Disposing of Clutter in a House I'm selling

Winterbotty

Hi, my dad died last year and we're close to selling his house.
There's lots of stuff in the house that if we had the time probably would be of use to someone. For example:

Kitchen stuff- pots, pans, cutlery, glasses.
Fridge freezer
Tumble drier
Lots of old motor sport magazines

There's also a lot of general clutter that will need skipping
I'm a bit loathe to skip all this stuff, but the time and effort not to is swaying me more to this area. Are there companies who will do this for us - my thoughts are in an ideal world someone would come along and empty it for us, and they would get the booty as payment. Does it work like this? Can anyone give me any recommendations.
Many thanks

DigForVictory

I'm sorry for your loss & the effort of sorting the house for sale.

Can I suggest you ring a charity? Explain that if they come & fetch it, it's all theirs? I know BHF can cope with electricals & furniture, but then the littler charities won't get a chance.

Maybe pick a charity your father would have chosen to support in life?

Red-Squirrel_2

Have a look at your council's website, mine has links to local charities that will do house clearances and either pass the useful stuff onto people in need or sell it in their shops.

Brighty

Yes there's companies that will do this. Search for local 'house clearance' companies. Won't be free though.

We used one when my parents passed, had planned to clear it ourselves and sell stuff, but ended up in a bit of a rush as we put it up to rent and it went in a few days with someone wanting to move in the next week.

I put all the stuff i wanted to keep in one room (TV, a few bits of old furniture, some tools from the shed/garage, mums paintings) and closed that room off, they then took everything else.

Cost was £350 for a 3 bed bungalow+shed+garage without too much clutter. They got also the saleable stuff as their 'bonus', but i'd had a really good look through everything first and made sure there wasn't anything of real value left for them.

Didn't think £350 was too bad when a skip would have cost half that. Was a very busy day though, first house clearance, then both EPC man and boiler man turning up.

Brighty

G_M

Google 'house clearance' for your town. There will be many firms. Some will charge, some will take their fee from the house content.s.

also worth contacting a local auction house. They will put items in the auction that they think may sell (they'll take 10% or so) and will also dispose of the rest.

As others have said, charities are a good idea.

If you have time, freecycle, gumtree or ebay are possible, but on an item by item basis which is a pain.....

Kynthia

A local hospice here does a house clearance and cleaning service. When a relative passed away we used them so that the place was saleable quickly, and it was nice to know the hospice that helped him in his last month's benefited.

Patchwork_Girl

I don't know if this will work for you (timewise) but you could just take rough pictures of the stuff/rooms and stick it on one of your local Facebook/Freecycle groups as 'free to collector' - with a couple of set times to collect. I bet you'd get a lot collected and taken away for nothing and people would be glad to have it.

savingfortomorrow

If you can get a charity shop to collect items for free. At least it may give some one a help, YMCA or British heart may willing accept. It makes a difference to receive a letter stating how much was raised through gift aid. Don't forget to get any special pieces aprraised or even google it. It may be better to sell a few valuable pieces to the right people than a job lot.

cloo

Freecycle is worth a try - you could list an 'open house' day where you give the stuff away.