Cleaning Out Your Parents’ House

If you can't sell it, donate it. Google charities in your area that will pick up stuff. Their web sites will list what they accept.

If you can't give it away?

Take it to the dump.

Look for a specialized service that will appraise, sell and ship all that crap for you.

We hired an estate sale company. They went through, organized and priced everything, and conducted a sale.

Anything left over, they removed and either donated or disposed of.

We could have made more profit trying to sell everything ourselves, but the convenience of having the house emptied out was worth every penny.

I would dispatch those dolls first: take a picture of each one and rate it "Mint," "Decent," or "Ruint." Corresponding price points are $100, $20, and Free With Prepaid Postage. Do not bother with the names of them, the maker, any of that (those doll people always know all that shit). Put it all on one eBay page and make a new email address like Louise.Dollenganger@deemail.me, and whatever happens happens. Life is too short for Krystal Carrington in soft paste porcelain.

1-800-GOT-JUNK

OP, there are 5 choices for each item: sell, keep for yourself, give away to a loved one, donate, or dump.

That's it.

They didn't care enough about you to do a "Swedish death clean."

I threw alot out and gave alot away. The local auction/estate sales place wasn’t interested. I will call 1800 got junk when the house closes to take away the remaining furniture. Good luck OP it took me a year to get through all the stuff. We’re going to put it on the market in two weeks.

The majority of estate sales are dull because any real treasure is long gone and the majority of Americans have the same dreary crap. I would have an expert go through and see if theres anything you dont realize might be valuable . Its worth the money . The rest,sell for whatever is offered. Hell,skip all that and make the last day $1 day and I guarantee itll be emptied out .

I'm thinking of hiring an estate company even though I'm not close to death (I hope).

Been there, done that. It was like moving a mountain. And yes, I donated tons. Had yard sales, gave away tons. Threw away tons. Recycled tons. You have no idea.

It was like moving a mountain. Took month and months. I spent a fortune on plane fares going back and forth.

It was like moving a mountain. You haven't been through what I went through.

After Mom died, my sister thought she could make some cash by selling Mom’s stuff via Craigslist or Facebook marketplace. I warned her that it would be a massive waste of time. Most of it didn’t sell. Some people wanted to bargain down already low prices. Others who planned to buy and pick stuff up never showed, never called.

I kept a few odd things of Mom’s… some useful kitchen items and a couple of pretty wooden trays I’d remembered from my childhood. And some old photos. I think my sister kept a few dresses, maybe some shoes. Junkluggers ended up taking everything else.

Mom was not a hoarder. But wow did she have a massive collection of handbags. Each in its own protective sleeve.

R12 vintage purses are all the rage and can be quite valuable.

I am active in our county historical society. They came over and took a lot of stuff to either add to their collection, sell for fundraising or take for personal collections. They even took a lot of old letters and paperwork.

[quote] Life is too short for Krystal Carrington in soft paste porcelain.

Truer words have never been spoken.

We did an estate sale service as well - some items auctioned for a lot more than we anticipated. Other items just went unsold and was donated. And there were some high quality pieces.

It's unfortunate - but a person's belongings ALWAYS GO FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR. Remember that. It's a hard lesson but it's absolutely true.

The only exception is maybe celebrities - and we've seen the low prices some of those online auctions bring.

It's overwhelming trying to sell it or dispose of it yourself. You really can't do it. Estate sales are the only way.

And yes - it's really depressing and makes you want to cry. Throwing away photos and yearbooks and cards is also really hard to do - but you have to. They aren't your memories.

People have far too many things that no one else wants. It is incredibly selfish not to have a plan for disposing of one’s belongings and passing on that burden. Swedish death cleaning is a gift you can leave your surviving family and friends.

R17 - it's funny you mention that - because my aunt did some of that about a year before she died (she was aware of her diagnosis but didn't tell anyone).

And yes - she was Swedish. (Born in USA to Swedish immigrants, spoke Swedish and co-owned a home in Sweden with my mom where she spent each summer - so pretty Swedish. Not some single great-grandparent).

I never heard of Swedish death cleaning before. Unfortunately, she didn't do enough of it and she had tons and tons and tons of stuff.

Basements exist to collect junk

There are auction houses who will take anything worth selling and sell it for a commission. They will clear out the house and separate the wheat from the chaff. In my mother’s case some items disappeared along the way, so you want to have an inventory of anything really valuable.

Seven years ago after my mother died I paid a company 5k to empty out my parents 4 bedroom house. They shredded all the paper and hauled everything away. It couldn't have been easier.

