Guide
How to prepare for a house clearance
What to find, mark and photograph before a clearance date, so documents, gifts and access problems are not discovered as rooms are emptied.
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Why preparation matters
A house clearance is straightforward when everyone knows what is leaving and what is staying. It becomes expensive to reverse when a passport, a will, a set of deeds or a piece of jewellery goes out with the kitchenware.
Preparation is not the same as doing the clearance yourself. You do not need to box every plate. You do need to search, decide and mark. The aim is that the crew arrives to a house where the remaining contents are genuinely unwanted, and where access will not be a surprise.
This checklist is practical. It is not legal advice. If you are an executor or administrator, use it alongside the longer probate house clearance checklist and take professional advice on the estate where you need it.
The preparation checklist
Work through these in order if you can. Several of them overlap, which is fine — the point is that each one happens before the van is booked.
1. Remove items to keep
Walk the house with a box, a suitcase or a marked corner of one room. Take anything you or the family have already decided to keep. That includes clothes someone still wants, kitchen equipment a relative has asked for, and furniture that is going to another house.
If you cannot move a large piece yet, label it clearly — a note on the item is better than a verbal instruction that nobody else heard. If several people are involved, write the list down. Memory is a poor inventory.
A fuller list of categories sits in what to keep before a house clearance.
2. Locate documents
Documents hide in the places people thought were safe: bedside drawers, tins in the kitchen, files under the stairs, loft boxes labelled “papers”, and envelopes behind the clock.
Search specifically for:
- passports and driving licences
- wills, letters of wishes and any list of specific gifts
- title deeds, leases and correspondence about the property
- birth, marriage and death certificates
- bank, pension, tax and investment paperwork
- insurance policies and household inventories
- family records, address books and contact lists for solicitors or accountants
You do not need to understand every sheet on the first pass. You do need to keep the pile together and out of the clearance. Official starting points for estates include applying for probate and inheritance tax on GOV.UK. Those pages do not replace advice on a particular estate.
3. Identify sentimental possessions
Sentimental value and sale value are different. Letters, children’s drawings, medals, a particular chair, a set of tools someone used for thirty years — these are easy to miss when you are tired and the house feels overwhelming.
Give yourself one slow walk for “things that would hurt to lose”, separate from the walk for documents. Ask other family members before you decide that a box of odds is junk. If people cannot agree, set the disputed items aside rather than leaving them in a room that is about to be emptied.
Bereavement house clearance is the slower version of this work, when decisions are still being made room by room.
4. Separate items gifted to beneficiaries
If there is a will, read it for specific gifts before anyone books a clearance. A named clock, a piece of jewellery or a particular table should not be in the general contents.
Ask beneficiaries what they want even if the will is silent. Write the answers down. “I thought you were taking the dining chairs” is a common argument after a house has been emptied. Physical separation — one reserved room, or labelled pieces — is clearer than a conversation.
This is not legal advice about who owns what. If ownership is disputed, get advice before instructing a clearance.
5. Identify potentially valuable belongings
Age does not automatically mean value, and a modern-looking object is not automatically worthless. The categories that most often deserve a second look are jewellery, watches, silver, coins, stamps, artwork, musical instruments, certain ceramics, cameras, and antique or designer furniture.
You are not expected to be a valuer. You are expected not to treat a jewellery box as residual waste. Set those items aside. If the estate or the family needs a formal opinion, that happens before removal. See valuations. We can look out for categories that commonly need a closer look; we do not replace a specialist.
6. Identify hazardous materials
Tell us about anything in this category before we quote. Do not leave it as a surprise on the day, and do not put it in a household bin because a clearance is booked.
Typical problems in Cornish houses, garages and sheds include:
- asbestos (old artex, garage roof sheets, some floor tiles and pipe lagging — if you suspect it, do not break it up)
- gas cylinders and camping gas
- oils, solvents, pesticides and unknown chemicals
- clinical waste and sharps
- certain batteries and old electrical equipment
- ammunition or fireworks, occasionally found in older rural properties
Some of these need a specialist contractor. We will not assume we can take them. Mention them in the enquiry.
7. Tell us about difficult access
Cornwall access problems are ordinary, not exceptional. Narrow lanes, no turning space, a long carry from door to van, stairs with a tight turn, parking restricted to residents, a hatch that will not take a wardrobe — all of these change the labour.
Photograph the approach as well as the rooms. Say how far a vehicle can get. If the property is a holiday let or a flat, mention corridors, steps and whether loading has to happen from the road.
8. Photograph the property
Photographs do two jobs. They help us assess volume and access for a quote. They also give you a record of how the house looked before contents left, which matters if beneficiaries later disagree about what was there.
Take rooms, the loft hatch, the garage, sheds, and the drive or lane. You do not need a professional shoot. Daylight and open doors are enough. If you live away from the property, this is often the main way the job is scoped — see house clearance when you live outside Cornwall.
9. Check sheds, lofts, garages and cupboards
The living rooms are the easy part. The volume that changes a quote is usually in:
- lofts (boxes, old suitcases, forgotten documents)
- garages (tools, leftover building materials, stored furniture)
- sheds and greenhouses
- under-stair cupboards and airing cupboards
- wardrobes, sideboards and filing cabinets
- garden stores and coal houses
Open them. Documents and jewellery turn up in lofts as often as they turn up in desks. If you want those spaces included in the house clearance, say so; they are not assumed.
10. Do not automatically throw everything away
The last item on the list is a warning, not a task. A clearance exists because most of the contents are leaving. That is not the same as treating the house as a skip.
Usable furniture and household goods can often be reused. Some materials can be recycled. Residual waste is what is left after those questions have been asked. What happens to house clearance items explains that order. Throwing first and sorting later is how documents and valuables disappear.
A sensible order of work
If the house is still lived in, or you have only a weekend on site, this order usually fits:
- Documents and keys (one box, kept with you).
- Jewellery, watches and small valuables (same).
- Photographs and obviously personal objects.
- Named gifts and beneficiary requests.
- A walk for hazardous materials.
- Photographs of rooms and access.
- Mark large pieces that stay.
- Then get a quote for what remains.
You do not need a perfect house. You need a house where the irreversible mistakes have already been avoided.
If several people are involved
Executors, siblings and partners often arrive with different ideas about speed. One person wants the house empty before the next mortgage payment; another has not finished looking. Write down who is allowed to instruct the clearance, who holds keys, and who will answer questions on the day.
If you are dealing with an inherited house, clearing an inherited property covers the family side of this. If the house is being sold afterwards, do not book agent photographs until retained items are out and the clearance date is set — see house clearance before selling.
After you have prepared
Send the postcode, the photographs and a note of anything that must stay. That is enough to start. The how house clearance works guide describes what happens next.
If you are still deciding whether a clearance is the right tool, compare it with skip hire and, for small household loads you can take yourself, Cornwall recycling centres.