This is written for the person who has just been handed a set of keys and a deadline, usually while grieving and usually from out of town.
It is the practical part. Everything else about it is yours.
Before anything leaves the house
There is only one rule that really matters, and it is this: nothing goes until somebody has looked in it.
Not sorted. Not valued. Looked in. The things that go wrong in these jobs are almost never about speed — they are about a box that went out in the first hour and turned out to have the deeds in it.
- Paperwork of any kind, in any container. Deeds, titles, policies, tax records, military discharge papers, share certificates.
- Anything in a freezer, a book, a coat pocket or a biscuit tin. Cash in the house is common in this generation, and it is never in an obvious place.
- Jewellery, coins, watches, and the drawer everybody has that contains all of the above mixed with rubber bands.
- Photographs and anything with handwriting on it. Nobody regrets keeping these and plenty of people regret the opposite.
- Firearms. Do not put one in a trailer. Deal with these separately and properly.
If probate has not finished, slow down
Until the estate is settled, the contents are not simply yours to clear, even when you are the one holding the keys and paying the electric bill.
This is worth one phone call to whoever is handling it before a large clearance starts. It is a short conversation and it prevents the worst version of this, which is a sibling arriving to find a house already empty.
We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. It is just the thing we have watched cause the most damage.
What is worth money, honestly
Less than families hope, and different things than they expect.
Brown furniture — the dark wood dining sets and display cabinets — has very little resale value now, however good it is and however much it cost in 1985. That is genuinely hard to hear and it is better heard early than after three weekends of trying to sell it.
What does move: tools, anything mid-century, costume jewellery in quantity, sewing machines, fishing and hunting gear, decent kitchen equipment. If there is a lot of it, an estate sale company is worth a call before a hauler is.
The order that works
- Walk every room once and take photographs before anything moves. It settles arguments later and it is five minutes.
- Pull the paperwork and the small valuables out first, into one locked room or one car boot.
- Let family take what they are taking, with a date on it. An open invitation stalls the whole job for months.
- Then decide: estate sale, donation, clearance — usually a mix.
- Clearance last, and only on what is genuinely left.
Where we fit
At the end, and usually on a room-by-room basis rather than all at once. We work weekends, which for somebody flying in to deal with this is often the only time available.
You do not have to be there. We quote from photographs, and we send pictures of every room as it is cleared, which matters more here than on any other kind of job — you are signing off work you did not watch, on a house you may have grown up in.
And if you tell us a room has not been checked yet, we will not touch it. We would rather come back.