5 Tips for an estate clean-out
If you have an estate cleanout on the horizon you might be feeling a little overwhelmed. There are quite a few factors to consider, and a whole lot of volume to deal with. There are a few things that anyone can do to make this difficult process into a much more manageable affair.
Determine what you want to do and create a plan.
It likely isn’t feasible for you to keep an entire additional house’s worth of items, so there are a few courses of action that can define how you get to work. One option is hosting an estate sale, where local people can come through and look for any items that might interest them which saves a lot of things from going to the dump. If you decide to go this route then you will need to set a timeline for the preparation to separate items worth selling from those that would need to be discarded or donated. The simplest and most time efficient option for sorting and organizing is hiring an estate cleanout service such as Just Dump It, a Connecticut junk removal company that offers comprehensive estate cleanout services including junk removal and donation. This option leaves you with the time necessary to sort any other issues out and clears a huge amount of physical labor off of your plate, while requiring relatively little planning on your part.
Keep your eye out for important documents and items.
No matter what you choose to do with the bulk of the estate, the first step of preparation is to put aside anything that could be useful and/or important. Financial documents, governmental records, and anything else that might contain sensitive information need to be found and preserved before the clean up progresses any further. Beyond important documents, there are going to be countless items that you won’t want to give up and it’s important to make sure that those items have been accounted for and separated before a sale or full cleanout is held.
Have a system
The best way to ensure that everything important is saved and everything else is properly categorized is to have a strong organizational system. There are a few ways that this can be done, and the more organized the better. Labeling items is a surefire way to have everything move smoothly as the cleanout moves forward. This is especially useful for furniture items where you can use colored tapes to differentiate between pieces that are to be kept, to be sold, to be donated, and to be disposed of. It also helps to set aside rooms for specific categories -especially if you intend to hold a sale - so that potential buyers don’t have to scour each room for clothing or knick-knacks, but rather can find all of it in one place. This will also keep people along a predictable path, and not going from room to room repeatedly, speeding up the overall sale. Whatever is left after the sale will also be easier to dispose of properly, whether you hire a dumpster or have a junk removal service come in to take it off of your hands.
Enlist help/divide and conquer
An entire estate is far too much to handle for a single person, and could even be tough for a small group. Once you have a rudimentary organization done, tap friends and family to see if they would be willing to lend a hand with moving things around. When figuring out where people should focus their efforts, try to keep in mind that many tasks will require more than one person and it is probably better to end up asking a few too many people to help than the opposite. And in the event that the task still seems insurmountable, hiring help is always a good option. Just Dump It’s estate cleanup service is perfect for this situation and can be a great solution when you just don’t have the manpower to sort and clean out a whole house.
Set as generous of a timeline as you can
Estate clean-outs can be physically and mentally exhausting, and putting yourself on a crunch won’t do anything but make it worse. Additionally, if things go wrong as they so often do, you will have a cushion of time to make whatever adjustment you need to keep things moving smoothly. The best way to give yourself the time you need is by hiring an estate cleanout/cleanup service to take the load off of your shoulders. Whatever the length of the timeline, it's equally important that you do your best to hit each goal on time, so that your workload can remain consistent and manageable.
Though an estate clean-out is no easy task, these few tips can really reduce both the amount of work and the stress of carrying it out.
Want more tips on how to organize or prepare for winter, or prepare your home for sale or moving? Check out our other blog articles.