Estate and whole-house cleanouts.

A probate cleanout is an estate cleanout that has to fit inside a legal process the family didn’t choose and can’t rush. The house often can’t be cleared, listed, or sold until the court has named an executor or personal representative and the estate has the authority to dispose of property. We work alongside that process — we don’t run it, and we don’t give legal advice. Your probate attorney handles the filings and the law; we handle the house once you have the authority to clear it.

The executor or personal representative is who we coordinate with. They direct what stays and what goes; we don’t make those calls for the estate. If heirs are still deciding, or the will is contested, the cleanout usually waits until the executor confirms what has authority to leave the home. We’d rather hold than haul something that shouldn’t have left.

Timing is the question we get most. A whole-home probate clearing typically runs inside the window between probate clearance and listing — often two to four weeks — but the cleanout itself is one to three days of on-site work once you give the go-ahead. We schedule around the estate’s timeline and the attorney’s, not the other way around.

What we can provide for the file is documentation: photos before major decisions, an itemized record of what was hauled, donated, and disposed of, and the donation routing record. We make no legal representations about the value or status of estate assets — we document what physically left the property so the executor has a clean record. For the items themselves, see the list of what we commonly clear in estate jobs below, and the inherited-house and listing-prep sections for the situations that most often surround a probate clearing.

When a parent moves to assisted living, memory care, or hospice, the house they leave behind rarely needs to be emptied all at once. We clear the prior home when a loved one moves to a smaller place — at the pace the family can manage, room by room, keeping what matters and thinning the rest so the home can be sold or rented.

Downsizing for a move is its own kind of work. The parent takes the pieces that come with them; the family decides what goes to other relatives; and what’s left — the furniture nobody has room for, the decades of accumulation in the attic and garage — is what we haul. Many of these jobs run in stages: we clear the rooms that are ready and come back for the rest.

These are emotional jobs, and we treat them that way. The crew works quietly, doesn’t rush, and routes usable furniture and working appliances for donation or recycling where possible rather than straight to the landfill. Nothing about the timeline is ours to set.

A heavily filled home is still someone’s home, and we treat it that way. Hoarder-house and heavy-accumulation cleanouts get the same calm, non-judgmental crew as every other estate job — no comments, no photos shared, no shame. The volume is higher and the work usually runs multi-day, but the approach is the same: sort, separate what the family wants kept, and clear the rest.

These jobs are paced and planned. We walk the home first, agree on scope and where to start, and work in stages so the family can keep up with keep-or-remove decisions. Usable items are routed for donation or recycling where possible; the rest is disposed of responsibly.

There are firm boundaries for everyone’s safety. Biohazards, human or animal waste, mold remediation, prescription medications, and hazardous materials are out of our scope — those go to the right licensed specialists, and we’ll point you to the correct channel. We handle the volume; we don’t handle the hazards.