Clearing a House After a Death: A Step by Step Guide

Clearing the house is the job nobody in the family feels ready for, and it usually arrives with a deadline attached. There is a solicitor to speak to, relatives who each remember something different, and forty years of belongings in every cupboard. This guide sets out the order to do it in: who has the authority to decide, what to check before anything leaves the property, how to sort the contents without regretting it later, and what to ask whoever does the heavy work.

Work out who is responsible before anything moves

The person legally responsible for the contents is the executor named in the will, or, where there is no will, the administrator appointed to deal with the estate. Until the estate is distributed, everything in the house still belongs to it. That means the executor decides what happens to the furniture, not whoever happens to hold a key.

Where the family agrees, this is a formality. Where it does not, it is the thing that does lasting damage, so settle it early. Agree in writing, and a group message counts, who is making the calls, and keep the executor copied in on anything that leaves the building. If two people want the same chest of drawers, that conversation is far easier to have now than after it has gone.

Ask the solicitor what has to happen first

Before you fill a single bin bag, speak to the solicitor handling the estate. Whether the contents can be removed straight away depends on the estate itself. Household goods may need valuing for the estate accounts, the timing can depend on whether a grant of probate is required, and the position changes again where inheritance tax is involved or the property is rented.

Three questions cover it. Can the contents be removed now, or do we wait? Does anything need valuing before it goes? Is there a date the property has to be empty by? Ask them before you book anyone, because the answers set your whole timeline.

Start with paperwork, not furniture

The most useful first pass through a house has nothing to do with wardrobes. Go room by room looking only for documents and small valuables: bank and building society statements, share certificates, premium bonds, insurance policies, pension letters, deeds, passports, war medals, jewellery, watches and photographs. Put them in one box and take that box away with you the same day.

There are two reasons to do this first. Paper disappears the moment other people start filling bags, and those documents are exactly what the executor will be asked to produce. Check the unlikely places while you are there. In houses of a certain generation, cash and paperwork turn up inside books, in coat pockets, in biscuit tins and taped to the back of drawers far more often than anyone expects.

Sort in three passes, not one

Deciding the fate of every object in a single sweep is what makes people freeze in the hallway. Three passes is easier to finish.

1. Keep. Only what a family member has actually said they want, plus the paperwork and small valuables already boxed. Label each item with a name so there is no argument later.
2. Might be worth something. Furniture in good order, jewellery, tools, china, anything a specialist might want to value. Set it aside rather than deciding on the spot.
3. Everything else. This is most of the house, and it divides into donate, recycle and genuine waste. It is also the part a clearance firm takes off you.

Sentimental things stall the whole job, and they are the ones worth being gentle about. If nobody can decide, photograph the item and put it in the second pass. A decision made in three weeks is a better decision than one made standing in a cold hallway on a Sunday afternoon. If the sorting is part of a downsizing move rather than a bereavement, our guide on how to declutter before a house move works through the same method room by room.

Do not bin what somebody would pay for

Some of the things that go into the skip first are the things worth a second look. Older hand tools, sewing machines, vinyl records, watches even when they have stopped, fountain pens, costume jewellery, military items, mid-century furniture, and anything with a maker's mark stamped on the underside. Photograph it before it goes, not after.

A clearance firm that knows its trade brings genuinely valuable items back to your attention rather than quietly loading them. We show anything that looks like it has real value to the family before it goes anywhere.

Check the waste carriers licence before you book anyone

This is the practical detail that catches families out. Anyone removing waste from a property has to be registered as a waste carrier with the Environment Agency. If an unregistered van takes the contents away and they are later fly-tipped in a lane, the fine follows the householder rather than the driver, because the duty of care sits with whoever handed the rubbish over.

So ask for the registration number before you agree to anything, and treat a cash price quoted down the phone by someone who will not put it in writing as the warning it is. Marley Moves holds an Upper Tier Waste Carriers Licence, and the registration number goes out with every quote.

Ask the other question too: where do the usable items actually go? Ours go to charity shops, mainly Sue Ryder, the Salvation Army and the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance, with a Gift Aid form completed where it applies. A clearance should be more than a paid trip to the tip.

What clearance day actually looks like

A full house is usually a day's work for a crew, sometimes two where there is a loft, a garage and a shed that have not been opened in decades. We photograph every room before we start, so there is a record of the property and of what was in it. Anything the family has set aside is confirmed with you and kept back.

The rest is separated as it comes out rather than sorted later at the tip: charity goods to the shops, recyclable material to the right stream, and only what genuinely cannot be saved disposed of as waste. The house is left swept and empty for the agent, the landlord or the buyer. If the property is being sold or handed back, ask for photographs of the empty rooms as well, because they settle arguments about condition months afterwards.

We do this across Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire, including Shaftesbury, Sherborne, Yeovil and the villages around them. There are more short answers on our house clearance questions page.

If you are keeping some of it

Very few clearances are all or nothing. Usually somebody is keeping a dining table, a bureau and a few boxes of photographs. Those can go straight to your address on the day of the clearance, or into storage at our Shaftesbury yard while the family decides what to do with them.

Where the estate also involves a full house removal, the move and the clearance can be planned as one job with one crew and one date, instead of two firms circling a property that has to be empty by Friday. The same applies where a parent is moving into care and the family home is being emptied behind them, which we cover in our care home move questions.

Getting a price and a date

What a house clearance costs comes down to four things: the volume to remove, the access (stairs, narrow lanes and where a lorry can legally park), how much of the contents is resaleable or donatable rather than waste, and whether we are also moving the items you are keeping. Executors need a figure they can put in the estate accounts, so we quote a fixed price in writing rather than an hourly rate that moves on the day.

When you are ready, tell us the address and roughly what needs clearing and you will have that price back within the hour. We work to the executor's or the solicitor's timeline rather than ours, we will come and look at the property first where that helps, and nothing leaves the house until you have confirmed what is being kept. Get a fixed quote.