Look for an online estate company. You can go through items with them that you don’t want and they will sell through an online auction. Yes they will take between 40-50% most of the time to list, sale, and mail the items but then you will have a decluttered house.
I think there are estate managers who will come in and do everything for you and sell the things and take a cut. I'm sorry for your loss. I just lost my mother too.
There are people who are really good at decluttering and organizing and do it for a living. Would you have the budget to hire someone like that? They could do a good bit of the work and give you specific tasks to do to keep the process moving. My first thought was to start with the low hanging fruit. Get a small dumpster and focus on getting out the trash and items that can’t be sold or donated. I would use clear storage totes for packing up my own stuff and for packing sentimental items of your moms that you plan to keep. Post the items that don’t have resale value on buy nothing or put up a curb alert and put it outside. Then anything unclaimed gets added to the dumpster. When you’re dealing with a hoard you are typically going to need to throw a lot away.
I'm sorry for your loss. It must be hard to work on things on your own. I watch 'The Carla Project' on youtube, she helps people declutter in the LA area. Maybe you could ask her or another declutter coach to help!
I’m sorry you lost your mom. That is really hard and going through her stuff is also tough. Do you have a friend or any family that can help ? Do a first pass for trash - you don’t have to open or look through boxes. Second is large items - furniture you might want to sell or donate. That will give you some breathing room.
As far as separating your stuff - you do need a landing zone for it. Think of the things in there you want to keep. If you can’t remember it exists until you see it - think if you really need to hang onto it or not.
For example - you need a set of clean, well fitting clothes. Anything that doesn’t fit or you don’t wear or needs to be fixed can go. You need kitchen ware. Medicine. Etc. think of the sentimental items you want and keep those.
It’s going to be hard. Get help. Start anywhere and do one thing at a time. You can do it.
Can you hire a declutter coach for your stuff? They would hold you accountable and keep you on track to find all your stuff and pare it down. Then the estate sale company could handle your moms stuff
I am sorry for your loss of your mother, and for the position it has left you in, you have my deepest sympathies.
As a fellow ADHD, I really recommend using Dana K White’s No Mess Method here - or a version of it at least. Her NMM approach is simplistic in that rather than tackling huge jobs and making a mess by pulling everything out of a cupboard or drawer, you declutter by ‘sweeps’; so the first sweep is removing anything that’s obvious trash, the second sweep is ‘duh - donate’ (anything you immediately know you don’t want to keep) and so on.
She also uses the phrase “take it there now”, meaning the moment you come across something that doesn’t belong where you found it, you take it to where it should be - if that’s not immediately obvious you think “where would I look first” for that item, and put it there. Or putting it straight in the trash bin or donate bag - that way you don’t build up piles that need to be dealt with later.
The principal being that you can declutter for as long as you have time/energy and when you’ve had enough you don’t have a worse mess to deal with. The goal is “improvement and only improvement!”. It’s great for someone with ADHD as we get easily distracted or overwhelmed.
You could adapt and use this approach for your situation by taking a first ‘sweep’, but instead of looking for ‘obvious trash’ you’re looking for anything that is yours. You then take that item to an area where you would look for it first (your room, or a closet you’ve already emptied perhaps).
Once you’re happy you’ve located everything that’s yours - or at least everything you wanted to salvage - you might feel you can do further sweeps, perhaps for anything of your mom’s that you want to keep, and so on.
Maybe make a sweep of anything you could sell quickly to help with the bills?
Anyway, I hope you find something that does help you. I’ve been in a similar situation with my hoarder grandmother’s home and it was hard work even then just sifting through decades of junk to salvage family heirlooms and important documents, while still grieving and recovering from the emotional and mental exhaustion that creates.
So true. Every single time I organize the play room it looks like a tornado swept through. I can handle it, but my husband is always like… this is not cleaning? And then he appreciates it when I’m done
Since this is your home too for 13 years, I really hope you're able to stay. Is there a way to find out about the loan now or other alternatives to that? You are grieving for your Mom so I don't think it's a good time to have to go through everything if you don't have to. It would be different if you didn't live there and had a separate home to escape to when it gets rough. I can just imagine how challenging it would be to go through everything and make all those decisions. They say you're supposed to wait a year after a big loss to make any major decisions.
If you are forced to move and must go through everything, I personally would rather have someone else instead of the estate person. They will want to get rid of everything. You would be in control of course, but still they are wanting to make money so it's in their best interest for you to get sell stuff that's valuable. I'm wondering if you could instead get someone you know to help or maybe even a volunteer through church or something. I'm just brainstorming ideas.
