Clearing a parents house

[Ceebeegee]

Hello everyone, just looking for some advice because I'm struggling with the situation currently.
My elderly dad is now in a care home. He has a rental property that we have now have to give up and return. I haven't given notice yet (on my dads behalf as POA) and the rent is still being paid, so there is no sense of real urgency so I keep putting it off.
He has lived here 52 years so there is years and years of "stuff" to deal with.
Where do you start?
It was my childhood home and, due to emotional situation anyway, I am struggling to rationally do any clearing of the house because everything suddenly seems sentimental.
How do you break through the barrier of sentimentality? I dont have room to store a 3-bed house worth of stuff, but I feel like I am being horrible if I get rid of anything.

The remaining clothes, linens and bedsheets, I can easily donate to charity or a clothing bin., But I struggle when it comes to books / artwork / trinkets / CD's / hobby collections of my fathers. He had a few collectible hobbies, that he has aquired over his 82 years - I think a lot are worthless to anyone else but they were my dads quirky hobbies so it feels disrespectful taking them to the dump/recycling centre.
I dont know where to start. I keep walking into a room thinking I'll tackle this room first, but I dont make any progress because I cant bear to part with any of it. But my dad isn't coming home so it needs to go.
Where do I start and how to get over the sentimental block?

Could you rent storage, so as you clear the house you can have a donate pile, a rubbish pile (there will be some) and a store pile? Then give yourself a little time to gear up to clearing the storage? If you have POA could this be paid for by DF?

Get a friend to help. It's overwhelming on your own

That's really hard. It's hard enough sorting things when they've died but at least you feel like they had use out of it when they were alive and now it's no use to them you can kind of rationalist that it's fine for it to go.

But when they're still around it's hard. And might they ask about it, to see some of the stuff?

Can I just jump in quickly about the rental property and giving notice? Make sure that the person whose name is on the original rental agreement is the same as the person on the documents giving notice, or this could be challenged and delay matters.
Jumps back out.

I know how difficult this can be. Things I found useful were taking photos of things so that they were not lost completely. This may work with hobby and collection stuff. Maybe put a few shots together in a frame for him to enjoy and remember if you think he would like that.
I also found clearing the obvious stuff out first helped enormously. All the recycling, all the obvious charity donations, I think perhaps because the house then losses it sense of being theirs as it starts to look and feel a bit different in increments.
Good luck.

oops, might have read that wrongly... he is the renter rather than the landlord. Apologies.

I'm so sorry. I had to clear my mum's flat when she went into a home and it was really difficult even though she'd done the big move herself 3 years ago.

I would go by categories, and I would recruit help. So it sounds as if you are identifying categories that are easy (household linens) and much harder ones (collections). Tackle a category that feels easy first, linens seem a good one. Maybe furniture and kitchen stuff might also be easy. Try booking a house clearance person to take specific loads, you don't have to ask them to clear the whole house at once, though it's more expensive that way.

Then can you recruit other people with similar hobbies for the collections? Try asking on a local WhatsApp or Facebook page for someone who knows someone who also likes this collection. Ask them for help selling them. If the financial side isn't crucial, you could offer them first pick of the items plus eg 50% of the proceeds, something like that?

Books are increasingly difficult but would anyone be able to help you sort? I catalogued my mum's books and ended up keeping quite a lot and passing some to my sister and brother, but also got a big load to a jumble sale, and did bin another lot.

Best wishes. This job is hard for everyone.

I did sell some key books via Marketplace and by ebay. Very little sold on amazon.

It is so difficult when you are trying to deal with personal items.
From experience, time does help, and you can start to look at things dispassionately, so if you can store things it makes it easier.
Could you take photos of the hobby things and just keep a few? Does your dad have any favourites, or is he happy to put them all in the bin? I have various ‘making’ hobbies, and for me it is about enjoyment of the process rather than the finished item so I’ve actually put various bits in the bin myself and told my kids they should bin them all when I die. Or, could you sell them on Etsy or facebook or something?

I'd suggest a yard sale but not in this weather!

Do look out for charity superstores for the easy categories, if the stuff is in decent condition. But if it's not... I currently have a skip outside and it's the business.

Ask friends to help you when you get to really tricky bits, so that you have emotional support.

