Emotions around house clearance

[MissMarplesNiece]

I've been putting it off for ages but I need to bite the bullet and get everything cleared out of DM's house so it can be sold. It's such a daunting task - emotionally rather than physically. And then, on top of that there's dealing with my DM's emotions. If you've had to deal with this, how did you do it?

@MissMarplesNiece I did this for my childhood home after DM's sudden death meant DF had to go into a care home (dementia). It was TOUGH. None of my siblings helped. However, lovely friends and my DH all chipped in and there was never a day when I was on my own. My hilarious 87 year old aunt came and was absolutely delighted to find an unopened multipack of M and S knickers which she carried off in triumph!

Clothing we bagged up and a local air ambulance charity collected.
Books ditto a local charity shop
Two skips on the driveway to fill with junk ie old duvets , a chair the cat had peed on, etc
Sentimental stuff like photos into boxes which are currently in my loft awaiting a) sorting and b) digitising

Private stuff like my parents letters to each other burnt
Helpful stuff like bank details into folders for redirection closing etc.
Auction house for antique furniture
House clearance for everything else

Make sure you have a good supply of easy meals in the fridge if you decide to stay there, lots of tea coffee and wine and some pick you up treats. It will be hard, you will cry buckets but once you've done it, you may find, as I did, that you have honoured your parents memory and done right by them. It was exhausting but I'm glad I did it.

The comment about instruction manuals made me laugh …I remember when my parents downsized in 2015 and we found lots of these, but also a yellowing invoice from a stonemason dated April 1980 that my Dad had kept in case he needed him again. The stonemason was my schoolfriend’s granddad and was about 65 years old in 1980 - I doubt he would’ve been very receptive to an enquiry 35 years later in 2015!

I hope you’re ok, OP.

Both my parents are now in nursing/care homes and I am going to have to sort their house to sell it in a few weeks. There is so much stuff, shed rammed with all sorts of bits too. It is a 3 hour round trip and I have no sibling help. I think like you I will get house clearance team in.

@NK346f2849X127d8bca260 Your parent's house sounds similar to DM's. There's so much stuff. DM couldn't go shopping without buying some kind of nic-nac. Every surface is crammed with small ornaments of one kind or another. The property is 4 hour drive from where I live & I find it difficult to go there and back in one day. I'm sure my step dad had some kind of compulsive disorder - I counted 20 Christmas lanterns and 4 fibre optic Christmas trees. There were over 50 men's shirts, some still with sales labels attached.

I dislike staying there on my own so for next week, when I'm going to do a bit of final sorting, I've booked a decent looking hotel in a nearby town. I decided if I was going to face the emotional turmoil of it all I was going to treat myself to a decent dinner, a bath & a warm bed rather than a lonely night in a cold bungalow in the middle of nowhere.

That sounds like a good plan, OP. It will be nice to escape to the hotel.

Would it help a bit to think that the tagged shirts etc would generate some funds for a charity shop? And that shoppers at the charity shop (possibly on low incomes) would get immaculate things for not much money? That hoarded stuff could do a lot of good.

It’s weird I’ve found this thread because today I threw away the last item from my parent’s house. I cleared out over 40 years worth from a large four bedroom house, attic, garage, and shed.
my dad was a low key hoarder so some of the finds were pretty impressive.
I found just doing one room at a time was a good place to start.
Oh and don’t let any friends of your parents be around whilst they sort through years worth of greetings cards because they’ll be extremely unhelpful and say things like “ohh but you canny get rid of that!”

@AmazingBouncingFerret I think DM has kept every Christmas card & greetings card that she & stepdad received over the last 30 years. I haven't looked through them all - another "too emotional" job. I confess I also had kept years' worth of cards but I had a clear out a couple of years back, threw them in the recycling & decided that in future I wasn't going to keep anymore cards unless they were very, very special.

This thing with DM's bungalow has made me think about the stuff I keep and I've been slowly decluttering. I'm quite interested in the idea of Swedish Death Clearing (I think that's what it's called)

Step dad's clothes went to charity. He also had good waterproof coats/waxed jackets and dozens of good quality, hardly worn shoes. They went to the Salvation Army and a charity working with refugees/asylum seekers so I hope they help out some vulnerable people & good comes from them.

