Estate Cleanout Checklist: Clearing a Home After a Loss
A practical order of operations for emptying a family home, including what to find before anything is hauled and how to handle disagreement between family members.
Clearing a parent's house is not a junk removal problem with a sad backdrop. It is a family and legal process that happens to end with a truck.
This is the order that causes the fewest regrets, from people who have been through it.
Before anything moves: find the paperwork
Go through the house once looking only for documents. Nothing gets thrown out, donated or sold until this is done.
- Will, trust documents and any letter of instruction
- Deeds, titles for vehicles and boats
- Insurance policies, including life and burial
- Bank, investment and retirement statements
- Tax returns for the last several years
- Social Security and pension correspondence
- Safe deposit box keys and any records of one
- Military discharge papers, which affect burial benefits
Then the places people hide things
An older generation that kept cash and valuables at home hid them in predictable places. Check all of them before a single box leaves:
- Inside books, especially a row of them on a shelf
- Taped under drawers and inside drawer cavities
- Freezer, and inside food containers in it
- Coat and suit pockets, and inside shoes
- Under mattresses and inside pillowcases
- Medicine cabinets and toilet tanks
- Behind picture frames and inside frame backing
- Toolboxes, paint cans and coffee tins in the garage
Photographs before furniture
Photographs, letters and home video are the things families actually regret losing, and they are the least likely to look valuable to someone clearing a room quickly.
Box every photograph and every piece of correspondence and set it aside. Sorting can happen later, somewhere else, when nobody is working to a deadline.
Let each person name a small number of items
Disagreement over possessions is usually about meaning rather than money. A structure that works: each person privately lists a small number of items that matter to them, then the lists are compared.
Most of the time the lists barely overlap, because people want different things for different reasons. The few genuine conflicts can then be handled one at a time instead of as a general argument.
Get an appraisal before assuming anything is worthless
Two categories catch people out. Things assumed valuable that are not, like most mass-market china, most collectible plates and most furniture from the eighties.
And things assumed worthless that are not: mid-century furniture, tools, certain costume jewellery, vinyl records, cameras and militaria. If a house has a lot of any of these, an appraiser costs far less than what gets thrown away without one.
Then, and only then, clear the house
Once documents, photographs, keepsakes and anything appraised are out, the rest is volume. This is the part to hand off.
Expect multiple truckloads for a full house with a garage and attic. Ask for a donation receipt for what goes to charity, since it may matter for the estate's taxes.
What cannot be hauled
Older homes accumulate exactly the material no hauler can take. Expect to find and separately dispose of:
- Paint, solvents and garage chemicals
- Old fuel and propane cylinders
- Pesticides, some of them long banned
- Firearms and ammunition, which have their own legal process
- Prescription medication, which goes to a pharmacy take-back
- Asbestos material in a pre-1980 house, which needs testing first
The short version
Documents first, then hiding places, then photographs, then keepsakes, then appraisal, then the truck. Doing it in that order is the difference between a hard week and a permanent regret.
