How to start clearing out a deceased estate….

Where to start in clearing out somebody else’s home (and what should happen to the mid-century furniture?)

Photo by Wolfgang Sievers, Age Dream Home, Union Road, Balwyn 1955 (demolished). Designed by the RVIA Small Homes Service in conjunction with The Age newspaper 1955. State Library of Victoria

Most people at some stage in their lives will have the duty of having to clear out somebody else’s home.  A relative may have passed away, or has moved into a nursing home, or simply the homeowner is physically, or mentally, incapable of doing the hard yards themselves. Every few months Secret Design Studio gets a phone call for help from a distressed person who has this duty, usually with a deceased estate, but doesn’t know how, or where to start. This download is for anybody who finds themselves in this situation, and doesn’t know where, or how to start.

There is one thing harder than organising a funeral for a relative, and that is cleaning out their home after their death. Invariably this is an emotional and difficult time with so much family history and many memories tied up with even the most mundane, household objects.  The amount of work and the emotions are much the same if an elderly relative is moving into a nursing home and is physically incapable of clearing a home out.  For some people this sorting and revisiting the past is too painful and they either delay the process, sometimes for years, or just get some burly blokes to put everything into a skip, and off to landfill, much to their later regret.

by Wolfgang Sievers, Buchanan House, Beaumaris, Victoria, 1960, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne.