Sibling and I have different approaches to clearing our parent's house - difficult!

[LindorDoubleChoc]

My mother has sold her house to pay for care home fees and my one sibling and I have to deal with getting rid of the contents by completion (mid November).

Sibling lives 1.5 hours drive away from this house and I live 2.5 hours drive away.

Sibling is 66, retired and lives alone. I am 61 and work 30 hours pw and have a dh and two adult children although one is only 20 and at University but still requires quite a bit of input in some ways.

Mum's house is small and uncluttered but still filled with most of her possessions including the larger pieces of furniture. Two of these are worth about £300 to £400 each, the rest are just fairly standard items (maybe 10 of them) with a re-sale value of maybe £20 to £50 per item being optimistic.

Sibling wants to hire a van for two days (£126) and for the two of us to clear her house in those two days, including taking things to the dump, taking things to the charity shop, then filling the van with her possessions, bringing them up to the town where we live, hiring a storage facility and selling her furniture from here on EBay or FB Marketplace.

Otoh, I have found an estate valuations company who could do the whole lot for us. They will separate out the valuable things and send them to an auction house locally. They will pack and clear the house and charity/dump/or recycle as appropriate for absolutely everything. I don't know what they will charge and it may not be covered by the value of the auctionable items but I feel it will be worth it for the lack of work involved!

For myself, anything I want to keep could fit in one small box and the back of my estate car.

The trouble is my sibling has done a lot more hours already in selling the house (DIY in getting it up to scratch, a lot more visits to our parent in the last 9 months in the care home, dealing with the sale etc). I really couldn't be more grateful to him for the effort.

But I am just utterly daunted by the prospect of those two days before the sale completes. I have to take 2 days days leave from work as they are mid-week. And then the enormous chore of selling things. He is not on social media or Ebay so expects me to handle all that.

Sorry it's long. What do people think?

Yes, DM has two pieces of teak mid century furniture worth I reckon £300 to £400 each from what I have seen online. The rest is nothing valuable.

Her clothes are with her at the care home! Anything left over isn't going to be worth a penny ... they all come from Marks & Sparks or Sainsburys .

I suspect your DM lived in a different world.

Will you be able to go to the tip in a van?
Around here you need a permit in order to go to the tip in a van, which you have to get from the Local Authority. You are unlikely to have a permit/ be able to get one in time for a van you are hiring for a couple of days.

This. I spent 2 days clearing my grandads house with my aunt (in her 60s at the time) as an able bodied 20 something with no dependents. It took two days.

we cleared:

the paperwork (checking through for photo albums made in notebooks, his war record, and shifting what we’d actually need (records of savings, insurance plans we’d need to get cancelled after sale etc.)

Then clearing through knick knacks and jewelry and things like all his sheet music and dividing that up between family members who couldn’t travel but always wanted great aunt’s wine decanter or the portmarian. Appreciate it seems you don’t have this bit but you do have the paper!

and like the person said above, the food and the garage stuff.

Then the clearance company did the furniture. Can’t imagine doing the furniture at the same time!

Why don't you let a charity empty the house and sell anything and keep the profits? You could say that's what your mum would've wanted.

DM has two pieces of teak mid century furniture worth I reckon £300 to £400 each from what I have seen online.
They'll go. You need more than one bidder.
If you are near a densely populated area, that will help. I would be looking within a certain radius from where I live.

@saraclara - so you'd be up for hiring a van, driving it 50 miles, emptying the full contents of a 2 bedroom house including beds and armchairs, book cases, a bureau, a china cabinet, plus all the boxes of kitchen items, cleaning items, hoover, fridge, books, clothes, ornaments, garden tools, old bath and washing machine in the garage. Then driving them round to the dump in the town and offloading, then on to the charity shops and offloading, then driving 50 miles up to another town and offloading into a storage facility, all within two days, and then spending the next few months trying to sell furniture on FB marketplace whilst all the time hoping that the storage fees aren't costing you more than the furniture will sell for. All that with only the help of your 61 year old sister?

I see.

