Have you reached the empty nest stage of life? Or are you wanting to proactively downsize to gain greater financial freedom? One of the big hurdles at this stage is a house crammed full of items collected through a lifetime of different journeys. Here is a guide to starting this phase, but don’t forget that you can also call us for an on-site house clean out service and guidance.

The Overfull House

Some people get bigger houses to accommodate the ‘stuff’ that they have accumulated, and some people collect stuff because they are trying to fill up their house. Through the years, we have seen that, in the majority, families only need a fraction of the items that they have accumulated over the decades.

The thought of sorting through it all can be overwhelming and is thus mostly ignored. Give us a call and we can help you get started or help you the whole way through.

Don’t leave a house stuffed to the brim for your kids to wade through when you have passed. It can be very traumatic for them as well as a big burden.

How To Approach A House Clean Out

Set up an appointment in your diary to start your clean out journey and set follow up appointments as well.

Start with one room, not the whole house.

The easiest category to start with is the things that are not being used. Aim at setting up four different decision criteria: Keep, Donate, Dump, Sell.

Having these criteria helps to get the process flowing. Note that a hoarder will battle even with these categories set up and will usually put 90% of all the items into the Keep category. See our article on When Is Collecting Hoarding?

Tough as it may sound, it is advisable to set your sights low on the value of the items. Selling second-hand items does not attract high value and, to the shock of some parents, the children often don’t want the collected items.

Donating is often the best route as the people that receive the items are deeply grateful, and their lives are made that little bit easier because of your donation.

Even large, solid timber storage units attract very low prices on the second-hand market. The items that attract a fair price might be some jewellery items or any mid-century modern furniture items that are currently very popular.

Sentimental Items

Of course, there will be precious, sentimental items that must be kept, but there might be some for which the memory is of greater value than the item. You can photograph them, write up a paragraph on the memory, and then file it digitally in your memories folder.

If your photo album (in the cloud) is linked to your TV, it will scroll through all your photos and every now and then that precious memory will pop up, and you get to see it more often than when the item was packed away!

Free yourself from the burden of boxes and boxes of unused items. Call us today to get started with a house clean out service.