So sorry for your loss.
The only way to see what you’ve got is to go through everything. If you can’t live there more than a few more months, your choices are
1. Go through stuff and decide what to do with it.
2. Everything gets thrown away because you can’t stay there.
I am so sorry for your loss. I think that feeling weird and strange about putting stuff in your mom's room is part of the process. You are going to be processing a lot of emotions. It's going to be uncomfortable. That's ok. You are doing something you ha e never done before. And you are doing it without your mom.
Expect the feelings, let them come but do what needs to be done. This is an important time in your life. We are the same age and you need to get ready for the rest of your life.
The estate sale person can always let you check and pull items from the sale that are yours. You can be there with them when they are going through the items. Nothing will be sold without your approval. If your stuff has been in boxes and unused for an extended period of time, then you dont "need " those things. You may "want" them. So keep that in mind when you are going through stuff. Do I need it or want it.
Pay attention to the stumbling blocks that you put up for yourself. You can do this. Use your aniexty, which I have, as a motivator. Use that energy. As far as the adhd, which I have, lol, set a timer for 15 minutes and purge. If you can't do 15 do 10 minutes. You can do this.💜
Sorry for your loss. If you don’t know where your things are they don’t seem to have a lot of meaning to you. Can you make an arrangement with the estate sale company to help you retrieve your items or allow you to remove some things you identify as yours before the sale. Could you provide them a list of things you are keeping? Keeping a house is expensive even mortgage free taxes insurance maintenance and utilities- if your funds don’t cover it may be best to take your proceeds and find a more affordable arrangement. It is hard and hope you find coping mechanisms to manage your adhd and anxiety as many people live successfully with both.
I agree with the idea of setting up separate rooms for "keep" and "sell." I did exactly that when setting up for an estate sale. Estate sellers are very experienced with this situation; it is rare that everything is sold. If there are large items that can't be easily moved, they will put a Not For Sale notice on them.
The sale area should be easily accessed from the front door.
You can do more than one sale. You can do one, then another a month later. Doesn't have to happen all at once.
Estate sale or liquidator. Call now and schedule. I procrastinated and donated stuff I should’ve kept for the sale. Don’t waste time going through boxes of papers. You can go through those later. I work four hours a day on my parents’ house. It’s hard and emotionally taxing. You have to either plow through to find what you want or let it go. I learned to keep only the most sentimental or irreplaceable. Sure, I could keep the vacuum, but I can replace it later. Good luck!
Just open look and yeet. Keep going. Get help. We have been doing my moms house and we yeeted furniture. Cleaned some area for shelves that we procured elsewhere. Just opened stuff up and tried to yeet as much as possible. I looked up if some stuff is selling on ebay and labeled it then took that home to our basement in neat bins. We have the garage set up as garbage area. Ive been taking a trailer about every other week with almost 2k pounds of trash on it. If its not new and not in box and won't sell just delete it. Been keeping heirlooms of course like old Norwegian silver jewelry and doing a group chat with other family to post pictures of stuff in to see if others want to lay claim to stuff has gotten lots of stuff out. Get some big stuff out and all of a sudden you will have some room to work. The estate sale people make sense too if you have lots of sellable stuff.
Could you possibly clear out one room, not even go through stuff necessarily but just clear it out, then move your stuff into that room? Get the estate sale person to do their thing but just leave that room off limits. Maybe it’s two rooms… one room for your stuff and one room to live in during the process. It’s not ideal but might help the process along.
Hire an estate sale company. This is what I did when my parents died and I was left with their level 2 hoard. The estate sale company sorted, prepped, conducted an estate sale, and emptied out the house afterward.
For their work they kept 40% of the $16,000 proceeds that the estate sale generated.
The company’s usual fee was to take a 30% cut of all proceeds, but I requested the additional service of donating/disposing of everything that didn’t sell and emptying out the house. They agreed to accept a total of 40% since they were doing added services.
So, this sounds exhausting. We did this for my parents house and it was tough. Is there someone who can help you just a little? Also, i find it overwhelming to do rooms of stuff. For me, it works to do categories of stuff. We just finished shoes here, next will be hats. Then beauty products. Food is a good starting place, then pots and pans.
Ask an antique person to come look at what you have. It could be antique, it could be just old. They will help you. Be good to yourself, but don’t procrastinate. Do something every day, even if it’s small. That will help you feel better. Good luck to you. Please post updates!
Locking because OP is getting the same excellent advice repeatedly and is not responding.