Had to do a clearance a couple of years ago and didn't have the money to pay someone. Listing a few things for free on facebook marketplace led to people turning up with vans and taking a lot more. Including old broken tools for scrap metal etc. Things like the dining table and chairs with fire safety tags were picked up for free by a charity. I sold a few bits on ebay. One that had to be collected and the rest were small collectibles that could be easily posted. Then a skip for anything that was just junk.

People definitely pay less than you might think, unless the furniture is fashionable like g plan or ercol. I remember before the relative passed away him saying things like the stereo is worth a lot, but everyone streams music these days. Might be time for a gentle reality check with your brother. You could look up similar items on ebay to show him sold prices.

Yes. I do think so, and I'll be interested to see what price the Valuer puts on them and how much that offsets their other costs of clearing the house.

My grandma went into a home fairly recently, and clearing her house for sale was a nightmare. It took all three of her children, two of their partners, and one of her adult grandchildren (muggins) to get it cleared and it took days and days, at least one skip and god knows how many tip and charity shop runs. They did sell a few items on eBay with mixed success - two riser recliner chairs went pretty easily and the guy collected. Other bits, less so. It was also hugely emotional as grandma had indeed saved every card, going back to the forties…! I don’t know what happened to most of the stuff. We took a bookcase and a few bits and bobs. But I suspect the vast majority went to charity.

It’s made me determined to ditch stuff before we get to that stage, and also to get a firm in when the time comes that I need to do the same job for my parents.

Just consider going in a hire van to the tip / recycling centre ?
Doubt you'll be able to get in ?

If you hire a van to go to the tip, you'll have to use the trade tip. Or at least you will where I live.

Is it a sentimental thing for him? His mums belongings? He may feel uncomfortable about strangers rooting through it. Perhaps that’s his worry and it feels like something that should be more personal to family?

No. I don't think you read my post fully. I was advocating just doing the charity shop and dump runs that weekend, and arranging for the auction rooms to take the rest, rather than take them to storage and sell them yourself.

Also if hiring a van at all, I'd pick one up from your mum's town.

But otherwise, I'd sit down with your brother and spell out how time consuming selling on eBay is (whether by post or by pick up), how much storage costs are (horrific, in my experience) and how little your mum will end up with, whatever you opt for. And hope that he'll eventually come round.

Your update demonstrates that you've done far more than the paragraph I quoted implied. I assumed he'd done all the house sale stuff too. So I take some of my post back.

I'm the sibling furthest away, while my DB is local to my mum. I'm only too aware of his load compared to mine, so I do everything possible that I can do from two hours away. But I'm definitely the lucky one. So I might have been projecting.

I'd add my aunt passed away à few years ago and she was a hoarder. We spent days sorting through stuff and my step dad decided loads of stuff was valuable (antique french style stuff) and i kid you not it look literally years of car boot sales to get rid of most of it. They still have a couple of pieces in the garage along with fancy plates and glassware that no one wants. Luckily they have space but it was absolutely a PITA to get rid of it.

I helped clear out my daughters house when she sold and moved in with her boyfriend who already had a full house of furniture etc. Apart from a couple of items she wanted I advertised a full house of stuff on marketplace (daughter works long hours and I was helping). Her furniture was less than a year old, very modern and top quality. It was like new as she had spent more time at her partners house. As an example I sold a 4 grand leather suite for 300 and 1500 bedroom furniture for 250. Both advertised for more but no takers. Basically she got sod all and I also ended up freecycling quite a bit as no one wanted to buy and the house completion date was looming.
If your mums stuff is dated and used then I think you will be lucky to get anywhere near what you are thinking. You will end up having to give it away. The whole experience was soul destroying and I was distraught she was getting so little. (I had wanted her to store them just in case but costs were high and there was no guarantee they’d fit into any future house)

I cleared my mother's three bedroom house, she'd not moved in sixty years and it had plenty of storage, all of it full. I'm an only child and it took me an age to do. I had the local auction house come with two young men and a van, that cost £40 plus VAT about a year ago. They went round and took everything that they knew would sell. The selling fees were on their website, they sent me the photos and catalogue entries to approve, the details of what the items sold for and the net proceeds went straight to bank. An old chipped blue and white plate that I wouldn't have sent to the charity shop was very old and sold for £150. It was no work for me, I walked round with them, signed off on the inventory and they did everything else.

