live.

It seemed steep, but the travel and clearing bit by bit would have wrecked me emotionally. I took away anything sentimental and left them to clear the rest.

I do look back and think about all the trinkets, crockery and furniture that were lovingly collected over the years, and I know I couldn't have parted with them easily. The cost was worth it so I didn't have to have the guilt of throwing away items that were once cherished.

@Feliciacat £5000!!! 😯 I think I've gone off BHF.

@MNdoormat sorry about your mum, I'm not close to mine but seem to get lumbered with everything. Quite looking forward to travelling back home later for a couple of days break.

Same situation paid £600 - tried charities, its soul destroying they only cherry pick, even auctions are overwhelmed- got an excellent service, literally cleared down to the carpets - including garden buildings - ours was recommended by EA

@Justinthebath I've phoned one private company and they said £400 - £900.

Yes I can get a friend up, if sibling is having a bad MH day he won't show.

I wasn't close to mine either and felt like I emotion when she died /and havent done since, so it sort of felt good to get something positive from her death. My sibling also refused to help. He gave up his executor duties and left all the probate to me too.

He asked me for a hf share of the £3k from the open house; it's the first time I ever told anyone to fuck off and it felt good 🤣

Good luck with the clearance.

If you decide to do what I did, with the open house, it makes it easier to tape paper on with price and quick description for the photos and open house to avoid confusion and stave off the cheeky chuffs!

We paid a few thousand recently to have MIL's house cleared, but it was a big property with tons of stuff in every room. It took about five lads with three Bedford vans four hours to clear it completely.

We had taken out paperwork, things we needed to keep and personal items first. The remaining things were taken to the clearance company's warehouse to be sold on, some things went to recycling and only mattresses and sofas were taken to landfill.

We used the same company to clear FIL's flat, cost much less as it was a much smaller property with less stuff in it. It was awkwardly situated on a main road so the relief of not having that hassle was worth every frickin' penny. I think it was just under £1k for that.

To be honest, having had months of having to visit the properties and try to clear out paperwork and sentimental items, the relief of just having sorted was invaluable. It's so stressful dealing with it all, we were happy to pay it and have it done.

Not sure where you are in the South West but this excellent Bristol charity might be just what you need. https://emmausbristol.org.uk/

We paid £500 in 2019 to have MILs 3 bed detached cleared. We had taken what we wanted, invited other family members and the neighbours to get what they wanted. Had a charity come and take what they wanted (that was free) and then the clearance firm with a waste licence did the rest. They did it carefully, came with two vans and a load of banana boxes and packed all the drawer contents and then all the furniture away in the vans and even swept out the garage. They did it in about three hours. There was no way we could have done it ourselves and it was great. The clearance company came before they quoted to look at the stuff and do a quote.

Dh and I have done it twice - I certainly wouldn’t want to do it again. Have told dds that when the time comes, remove anything valuable (I’ve already made a list) or anything they may want for sentimental reasons, but then FGS get a clearance firm in.

Having said that, when we were clearing my DM’s house after she had to move to a care home*, a SiL advertised an Open Day on local social media. We put a lot of household stuff that was usable but maybe a bit shabby (crockery, saucepans, etc.) in one room for ‘help yourself’ - it was amazing what people came and took away. Saved us a lot of trips to charity shop or tip.

*Having done both, it’s worse clearing a house when someone’s still alive, even if they’re no longer aware (dementia). You feel as if you’re throwing their life away.

Would just add, do check anything that may possibly be valuable. A DSis was present when the clearance firm were doing an aunt’s house (care home and dementia again). She saw them taking a slightly more than cursory interest in a painting that had been wrapped up and stored behind a piece of furniture, probably for decades. It had formerly been in our GM’s house - DSis recognised it. Anyway she had it valued - it turned out to be by quite a well known Victorian artist and sold at auction for over £9k - which went into the aunt’s care home fees pot.
GM must have picked it up for relative peanuts at a sale ages before - she’d enjoyed sales but had never had much money.

We've done this three times now in the last three years for our mothers, and the first two were really major clearances. I felt it was important to treat their belongings with as much respect as I could and so we did all the sorting out ourselves. We found local charities which were happy to take very large amounts of donations of clothes, bric a brac, and household items, and we spent several weeks clearing out the rubbish from both properties. I hired a skip for my mum's house, which we completely filled with rubbish from the garage and garden. My best friend's daughter was in the process of buying a flat and was grateful for lots of smaller bits of furniture, pictures, mirrors etc, and a couple of the neighbours had some other bits and pieces. I found a charity which took most of the large pieces of furniture, which they restored and re-sold, and we used the same charity for the most recent clearance last month. We ended up paying £500 for a rubbish clearance company to clear the rest of the furniture and boxes and bags of rubbish from my mother in law's second floor flat (no lift), and then I paid £100 to remove the beds and a couple of other large items from my Mums house last year which the charity couldn't take.

It was exhausting going through everything for the first two clearances and it took up most of our weekend for weeks and weeks, but it was important to me to sort out their treasured possessions with as much respect as I could and to find homes for as much as possible. I've ended up with a number of boxes of their possessions (mostly my Mum's) which I couldn't part with and which I have no idea what to do with but they were too precious to her to give away.

@MNdoormat that sounds eerily similar to me! I think it'll feel like a sort of sadness like something is missing when she goes.

I can empathise with not very helpful siblings.

I had an email from my neighbour at home this morning asking when I'm coming back so I'm looking forward to seeing her, will phone a few more removal places tomorrow.

Local antique dealer came and valued everything in the house and bought stuff he was interested in,local hospice cleared the house and garden. Charged £250 ,that was 10 years ago.It was large bungalow.

Take care - we cleared an elderly relatives house recently - she had cash and valuables stashed all over, we had a very honest clearance guy who kept some things he found for us

Oh that's cool - with my Great Aunt we found £5k in a sock, could have easily been missed