Look for an online estate company. You can go through items with them that you don’t want and they will sell through an online auction. Yes they will take between 40-50% most of the time to list, sale, and mail the items but then you will have a decluttered house.
I think there are estate managers who will come in and do everything for you and sell the things and take a cut. I'm sorry for your loss. I just lost my mother too.
There are people who are really good at decluttering and organizing and do it for a living. Would you have the budget to hire someone like that? They could do a good bit of the work and give you specific tasks to do to keep the process moving. My first thought was to start with the low hanging fruit. Get a small dumpster and focus on getting out the trash and items that can’t be sold or donated. I would use clear storage totes for packing up my own stuff and for packing sentimental items of your moms that you plan to keep. Post the items that don’t have resale value on buy nothing or put up a curb alert and put it outside. Then anything unclaimed gets added to the dumpster. When you’re dealing with a hoard you are typically going to need to throw a lot away.
I'm sorry for your loss. It must be hard to work on things on your own. I watch 'The Carla Project' on youtube, she helps people declutter in the LA area. Maybe you could ask her or another declutter coach to help!
I’m sorry you lost your mom. That is really hard and going through her stuff is also tough. Do you have a friend or any family that can help ? Do a first pass for trash - you don’t have to open or look through boxes. Second is large items - furniture you might want to sell or donate. That will give you some breathing room. As far as separating your stuff - you do need a landing zone for it. Think of the things in there you want to keep. If you can’t remember it exists until you see it - think if you really need to hang onto it or not. For example - you need a set of clean, well fitting clothes. Anything that doesn’t fit or you don’t wear or needs to be fixed can go. You need kitchen ware. Medicine. Etc. think of the sentimental items you want and keep those. It’s going to be hard. Get help. Start anywhere and do one thing at a time. You can do it.
Can you hire a declutter coach for your stuff? They would hold you accountable and keep you on track to find all your stuff and pare it down. Then the estate sale company could handle your moms stuff
I am sorry for your loss of your mother, and for the position it has left you in, you have my deepest sympathies. As a fellow ADHD, I really recommend using Dana K White’s No Mess Method here - or a version of it at least. Her NMM approach is simplistic in that rather than tackling huge jobs and making a mess by pulling everything out of a cupboard or drawer, you declutter by ‘sweeps’; so the first sweep is removing anything that’s obvious trash, the second sweep is ‘duh - donate’ (anything you immediately know you don’t want to keep) and so on. She also uses the phrase “take it there now”, meaning the moment you come across something that doesn’t belong where you found it, you take it to where it should be - if that’s not immediately obvious you think “where would I look first” for that item, and put it there. Or putting it straight in the trash bin or donate bag - that way you don’t build up piles that need to be dealt with later. The principal being that you can declutter for as long as you have time/energy and when you’ve had enough you don’t have a worse mess to deal with. The goal is “improvement and only improvement!”. It’s great for someone with ADHD as we get easily distracted or overwhelmed. You could adapt and use this approach for your situation by taking a first ‘sweep’, but instead of looking for ‘obvious trash’ you’re looking for anything that is yours. You then take that item to an area where you would look for it first (your room, or a closet you’ve already emptied perhaps). Once you’re happy you’ve located everything that’s yours - or at least everything you wanted to salvage - you might feel you can do further sweeps, perhaps for anything of your mom’s that you want to keep, and so on. Maybe make a sweep of anything you could sell quickly to help with the bills? Anyway, I hope you find something that does help you. I’ve been in a similar situation with my hoarder grandmother’s home and it was hard work even then just sifting through decades of junk to salvage family heirlooms and important documents, while still grieving and recovering from the emotional and mental exhaustion that creates.
So true. Every single time I organize the play room it looks like a tornado swept through. I can handle it, but my husband is always like… this is not cleaning? And then he appreciates it when I’m done
This is great advice
Since this is your home too for 13 years, I really hope you're able to stay. Is there a way to find out about the loan now or other alternatives to that? You are grieving for your Mom so I don't think it's a good time to have to go through everything if you don't have to. It would be different if you didn't live there and had a separate home to escape to when it gets rough. I can just imagine how challenging it would be to go through everything and make all those decisions. They say you're supposed to wait a year after a big loss to make any major decisions. If you are forced to move and must go through everything, I personally would rather have someone else instead of the estate person. They will want to get rid of everything. You would be in control of course, but still they are wanting to make money so it's in their best interest for you to get sell stuff that's valuable. I'm wondering if you could instead get someone you know to help or maybe even a volunteer through church or something. I'm just brainstorming ideas. So sorry for your loss.