If you are in the American Midwest, auctions are the best way to go. Just did this with my mother's house- all over and done with in about 6 hours. If auction not an option, donate it. We found the only items that brought any $ were her husbands power tools, garden equip. and guns. Everything else was basically worthless.

Good luck, OP.

I went thought this ten years ago with my mom. Her and dad were mild hoarders.

My brother wanted to move out of state as soon as mom passed, so we held an auction. God, that was depressing AF, but it got a lot stuff out if the house so we could sell it.

Everything that wasn’t out when my brother moved and the house sold came to my house. I couldn’t sort that shit until Covid, due to work and other obligations.

Thanks to that experience, I’ve been trying to get rid of stuff here so nobody has to do that with me.

[quote] nts. It is incredibly selfish not to have a plan for disposing of one’s belongings and passing on that burden

The survivors can easily hire someone. Not putting anything in place provides the maximum flexibility. If they want to sift through every item themselves, they can. If they don’t, they can hire someone. I have never heard of anyone arranging this before death. I think that is exceedingly rare.

Sadly, I doubt much of it has any value. Unless you treasure it yourself, having somebody else take care of it is probably the best option. Any money you make by sifting through things is not going to be worth the effort.

People should throw their own shit out before they die. It’s a terrible burden to leave to one’s next of kin.

[quote]People should throw their own shit out before they die. It’s a terrible burden to leave to one’s next of kin.

If the person is a hoarder, yes, but, then they likely have some kind of mental problem and aren't going to respond to your exhortation. If it's an ordinary person, there is absolutely nothing selfish about not clearing out your belongings. You rarely have even an approximate idea of when you are going to die, and, by the time you do, you are rarely in a position to do so. You are only saying this because you aren't near death yourself.

It's quite easy to hire people to clean out and dispose of the belongings. There's really no selfishness at all. It's just part of life.

[quote]they likely have some kind of mental problem and aren't going to respond to your exhortation

I love you, r27. This is going to be my new default response.

“Why didn’t Bob finish drafting that document?”

“He likely has a mental problem and won’t respond to your exhortation.”

Interesting you purposely cropped out the first part of my sentence in order to make it sound idiotic. Really, you aren't fooling anyone. We are not as stupid as you.

Bitch, it was a compliment! What the fuck is wrong with you?!

My apologies.

My dad and his nutty wife are, I’d say, kevel 2 hoarders.

Not bad enough to be on “Hoarders” tv show, but hoarding a lot more than old books and grocery bags.

They often speak with great relish about the mess they will be leaving behind for us to clean up. They are building up more crap on purpose.

They’ve always been very contrary.

My next-door neighbor of 30 years died last summer at age 80. I was 25 when I moved in, and he was the age I am now, God help me. He was a guncle of the old school. He laughed a lot, told jokes, was naughty and silly, and in turn, they laughed both with him and behind his back. He and I shared a lot of laughs, helped each other out (me more than him, but the house became too much and his "family" were greedy, selfish shits, just waiting for him to die so they could inherit). I raked his leaves, cut the grass, shoveled snow, took out the trash for years and years. His best friend made sure he got to his medical appointments. He stopped inviting groups of friends over some 20 years ago, but I failed to notice that he continued to fill his house with stuff - trunkloads of tableware, appliances, decor - for entertaining he would never do. He spent his days painting and dreaming of dinner parties with friends he'd long written off. But this "stuff" apparently brought him joy. He probably knew he was hoarding stuff, but he chose to see only the potential of it.

When he died and the family pulled out SIX dumpsters BEFORE the estate sale, I found myself very conflicted. In a way he was selfish, leaving a huge mess for his undeserving nieces and nephews. He may have been taking some joy in knowing they'd have to work their asses off for months to clean out the house. Stuff they didn't value. Stuff they didn't see the joy HE found in it. But he, like anyone, was a complicated man. He took his true joy with him - whatever that was.

It's the purview of those who are left behind to give the dead some grace. Like most of the above responses, and as I saw firsthand, the beneficiaries (to be clear, I and the other friends who did the work of caring for him were not in the will) made it all about themselves. I expected this, and it's fine. The dead don't owe us any explanation. Maybe he meant to include us and never got around to it, maybe his concept of family was as old-school as I suspected. He/they were good enough to remember you when they left the mortal plane. Accept or reject their humanity, which now only exists in the hearts they left behind. Your memory will be entrusted to someone else one day (or not), and your ability to change the narrative will be gone. For me, nonjudgment and grace were the best path.

The problem with selling collections of anything on line is that very few people want to buy an entire collection--they want to buy pieces one at a time. That's the fun of collecting.

