Part 2
Wow, Katrine, that is really good advice - I am taking notes myself as I will soon be clearing and selling mums bungalow!
I have cleared the actual rubbish (TV guides dating back 12 months!) and broken stuff, but that has given me lots of tips on what to do about the rest.
Thank you canary. I hope it is helpful to the OP. I get the sense you are grieving Sarah and feel very alone and vulnerable. I totally understand the burden of responsibility, which I have also experienced with dealing with my mum's home. Hence Part 2, because it's been different than with MIL.
My mum still lives in her home, with live-in carers. I did not have POA but fortunately was joint party to her bank accounts so can pay her bills, get repairs done etc. I am now her legal Guardian, but what I describe below happened before then.
My parents had the house built in 2002. 3 ground floor bedrooms but with a fixed staircase to a vast open loft room that was habitable after a fashion but full of junk and not signed off by Building Standards as habitable. It had a couple of beds up there, overlayed with junk, no curtains at the windows, and just used very occasionally as a bedroom by visiting grandchildren.
My dad died in 2007. My mum got ill and returned from hospital with vascular dementia in January 2008. Live-in carers occupied one bedroom, family members used another when visiting, and my mum has the largest bedroom. Loft area often used for a night when incoming carer arrived so I started very slowly to clear the junk to make it a bit more comfortable for guests, hung curtains etc.
The clearance was so emotionally painful to me, and made me feel so guilty, that I called a halt when it was tidy. Still tons of books, photograph albums, furniture and other household items, plus boxes of ornaments and 2 trunks containing silver and jewellery. Umpteen empty suitcases and cardboard boxes, ready for her next house move.
My brother said 2 years ago, when are you going to start clearing the loft?
Told him I'd already been doing it and I thought her will said it was his job to do it when she died. I won't have time he said, just get on with it.
Charity shop and tip for much of it, also Freecycle. Once I had cleared the top layer I started on the boxes of ornaments, china, glass and family mementos. Copious weeping sessions and crises of conscience ensued, but OH was very supportive by telephone. It helped that the carers encouraged me too. They said I was doing the right thing.
I took a lot of antique furniture and ornaments to auction and made about £1,400 in total after paying commission. I kept some things, but not much. Bear in mind this was mainly stuff stored in the loft room, not in the rooms downstairs which are in use, so my mum was totally unaware of what I was doing. Bear in mind also that I didn't have POA so technically it was illegal for me to sell her stuff at auction under my name even though I paid the cheques straight into her bank account. I have also retained photographs of the items that were sold.
I bought loads of cardboard archive boxes, the kind with lids. This allowed me to label and stack the remaining family stuff, books, albums etc. in the loft room. There's still a lot of it, but it is manageable now. What we didn't need was my grandmother's oriental bric-a-brac and china and all the other stuff that had sentimental value for my mother but not for us. She used to say we could throw it all away, or sell it, when she was dead. That's where the guilt comes in. It is sensible and practical to dispose of it, especially as she would never have seen it again. However, I know that if she has any thoughts about what is upstairs she will imagine that her treasure trove is still there.
I took the jewellery and silver to be valued and paid for an inventory of these. They are stored in a secure place. I had an auctioneer do a detailed walk through valuation of all household contents, with written report. The total of these, including silver and jewellery, for sale purposes (not insurance value) comes to about £10K. Beautiful 8-seater Victorian mahogany dining table and chairs valued at £200. That sort of thing. They value at what is the minimum they could guarantee you would get for this at auction (you might get more).
The point is that 'stuff' is not worth much. It doesn't matter what you paid for it. The value is what you can sell it for. This knowledge helps a lot when you are clearing a house. By all means sell things to boost the owner's kitty, but don't exhaust yourself in doing this because the effort to maximise their estate must still be reasonable considering all circumstances.
P.S. Sarah, I wish I could give you a big hug.