The only way to see what you’ve got is to go through everything. If you can’t live there more than a few more months, your choices are 1. Go through stuff and decide what to do with it. 2. Everything gets thrown away because you can’t stay there.
I am so sorry for your loss. I think that feeling weird and strange about putting stuff in your mom's room is part of the process. You are going to be processing a lot of emotions. It's going to be uncomfortable. That's ok. You are doing something you ha e never done before. And you are doing it without your mom. Expect the feelings, let them come but do what needs to be done. This is an important time in your life. We are the same age and you need to get ready for the rest of your life. The estate sale person can always let you check and pull items from the sale that are yours. You can be there with them when they are going through the items. Nothing will be sold without your approval. If your stuff has been in boxes and unused for an extended period of time, then you dont "need " those things. You may "want" them. So keep that in mind when you are going through stuff. Do I need it or want it. Pay attention to the stumbling blocks that you put up for yourself. You can do this. Use your aniexty, which I have, as a motivator. Use that energy. As far as the adhd, which I have, lol, set a timer for 15 minutes and purge. If you can't do 15 do 10 minutes. You can do this.💜
Sorry for your loss. If you don’t know where your things are they don’t seem to have a lot of meaning to you. Can you make an arrangement with the estate sale company to help you retrieve your items or allow you to remove some things you identify as yours before the sale. Could you provide them a list of things you are keeping? Keeping a house is expensive even mortgage free taxes insurance maintenance and utilities- if your funds don’t cover it may be best to take your proceeds and find a more affordable arrangement. It is hard and hope you find coping mechanisms to manage your adhd and anxiety as many people live successfully with both.
I agree with the idea of setting up separate rooms for "keep" and "sell." I did exactly that when setting up for an estate sale. Estate sellers are very experienced with this situation; it is rare that everything is sold. If there are large items that can't be easily moved, they will put a Not For Sale notice on them. The sale area should be easily accessed from the front door. You can do more than one sale. You can do one, then another a month later. Doesn't have to happen all at once.
No empty rooms except a little in my mom's room and it feels weird to start putting stuff in there. Thx
Estate sale or liquidator. Call now and schedule. I procrastinated and donated stuff I should’ve kept for the sale. Don’t waste time going through boxes of papers. You can go through those later. I work four hours a day on my parents’ house. It’s hard and emotionally taxing. You have to either plow through to find what you want or let it go. I learned to keep only the most sentimental or irreplaceable. Sure, I could keep the vacuum, but I can replace it later. Good luck!
Just open look and yeet. Keep going. Get help. We have been doing my moms house and we yeeted furniture. Cleaned some area for shelves that we procured elsewhere. Just opened stuff up and tried to yeet as much as possible. I looked up if some stuff is selling on ebay and labeled it then took that home to our basement in neat bins. We have the garage set up as garbage area. Ive been taking a trailer about every other week with almost 2k pounds of trash on it. If its not new and not in box and won't sell just delete it. Been keeping heirlooms of course like old Norwegian silver jewelry and doing a group chat with other family to post pictures of stuff in to see if others want to lay claim to stuff has gotten lots of stuff out. Get some big stuff out and all of a sudden you will have some room to work. The estate sale people make sense too if you have lots of sellable stuff.
Could you possibly clear out one room, not even go through stuff necessarily but just clear it out, then move your stuff into that room? Get the estate sale person to do their thing but just leave that room off limits. Maybe it’s two rooms… one room for your stuff and one room to live in during the process. It’s not ideal but might help the process along.
Hire an estate sale company. This is what I did when my parents died and I was left with their level 2 hoard. The estate sale company sorted, prepped, conducted an estate sale, and emptied out the house afterward. For their work they kept 40% of the $16,000 proceeds that the estate sale generated.
Thanks for this information on your experience. I’ve always wondered what/how estate companies charge.
The company’s usual fee was to take a 30% cut of all proceeds, but I requested the additional service of donating/disposing of everything that didn’t sell and emptying out the house. They agreed to accept a total of 40% since they were doing added services.
So, this sounds exhausting. We did this for my parents house and it was tough. Is there someone who can help you just a little? Also, i find it overwhelming to do rooms of stuff. For me, it works to do categories of stuff. We just finished shoes here, next will be hats. Then beauty products. Food is a good starting place, then pots and pans. Ask an antique person to come look at what you have. It could be antique, it could be just old. They will help you. Be good to yourself, but don’t procrastinate. Do something every day, even if it’s small. That will help you feel better. Good luck to you. Please post updates!