We had to do this for my nan’s flat when she went into a nursing home( dementia)
we were on a deadline as it was a council flat. We spent a week going there to help( mom, aunt, cousin and me) took a room at a time. We set a plan each day too.
we kept jewellery, photos, important papers and clothes. Put furniture free to collector on fb. We’ve each got a storage box of things in our houses and rotate photos and a few nicknacks at the care home.
some sentimental things came home with us but anything mega old or not store-able was thrown . ( be prepared with the black bags)

With my MIL's house my DH and sibling had different coloured little sticker dots, which they went around and put on things they'd like to treasure, anything with two dots just started a conversation about who would take it and it was a resolved. Everything else was respectfully cleared away.

I had to do with after my mothers relatively unexpected death.

I actually doing it comforting and cathartic.

She loved her home and I did it respectfully and efficiently.

I had this problem as well as a lot of my parents things were valuable. My mother was a big antiques collector. My father died before my mother who is alive but now very old and living elsewhere. My mother was too old and too frail to start going through it with her and she insisted on everything being kept. We ended up putting most of it in storage and it is still there. At some point in the future we will have to empty it all out and get rid of what is of no value and what is a value for auction. It is an absolutely huge task and my husband and I are at a loss as to how unearth we can achieve this.

@Pennina If you find the number for a local auction house they will come with a van (mine charged £40 for the van) and go through the storage unit and take away anything that they think will sell. There will be sale charges, a fee per lot and a percentage of the sale value but basically they take it away and send you the money later. They will write the description, take the photo and send you the catalogue listing for approval - you are paying them to do all the work involved in selling.

That will leave you with the furniture they don't think has a cash value. Things that fit in a modern household might be of interest to a charity shop or a charity working with those fleeing domestic violence. Again, they will come with a van and take what they can use. Hopefully what's left then will be manageable for you to deal with. Up to this point you won't have had to do any heavy lifting, if you hire someone with a van (and a waste disposal licence) they would clear what's left for you.

Other people don't have the emotional attachment we do and when it's their job and they do it every day they are efficient too.

It is an absolutely huge task and my husband and I are at a loss as to how unearth we can achieve this. 1) You can hire a valuer - see if an auction house can recommend one 2) you can look online for similar pieces. Remember what you can sell for will be 25-50% of the price they’re being offered at for sale

I did it for DF a few years ago and he really was a hoarder. Big house and we tried to do ourselves with two big cars(siblings were completely useless) but you couldn’t move so we got a house clearance in and it cost £££ but you truly couldn’t go through everything. Imagine hoarding from 1-10. His was a 9. You literally couldn’t move.

Dont expect charity’s to take much. They want labels on furniture and often are very fussy or just are closed to donations. I had a friend who used to manage a charity shop and she said the things people expected to give away was horrible. Think stained underwear left outside the shop or huge damaged pieces of furniture they people wanted to ‘donate’ but most was unusable.

I had a friend who used to manage a charity shop and she said the things people expected to give away was horrible. When I was young, charity shop customers were almost exclusively the very poor. When you were sorting stuff for the charity shop, you asked yourself “Could someone make use of this?” Nowadays, charity shops see their main purpose as raising money. The question you ask yourself now is “Would I pay good money for this?” It’s quite a mind shift.

Of course there are always people who find it easier to let the shop sort it and dispose of the junk.

And there are people who can’t bear to simply throw away the stuff that still has good use in it but isn’t good enough to sell, and who have very full houses as a result

You can get house clearance in to do it. We bought a house that was meant to have been emptied before completion and the vendor had got overwhelmed and left it far too late, leaving total chaos in his wake.

The house clearance company took everything, kept to one side any papers/photos they found, sold what they could and charity shopped/recycled anything else they could. We had to pay them (claimed cost back from vendor) including waste disposal charges but they deducted anything they managed to sell.