House clearance need to sell Mum's house but I'm too ill and disabled

[David1]

My Mum lives in a care home. She moved in last July and is doing well.

I was my Mum’s primary carer, but I have a sister who lives nearby who visits my Mum frequently.

Recently I have had a catastrophic collapse in my health. I suffer from ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and have had a relapse that has rendered me almost bedbound. I spend most of my days lying down and resting as this is the only thing I can do. It is horrid.

We need to sell my Mum’s house in order to pay for care home fees. It’s not urgent, however a friend of our family (and daughter of my Mum’s neighbour) has offered to buy the house. However, the house is still as it was when my Mum moved into care, and has all the family’s belongings in it. It will be a huge job to clear it.

We need to clear the house of everything before selling. However, I am just too ill to contribute to this process and am really worried about how it can be done. My sister can do things, but she can’t do everything. There’s a lot of furniture in the house that needs to be sold or disposed of.

The worry about this situation is not going to help my condition, so I feel rather trapped and helpless. If we can sell the house to our neighbour’s daughter it would be great, but I think we need to get started on clearing our house.

I don’t know how on earth we can resolve this when I’m so ill and cannot even visit the house without serious impact on my condition.

Does anyone have any advice on how one might do this house clearing?

Thank you.

 

[jaymor]

There are house clearing companies who will come in clear a house including lofts and garages. You just need to know what you want to do with the contents.

When my Father died we donated all his furniture to a local charity once we had taken out personal papers and mementoes that family and friends wanted.

 

[Tin]

Maybe getting a removal firm in to pack everything and put in store until you are ready to sort get someone in to look at the items you want to sell, they usually make an offer on the spot and will take away, then the rest of the family if there is anything they want, a local charity who will come and collect if its a lot. Is there anything your neighbours daughter would like to buy, open house sale? Thinking off the top of my head I know, but you can organise these with phone calls and appointments, then hopefully you will only be left with the things you want and a clean up, which can be done by a company.

 

[henery]

Sorry to hear of your illness.
Recently I was involved in clearing a relatives house to facilitate its sale.
I found the British Heart Foundation very helpful. Tel 0800 138 6556.
Beware of private companies who will clear the property, they charge a fortune.!!
Henery

 

[Quilty]

I would suggest asking all the family and friends if there is anything they would like to have as a good memory of your Mum. or that they need or can use. This will get everyone roped in helping do the work. The stuff that is left you could get charities to lift the big items and put the rest in storage until you feel better.

When my Grandfather died we managed to find a new home for almost everything in the house as everyone in the family wanted a memory and knew of someone in need.

 

[Jess26]

All very good advice.
One other option that came to mind. Once everything personal and any momentous have been removed maybe the buyer (especially if the friend buys it) would be interested in a slight reduction on the sale price so that she could cover the cost of clearing what's left. Knowing your health problems I'd think any buyer would consider this.

I hope your health improves soon.

 

[Blackcat20]

Hi David1,

I'm glad to hear that your Mum is doing well in her care home, but can fully appreciate how clearing your Mum's house can seem like a huge task to you. I really feel for you, as I faced a very similar situation last March, in that I had to sell and clear my Mum's house (full of all her furniture and personal things) after she moved into a care home, which was near me, and 250 miles away from her house which was up in
Scotland. Due to the long distance, to the fact that I have a demanding full-time job and also because my priority was to spend time with my Mum (whom I visited every evening in the care home), I decided that it was not practical to try to do any of the clearing myself and so I arranged almost everything by phone or online. I don't have any siblings or other close family, so I had no choice but to do everything myself.

Basically what I did was to make one visit to the house, armed with lots of sets of coloured stickers to put on the furniture and other items I wanted to keep (different colours to indicate items to go to my Mum's care home room, to my house, to auction etc). I also gave a set of stickers to the estate agent so that she could add them to items for me if there was anything I forgot during the visit. We did a Skype call as she walked round the house so that I could see that we were talking about the same thing! I then arranged with a national removal company to pick up the furniture which was to come to my Mum and to myself, and they were happy to go to the house and load up the items according to the stickers (when the van was loaded, they gave me a call as they walked round to the rooms to check that that had picked up everything). As part of the sale, I also asked the estate agent to check if the purchasers of the houses wished to buy any of the furniture which I did not want - it turned out that they did want quite a lot of the bulkier items (beds, dining tables, bookshelves, sofas) and they paid an extra fee for these.

