Surely there’s a better word, or term, for this function than what I’ve come up with in the title here, but I can’t lay my hand on it just now.
What it is, is when someone has died or gone into a long-term care facility, and someone – you – has to go into the house and deal with its contents. The object is to get all the person’s belongings out of the home so it can be sold, or rented out again if it’s an apartment.
I’ve done this several times. Sometimes for family members, sometimes helping out a friend with their family member’s house. A friend here is currently doing it for a cousin of hers who has died.
It’s hard work. It’s often sad work, if you were fond of the person whose stuff you are now having to make (often difficult) decisions about. It’s sometimes filthy work – one friend’s old aunties had been chain smokers and lived in the same house for forty years. The tobacco gunk on the walls was like syrup.
The friend’s cousin had been a semi-hoarding hermit for thirty years and the condo is just. disgusting. I haven’t seen it, but it sounds like an episode of Hoarders. They brought towels to put on the chairs and are wearing latex gloves to go through his papers.
Although, I think you could put forward an argument that a house full of hopelessly awful stuff is easier to deal with, just put everything in a Dumpster. Call in some crime-scene cleaners to scrub it back to decency. Voila, done.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are houses that are obviously full to the brim with valuable antiques, paintings, rugs… these are the easy ones. Call an auction house and they’ll send someone out to take care of it for you, and write you a nice cheque afterwards.
More difficult are the in-between houses. The ones with a few items that are of some value. Some nice knick-knacks, good cookware, a couple of decent chairs or tables. Decisions must be made as to how to realise that value, i.e., sell them. Yard sales are a god-send here, but in a condo or an apartment…?
What if only some of the items are really quite valuable? A nice set of Wedgwood, complete unchipped dinner service for 12.
Or you think they might be? That stamp collection – is it valuable, or just Uncle Frank’s accumulation that a stamp dealer wishes you wouldn’t darken his door with?
How do you find out? You’re afraid that if you approach an expert they’ll low-ball you, and you’re probably right. The area I do know about, used and rare books – right now there’s a huge a glut on the market, what with everyone turfing out their attic and peddling the results on Ebay. Even a reputable dealer will offer you a quarter, maybe, of retail value, since stock is moving so slowly these days, and it all has to a catalogued and housed while he finds a buyer for it. Really high-end books are holding their value, but lesser stuff seems to have no market at all lately.
So. Got any interesting stories to tell us about sorting out a house? One friend and I nearly came to blows when she was convinced her aunties’ sad, smelly no-dust-jacket books were worth selling, and I told her they were worth dumping.
When my father went into a home and his house needed to be sold, my brother and I… well, let’s not go into that, the brother is insane, and it was highly unpleasant. These situations don’t tend to bring out the best in people, as tussles over who gets Grampa’s walnut rocker turn ugly.
Lurkers, are you there? Please come out and play. I’m sure you have some good stories to tell us.