Hoarding for spite and hoarding because items give you joy (or hope) are two very different things.

To be clear, I won’t be the person to clean up after my dad is gone. So, it really may doesn’t affect me. But my dad does intend to spite the people who WILL be cleaning up after him. Which is weird, because they’ve been quite loving towards him. Do, I font know what that’s about.

Sorry for typos, I need glasses

A long-frayed electrical cord, plugged in and left to do its work is what is needed.

[quote] The problem with selling collections of anything on line is that very few people want to buy an entire collection--they want to buy pieces one at a time. That's the fun of collecting.

I know a widow who recently sold her husband’s enormous rock collection to a dealer. That’s what dealer’s do.

[quote] Hoarding for spite

I've never heard of such a thing.

Yeah - the problem with cleaning out your house before you die - is that you kind of need to know you're on the way out, BUT you are still capable. Those two things don't really go together.

If you clear out before you get sick - that is the best way. But sometimes it feels like you're preparing for death - which could be years away. And who wants to give away or sell their most treasured items?

Now junk - people don't need to get old to get rid of that shit. That's something you should do every year regardless of age.

[quote]Yeah - the problem with cleaning out your house before you die - is that you kind of need to know you're on the way out, BUT you are still capable. Those two things don't really go together.

What? First of all, many people have little warning that they are going to die. Second, when they do have an idea they are going to die, it is usually because they are ill. The idea that some 85-year-old is going to start a massage house clean after getting ill and discovering she as cancer is ludicrous.

[quote]If you clear out before you get sick - that is the best way. But sometimes it feels like you're preparing for death - which could be years away

No. The main reason people don't clear out before they are sick is because they are well and they are using their houses and the things in them. At what age are people supposed to start living in a spartan house awaiting eventual death? 60? 70? 80? Some people live in their own homes until their 90s. That may be a long existence in a barebones home if they clear out all but the bare minimum at 75.

I have never heard of anyone preemptively clearing out their house in preparation in death and I'm virtually certain you won't either.

And what on earth is the big deal about leaving a house of possessions after you die? If you don't want any of it, it's easy enough to hire a company to clear it out. If you do want some of it, it is imperative the deceased not discard everything before death.

Both my father and his wife and my mother and her husband downsized their belongings in their early 80s, which made things much easier for my siblings and I when they died and we had to clear out their things.

R42. Yes, people do that. But that is because they need fewer things because of age. The idea of clearing out solely because you are old may be soon to die is absurd

Before our mother passed a little over two years ago, she had repeatedly told all three of us to point out any objects that we wanted and she noted it, but when the time came we still had piles and piles of stuff to sort through. I have a good relationship with my brother and sister, so we did not argue and there were only a few items that we all wanted, but kept saying the same thing to one another if you want it, I'm not going to argue with one provision that we all agreed upon: pick that one item you really want and designate it as such. Fortunately, we all picked different objects, and the only things we went back-and-forth over were pictures, specifically a portrait of our grandmother, a photo of our mother and grandparents, and one of Mom riding a pony on her 5th birthday (all of which I got), but there were some fabulous other photos and objects that brother and sister both received. Nevertheless, we held a garage sale and got rid of a bunch of stuff, and my sister found a wonderful charity that took everything else ( and by way of advice, 1-800-got-junk charges a lot to clean out a house!).

That said, don't so it the way we did and think that you'll have everything wrapped up within a few weeks. We busted our butts and in the end it made no difference; the whole process took almost a year.

[quote] [R42]. Yes, people do that. But that is because they need fewer things because of age. The idea of clearing out solely because you are old may be soon to die is absurd

My parents did because they also said they didn't want to force us to sort through their things after they died.

Whether you consider that is "absurd" or not doesn't matter to me. I do not consider you, an anonymous person on the Internet, either my or my parents' moral arbiter.

I found my dad's huge porn collection

If you need the money AND have the time, you go through it for treasure and it takes forever. If you don't need the money, or dont have the time, donate and have someone haul it away. Pay to get rid of it even. If you NEED the money but do NOT have the time, its a uncomfortable situation but if you dont have the time, you might make more working your job than spending your valuable time on the detritus of someones life.

R41 my grandmother, a practical and lovely German American, downsized radically when she buried her son. She was in her 70s. She downsized from a colonial in connecticut to 2 bedroom apartment near close family in New York State. She lived to 95 in good health. She downsized herself! This included beautiful things from her wealthy father and maiden aunt. Her final home, that 2 room apartment was nice and well appointed with some memories and everything to live well, but nothing excessive. I think the lightness of it helped her live longer and clearer. she concentrated on social and intellectual activities, all stimulating for the mind. her objects were not going to do that, and she was no longer interested in entertaining.

