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.

Sorry you are going through this OP. It was either the council or the charities that wouldn't take any furniture that didn't have an intact, fire safety label on it. They were also very picky and wouldnt take lots of hardly used things.

Ensure you have removed any valuables before you get a company in to 'assess' and provide a price to clear. My aunt found a clearance firm and just let them wander around my nans house! He tore open bin bags with clothes in, rummaged around everywhere and when he'd left, nans watch and other items from her dresser were missing! Not saying all clearance firms are like this, but there are some unscrupulous ones too.

Must be different area rules depending where you are as none of the charity furniture stores around me charge to collect furniture nor the local council they're very grateful for items.

There is probably a local community furniture project that would come and take lots of the stuff. I know they don’t charge for collecting odd items, not sure about full clearance.

Recently been quoted 1.5k SW London, 3 bed semi, pretty sparse in terms of ‘stuff’. Seems like a good price to me, I will take 2 sentimental items (and picture and some nostalgic christmas decorations) and be done with the rest of it.
I couldn’t bare to sit spending a couple of days deciding where to send various things and I’m short of time - they said they could have it done in under 2 hours which suits me fine. The house isn’t local to me and I’ve had to make so many trips over the last year to deal with various household things and as much as I’ll be sad when the house sells as it holds so many memories I also can’t wait until it is no longer my problem!

I've just seen what someone else said about checking for money and think it's really important to look through things very thoroughly. My mum had quite severe dementia by the time she went into a care home and had been very paranoid about people stealing from her. I found £600 hidden in an envelope under a plank of wood at the top of the wardrobe, £300 hidden in a little bag behind a drawer in the bedside cabinet, and another £500 taped to the top of another drawer unit. If I hadn't checked through everything very carefully, I wouldn't have found any of it. My mum had also hidden various bits of jewellery around the house - she pulled most of the charms off her charm bracelet and I never did find most of them and assume they were taken by the carers who she had for the last week she was at home.

Sorry for your loss. We had to do this for my MIL’s place a few years ago. Our situation was complicated in that we lived several hours away and could only go for a weekend at a time. Had we been able to, we would have done it in one or two goes with a skip as it would have saved us multiple tip trips (small house and borderline hoarding).

We sorted everything into four piles on each trip: keep (sentimental, photos, etc), get valued (ornaments/jewellery), chuck, charity shop/pass on. We would have also passed things on through local Facebook sites. We managed to clear everything ourselves apart from furniture, and BHF did take that. We’ve found BHF very good with furniture.

It is a huge help if someone with less emotional connection to the deceased can help you - I found it a lot easier than my DH.

We might actually have spent less getting a firm in but they can’t make the judgement calls about what is sentimental and I wouldn’t have trusted them to set aside photos and so on. We also didn’t know what we might find and whether there would be money or anything stashed. It does depend on how you’re feeling and how much time you have, though.

We did it after a bereavement a couple of years ago. Couldn't afford to hire someone to clear it. A local hospice charity took a lot of the furniture, so look into small charities. Clothes all went to the charity collection bins at the supermarket. Listed some things for free on facebook marketplace and most people who turned up took more stuff, some comingback multiple times. One knew a scrap metal person, so they took a bunch of stuff from the garage too. The contents of the freezer went on olio and dry goods that weren't many years out of date to the food bank. Had a couple of hippo bags for things that couldn't be distributed other ways.

Really, more could have been sold, but the relative lived a 4 hour drive away and we also didn't want to advertise that the place was empty. The relative believed that some things were a lot more, as they were expenses when bought. There's not much demand for double tape decks these days though.

£600 was an excellent price, in what area was the house and who are EA ?

We used a community charity. They cleared absolutely everything. They brought two vans. One for landfill/recycling and one for reuse. A lady stood in each room and went through everything instructing the muscle which van. I was surprised at some of the stuff they put in reuse. All the kitchen crockery, cutlery and pans went to reuse for packs for people getting council tenancies. Craft materials went to various groups such as a mental health support group. Tools went to gardening groups and people newly with gardens. Etc etc.

We paid 600 pounds.

Late to the party here, I saw your messages so I had a browse. We were pulling our hair trying to find someone to sort our late grandmothers property out. We are based in the South West, Gloucestershire area. The amount of people I had to speak to was silly and largely losing the will to do anything especially some of the prices - all we wanted was bereavement home cleaning.

We eventually spoke to Clear & Clean who were just so relaxed and down to earth, honestly, it was so nice to speak to them. They were normal people!

Their website: https://clearandcleancompany.com/.

They asked if there was anything they should look out for in my nans house and then they just got on with it. I was a little worried about everything going into the bin because nan used to collect all sorts, but they reassured me that they would recycle, upcycle or donate anything they could fix/repair to charity. They did find some jewellery amongst the possessions and kept it aside bless them. I felt totally comfortable having a stranger in our nans house. Some people I spoke it, they didn't fill me with confidence.

They are really friendly, just call them - If you call the landline like I did, I think it connects to Dave;s mobile eventually so he might be on the move.