Cleanouts

An Estate Cleanout Checklist That Respects the Family

Clearing a family home is not a logistics problem with feelings attached. It is an emotional process with logistics attached, and the order you do things in matters.

Before anything leaves the house

The most important rule of an estate cleanout is that nothing leaves the property until the legal side is settled. If the estate is in probate, or if there is any disagreement among heirs, talk to the attorney before the container arrives rather than after.

Before you start:

• Confirm who has legal authority to dispose of the contents
• Locate the will, deeds, titles, insurance policies and financial records
• Photograph every room before anything moves
• Agree among the family who wants what, in writing if there is any tension
• Check whether anything is specifically bequeathed
• Have anything potentially valuable appraised rather than guessed at

The four-pile method

1. Keep. Family members are taking it. Label it with a name.
2. Sell or donate. Set a deadline — if it has not gone by then, it moves to disposal.
3. Dispose. Into the container.
4. Special handling. Documents to shred, medications, firearms, chemicals, electronics, batteries and refrigerant appliances.

Nothing goes into a fifth "decide later" pile, because the decide-later pile grows until it swallows the project.

Things people throw away and regret

• Paperwork not checked. Savings bonds, share certificates, insurance policies, deeds and cash turn up inside books, tins and drawers with genuine regularity.
• Photographs and negatives. Once gone, gone.
• Military records. Discharge papers, medals and service records matter to somebody, always.
• Costume jewellery. Frequently sorted into disposal by people looking for real gold. Some of it has real collector value.
• Clocks and clock parts. Specific to this city and genuinely worth saying — Bristol was the clockmaking capital of the country, and there are households here with movements, cases, tools and factory ephemera that have real value to collectors and to the museum. Do not skip a box of brass parts.
• Tools. Old hand tools, machinist tools and factory-era equipment are collected seriously in this valley.
• Mid-century furniture. A great deal of the housing here was furnished in the fifties and sixties and never redecorated. Some of it is worth considerably more than it looks.
• Anything in the freezer or a coffee tin. Older people of a certain generation did not always trust banks.

What cannot go in a container

• Paint, solvents, fuel and garden chemicals. Household hazardous waste, and note the five gallon per person limit — a cellar of an old house will exceed that easily, so plan more than one trip
• Electronics — televisions, monitors, computers
• Batteries of every kind, including the ones inside power tools and mobility scooters
• Fridges, freezers, dehumidifiers and window AC units unless the refrigerant has been professionally evacuated
• Propane cylinders and aerosols, including "empty" ones
• Medications. Pharmacy take-back
• Firearms and ammunition. Contact Bristol Police for guidance — do not transport them to a container
• Confidential documents. Shred rather than dumpster
• An uncleaned oil tank. Common in these cellars and not a container item

Room by room, in the right order

1. Garage, shed and porch

Almost entirely disposal, very little emotional weight, and it clears staging space. Also where the fuel cans and garden chemicals live.

2. Kitchen

High volume, quick decisions. Check tins and containers before anything goes in.

3. Bathrooms and utility

Fast. Medications to one side.

4. Spare rooms and closets

Where the paperwork hides. Slow down here.

5. Living areas

Furniture decisions, and the first genuinely emotional room for most families.

6. Main bedroom and personal effects

Slowest. Do not schedule anything else for this day.

7. Attic

Brutally hot in summer, freezing in winter, and often floored with nothing but joists. Work it in mild weather, in daylight, with two people.

The cellar is the difficult room

Worth separating out, because in New England housing the cellar is where a cleanout goes wrong.

A Bristol-area cellar typically holds the workshop, the paint, the fuel, the garden chemicals, the dehumidifier, decades of storage, and frequently an oil tank. It is also where pipe and boiler lagging lives, which in a pre-1980 house should be treated as asbestos-suspect until tested.

Work it in daylight with proper lighting, sort the chemical items into their own staging area before anything else moves, and stop if you find friable insulation on old pipework rather than pulling at it.

Damp is the other issue. Cellars here run humid, and cardboard boxes stored for decades often fail the moment they are lifted. Bring proper containers rather than trusting what is there.

Sizing the container

• Apartment or small condominium unit: 15 yard
• Two to three bedroom house, no cellar clear-out: 20 yard
• Three bedroom with a full cellar, attic and garage: 20 yard plus a swap, or a 30
• Long-held family home, everything going: 30 yard, and plan for a second

Two local cautions. If the property is a condominium or a building of six or more units, City bulk pickup is not available at all, so a container is the route rather than a choice. And if the house is on a private road, the same applies.

We schedule estate work with longer rental windows as standard, because these jobs do not run to a tidy timetable.

When to bring in help

Consider professional help when the property has been hoarded, when there is mould — common in a house that has sat closed up through a Connecticut winter — when there is pest activity, when biohazard is involved, or when nobody in the family is local. There is no failure in that.

If you are coming in from out of state to clear a parent's house in a single week, call ahead. We will have the container on the driveway the day you arrive rather than three days into a week you cannot extend, and we will schedule the swap before you need it.