2 room apartment. not 2 bedroom. a bedroom, living room - kitchen. we were all impressed and I wonder if I can do the same in 15 years. 70s seems like a good time to do it.

Her daughter, my mom, lefts "mountains" (as noted above) of crap and it took forever to clear. And I dont think my mom enjoyed all that stuff in her elder years.

I don’t like having things around that trigger memories— even good ones. Even the good memories are so painful.

I might buy a new piece of art that reminds me of a scene from my childhood— but I don’t want things literally from my childhood.

I’ve always been weird that way. Move forward.

My dad is clearing out his house and he threw away all my grandparents.and mom's recipes. I was a little pissed, but I love the guy and I love that he's so considerate to start the process

Anybody have any experience getting rid of guns after someone has passed away?

R46 When my Dad died, his widow told me she found a large locked box of his. His guns were already accounted for. I told her I had no interest whatsoever in knowing what was in that box--it was all hers.

R54 is Trudy Campbell.

I hired Got Junk and it cost about 9k because they have small trucks and they kept having to come back a dozen times.

If you really want to get rid of it all just post on Craigslist or Facebook under "Free Stuff" and people will come from miles away- I had one couple who drove 2 hours to get a dining room table.

Or donate it to the Humane Society thrift store.

Also, Goodwill will take ANYTHING.

R53, I believe your local gun show is your best bet for selling outright. You also might make contact with some dealers and give them your inventory and see what offers you get. Antique and vintage guns are always collectible

R53, if you want to sell them, you can.

If you want to get rid of them, the cops will usually take them, but I would call and make sure.

"Dealers," that is...

Sorry that anyone has to deal with this.

Early this year I was discharged after a long hospitalization for multi-organ failure with a bad prognosis and was referred to palliative care. I could feel my body shutting down. I'd survived cancer many years before and had been in remission. This was somewhat surprising but not a total shock. But in the meantime, I'd gotten married. My partner was in shock and at a loss for what to do. I gained enough strength to go through all of my stuff, get rid of almost everything he didn't need, and transferred all financials over to him. Wasn't a hoarder, but I did accumulate decades of documents that were shoved into boxes, completely unorganized. Dropped 75 lbs, so also got rid of all of my clothes. It felt liberating. I did not want my husband to be burdened with the practical stuff. It was one thing I could control. I learned later that this is called Swedish Death Cleaning.

Although my prognosis has improved somewhat, we know that statistically, I'll possibly be gone in a few years. No one really knows what will be one's last day. Letting go and knowing that my most important loved one can move on relatively hassle-free feels amazing. Wish I'd done it sooner.

I know that this is a difficult conversation to have with parents, especially in American culture.

While I do not believe in afterlife, if I'm wrong and not busy being an octopus, I'll be spying on you bitches.

I was so disordered by my mom’s death in a car crash that I gave her jewelry box to Goodwill. With my parents wedding rings in it.

I’m sorry, OP. I have read not to get rid of anything in the first 6 months to a year and that’s why I’m actually leaning towards going through everything just to make sure.

Unless your parents were rich or had an extraordinary eye and discipline to assemble a house full of valuable fine art, fine jewelry, expensive vintage designer clothes in pristine condition, lots of sterling silver, highly desirable (not once highly collectible) vintage or antique furnishings, make it easy on yourself:

Arrange a donation of all clothing to a charity organization that sells or redistributes second hand clothes.

Call local auctions with a general list in hand and discuss whether they would come collect and auction household contents (and which types and under what terms and costs. Whether for a general household auction or placing more desirable things in themed sales. They will want a reasonably informed summary of what you have, so as not to waste their time to agree to come look at things they know are of very little value. If they are not interested, ask their advice - because the local options will vary widely depending on where you are. They can also suggest charitable organizations that accept donations, or individuals who will dispose of book collections or vintage china collections or similar things on eBay or other venues.

For things of no value, hire a crew to dispose of the stuff.

Hire a cleaning crew to make the house presentable. Realtors can often suggest these as well as a short list of repairs that will put the home in a better position to sell it easily.

Getting the most $ out of a book collection (unless it's something extraordinarily valuable) or other focused collections of low value things is generally a waste of everyone's time and generates a piddling amount of money. Most people don't have parents with truly valuable things (though many have parents whose things they want you believe are somehow valuable or worth having saved for a lifetime -- only to discover otherwise.)