Get started with the easy stuff and just get it out of the house

Sort the emotional stuff into piles (maybe in different rooms) so that it is all together

Take photos of it

Thank it for giving you and your DDad wonderful memories (weird I know, but it works for me)

Pack the collections carefully into boxes and then donate them to somewhere or someone that will appreciate them. You can find people who collect anything on facebook/insta etc

Try and do one thing a week so you dont have to rush too much, but you keep up the momentum.

Take over paying the rent yourself to give yourself the push to get it done.

I’ve had to do it within the last year.

Get a quote from a house clearance company and find one you are happy with. Understand what they will and won’t take (eg food/ tins of old paint/cleaning fluids might be a no).

Go through the house room by room and collate paperwork for shredding.

Spend time looking at the old sentimental stuff, enjoy you memories. Take a few boxes to take home the stuff you want to keep or the high value items to sell. It helps if you have someone with you who can help.

Clear out anything to the dump anything the house clearance people won’t take.

Leave the rest.

It’s hard and emotional but if you hadn’t already worked it out from my post, paying for house clearance is totally worth kt.

Went through this and it's so hard to make a start. It feels wrong and upsetting to be throwing their personal things away but we started with the kitchen, 3 boxes for keep, donate or throw and had help from siblings.

I work in self storage
We have a lot of people who take storage with us, get a house clearance in to remove furniture etc, then move the rest to storage to go through and decide what to keep, donate etc

A lot of the good self storage companies do opening offers, which often spurs people into sorting through it all while the price of storage is lower

We hired a clearance company to do it, for exactly the reasons you give.

When my great aunt died, we sorted through the valuable and sentimental items, but the very sad and hard fact is, most people's houses are filled with items which ultimately get thrown away or put in a charity shop. Our own belongings are just that, ours, and most of it is junk to others. Once we had sorted the main items we got a house clearance to come. It want very much and they sell/ charity shop/ throw away everything according to the value .

Get a skip for stuff no one will want. Get help. Start with easy things like advertise or donate large furniture eg fridge freezer, sofa etc. Do you have a local Neighbour site or FB marketplace? If not try local charity shops. Some will collect. Photograph his collections and put in a frame as he might ask about it later.

Employ a house clearance company - I'm serious. I had neither the time nor the inclination to do it. They sorted everything out, piles for the tip, for charity, sentimental items and for the local auction house. It was worth it. They did it in a day.

1. Harden your heart

2. Get a skip.

I had to clear my parents house after they died and I found giving things away a good place to start . It made me feel better that as much as possible large items moved on to a new home . All the beds and mattresses and sofas went to new homes .

Keep all the photos and photograph anything too big to keep if you want to remember something . Pick just a couple of your favourite ornaments .

You will find necessity will motivate you in the end even if it’s hard now .

I personally found I didn’t want a Company to do it for me but did by necessity finish up using skips

I found clearing my parents’ house so hard. I just ineffectually swirled stuff around and cried.

My lovely husband took the obvious stuff to the tip and British Heart Foundation took all the big furniture away and sold it. My husband boxed up stuff he wasn’t sure about in big plastic tubs and it’s still in my spare room 12 months later.

Its a horrible job 🙁

I have nothing but sympathy, clearing my parents house was so hard. Mine had been in the house since they married and had a lot of stuff.
I decided on a scheme of things I really wanted to keep (these came to my house), things that had a realistic worth and I could cope with the effort of selling ( photographed, documented, boxed and taken to storage unit), things I needed to sort through to decide on (boxed, to storage unit, sorted there to rubbish or actual keep but had to earn a place in my house), and rubbish.
I had to be realistic that my dads beloved dresser had zero value, and no one wanted to come and get his horse brass collection, so they were left for the house clearance people who sell what they can.
Having things in the storage unit took some of the personal part out, and I was fairly ruthless on selling things in that I didn't hold onto it for ages

I left things on the pavement near the house and also stuff on the garden gate. It got taken. You can leave a notice to say 'free things to take'

What's so wierd about doing things like that is that we pay out for contents insurance each year, yet when it comes to clearing a house, for most average households, the contents are not actually worth that much as they are. So when the house clearing people come it feels like in a strange way like legal burglary! You have to remind yourself that they're actually providing a service.

Try Freecycle. Things that you can’t use, but which may be appreciated by others, may be taken off your hands without having to throw them away. I use it a lot.

When my Dad died, we hired a storage unit for three months, and moved all his junk into that. When my siblings and I all had a free day at the same time, we’d go to the storage unit and sort into three piles: things one of us wanted, stuff that really did need to go to the tip, and stuff to give away. It was an oddly bonding experience for us, as well.