I spent months sorting mountains of linens, clothes, papers and when I'd really done I had a house clearance firm strip the remainder in the house and garage and vacuum throughout. I filled the back seat and boot of my car every week, I'd totally underestimated the volume of stuff that was carefully packed away.

I hope that the valuation company proves to be the clear winner. If not I'd have the local auctioneer remove and sell anything saleable and then contact a local charity for the remaining kitchenware and furniture. Here there's a church group that works with families starting afresh after domestic violence and they furnish and equip their accommodation. They take tableware, towels, tables - all the things that you need to put into a house. That should reduce the volume and the lifting so that what's left will go in that van for later sorting. I'd also be looking at how much the storage for the van contents is likely to cost. If you are not prepared to do the selling then say so now, it will be better addressed now than once you've got this stuff in storage.

Charity shops here place a limit on how much you can take in at once - your brother's idea of sorting it all in the two days and taking it to the tip and the charity shop may not work in the real world. You might not be able to take the van to the tip, you might not be able to take it to the charity shop. There were four van loads went from my mother's house, plus all the stuff I took each week to the charity shop and the many times I filled the bin.

I think you seem really detached trying to outsource this whilst he clearly wants support to do it together. He's done so much more than you already. Suck it up to support him.

That is what I meant
My houses are mostly furnished in new and old ercol.
The old can be very pricey for what can be in terrible condition.

I buy and sell,and use auction houses a lot. They will come out and look at what you've got and give you an estimate of it's worth. Generally speaking,it isn't worth sending anything worth less that £30 to auction as after fees,you'll barely get anything. Ercol and Schreiber furniture is popular now,and Art Deco still is,but anything older just doesn't sell. I've seen beautiful Edwardian dressing tables go for £5 or not sell at all last week.Big wardrobes are a no no too,as modern houses are too small for them and people can't transport them easily.

Selling on Facebook and eBay is long-winded and laborious,people bid and don't pay,don't turn up to collect or expect you to deliver.
It's a good idea to check everywhere,including inside books before you leave,or get rid of stuff. Older people have a habit of squirreling away money in the oddest places. I've found large amounts of cash hidden behind a bath panel and inside a padded bed head board.
Best of luck,it can't be easy. We are going to be in the same situation with MIL shortly.

Nail on head. As I said, he is more sentimental about this whole scenario than me. He is closer to DM and had a better childhood. Some of these things my DM has owned her whole adult life, one was a wedding present to her from her own mother (a glass fronted 1950s china cabinet worth £50 max from what I've seen on Ebay). But my DM had a rotten relationship with her mother! (can't discuss with DB).

I don't understand why he is so attached to this stuff. But he is attached and I am not. There's where the problem lies.

I perfectly understand the sentiment that we are selling on behalf of our mother and her needs, and none of the "profits" will come to us because her care still needs to be paid for.

Tbh I know my mother would say - just give it to charity, I'm well taken care of. I honestly believe any profits from this whole exercise wouldn't pay for more than a week of her care.

Should add - I'm so very grateful for so many replies! They're all helping me sort my head out.

It's very difficult to sell furniture for more than a very small amount, even if it is quite new and was expensive. Charity shops are very fussy on what they will take, especially BHF. Offering furniture for free on FB or Freecycle is still difficult with big items as you need a van to collect. Taking it to the tip could mean being charged if you have a van. Storage is expensive and probably costs more than you can sell stuff for.
You can solve all this hassle by getting house clearance to take it away, and probably saving money.

Not sure what relevance your sibling being single and you having 2 offspring is in the op.

They are adults I don't see what input a 20 year old needs that couldn't wait 2 days unless they have disabilities or health issues.

Actually you should be doing more of the work as you have a DH and 2 extra adults to help out especially as your sibling has done a lot more than you have upto this point.

Dh can't help out with the move as he can't take leave mid week (University lecturer so no leave outside of term times). One dc is living 1000s of miles away, other dc is at Uni and mid-term so I'm not going to call on him to miss lectures and seminars for this exercise.