After that I put everything in the hands of an auction/house clearance company which had been recommended to me by the solicitor who I had used to sell Mum's house. They arranged for the good items to be taken to auction and for the useful items to go to a local charity of my choice (the rest was then cleared and disposed of). It took three days with a team of 6 professional clearers (the house was a four-bedroom one which was cluttered with all kinds of things) and cost £800. The firm dealt with everything, even freezer contents and personal papers (those which were not required went to confidential waste). For me, the cost of this was money well spent.

Sometimes I have regretted not being able to go through all my Mum's things more carefully myself, and having to do just about everything remotely. My priority at the time was nevertheless to spend my very limited free time with my Mum herself rather than in travelling up north and sorting out her material possessions, which the house clearance said would probably haven taken one person several weeks to do. As my Mum sadly died unexpectedly last June, I am glad that I chose to spend the time with her and not on the house. I found that the removal company and the house clearance company were very reliable, and that all the stickered items arrived safely - my house is now filled with pieces of furniture and items of Mum's which being back happy memories.

So what I would say is - it doesn't matter if you can't do the clearing yourself, as you can ask friends/family or employ people who are professionals to help you (and you can still make lots of decisions yourself by using Skype, phone etc). In my case, I think that having some distance from being present at the actual clearance made a very sad and painful process just a little bit easier.

I wish you and your Mum the very best, and also hope that your health will improve soon.

Blackcat x

 

[halojones]

Sorry to read about your ME.. The advise from others is good ....Do you have any type of support worker? What about the ME society?Is there any local community /charity groups that could help..?...I do think that a support worker would be a great help for you ...we all need help at times...If I had the money, I would do what black cat has suggested, make it as easy as is possible...Wishing you luck...xxx

 

[David1]

Thank you everyone for your kind and informative comments.

I have found all the advice you have written to be extremely valuable.

Thank you again.

 

[Rustymuppet]

My friend's mum recently died. After taking out the personal items and anything she wanted to keep, she put the house on the market with an estate agent who also did auctions of household items. They cleared the house, sold the saleable items and got rid of everything else.

 

[RobinH]

All good advice, but I would avoid putting large amounts in storage - this will just cost money month after month, and will all probably be disposed of after wasting a lot of cash. I would get friends and relatives to take what they want, then offer the rest to charities, then get a house clearance company to do the rest. If this will damage your health, get others to do all the work. By the way, charities are quite picky - they won't take anything they can't sell, so don't be surprised if they leave some stuff. Time to look after your own health.

 

[fizzie]

British Heart foundation are great and will clear a lot of the furniture for you without you doing anything. I should be extremely careful about private house clearance. You could put the rest in storage at a fairly low cost and then just go back and take bits out at a time as and when you are ready to sort it through. Once the big stuff has gone this will be easier.

 

[angelface]

Could you get your sister to go through all the cupboards in the house first?

In my aunts house I found a lot of jewellery. Other posters say they find money, and often important documents.

There was nothing I wanted in the way of furniture, but there were a lot of photos and a few keepsakes I wanted.

It maybe worth getting a local auctioneer in to value,but even 1920s furniture is worth very little. Depends if you know how valuable things are -even quite new stuff is not worth much.

After that you need a house clearer, it will cost money,but surely it is a responsible use of your mothers money. Also,bearing in mind the cost of care fees, clearing a house wont cost much more than a couple of months care.

Above all,dont store anything - it will never go! And you may find your sister has already thought all this out. Don't panic,its all do-able

 

[Amy in the US]

From the dates, this looks to be an old thread that got bumped back up. If the original poster is still with us, I hope all went well.

 

[Rjlarke]

British Heart foundation are great and will clear a lot of the furniture for you without you doing anything. I should be extremely careful about private house clearance. You could put the rest in storage at a fairly low cost and then just go back and take bits out at a time as and when you are ready to sort it through. Once the big stuff has gone this will be easier.

While the intentions of charities such as the BHF are unquestionable. I'd suggest quite the opposite to your advice. They cherry pick the very best items and leave you with 99.9% of the other stuff to dispose of yourself, they are very very picky, more so than you would imagine. Often meaning you have to get a second clearance done. Now private clearance companies usually discount what they charge you by offsetting it against the value of items. If the charity has stripped the good stuff then you are going to pay more because for the clearance. The clearance company has to pay around £160 per tonne to dump your stuff, the less they have to dump the cheaper it will be. So if there is no offsetting and only rubbish it's going to be expensive. There is a hell of a lot of labour involved also. I wish we'd not got the charity in first to be honest.

 

[Chemmy]

This thread dates back to 2014 so has now been closed.