Six Top Tips for Clearing an Estate

Set Aside Important Documents

The first thing you need to do is find your loved one’s important documents. This will likely include documents regarding a will, home insurance, life insurance, bank statements, receipts for utilities, stocks and bonds. This information will be required in order to collect any insurance policies and to close out bank accounts. The will should specify what needs to be done and how the deceased’s items will be shared amongst family members and loved ones.

Redirect Post

Any documents that are coming in the post should be redirected to the address of a person who will be responsible for making payments and answering letters. This should be fairly simple if you speak to the post office.

Hire a Skip

You’ll find that there are many items that no one wants to keep – most estates have a lot of clutter to remove. This means you’ll need to dispose of such items, so hiring a skip is your best choice. Hiring a skip for the property allows you to immediately remove any rubbish from the home and place it in the skip, leaving room to sort everything else.

Place Stickers On Things to Keep

If there are multiple people who will receive items from the home, you can use colour coded stickers to mark which items will go where. Go through the home first and label each item accordingly.

Set Aside Items to Donate or Sell

Anything that is not wanted can be either sold or donated or simply added to the skip, depending on what it is. You can designate a place for these belongings and move them to that area so that it’s simple to just gather all donations when someone is available to haul them to a local charity shop.

Set a Time Limit

You may find it difficult to work through the estate without getting emotional, so many people find it helpful to do this in two-hour shifts. You can work and then rest to allow yourself a break. However, it’s recommended that you set a time limit to complete the cleanup. This means everything should be moved out of the house to allow you the time and space to clean before renting or selling the property.

Are you facing a difficult clean up of an estate? Let us help. Black Country Skip Hire offers skips of all sizes for your estate clearing needs. Contact us today.