Cleanouts

An Estate Cleanout Checklist That Respects the Family

Clearing a family home is not a logistics problem with feelings attached. It is an emotional process with logistics attached, and the order matters.

Before anything leaves the house

The most important rule of an estate cleanout is that nothing leaves the property until the legal side is settled. If the estate is in probate, or if there is any disagreement among heirs, talk to the attorney before the container arrives rather than after.

Before you start:

• Confirm who has legal authority to dispose of the contents
• Locate the will, deed, titles, insurance policies and financial records
• Photograph every room before anything moves
• Agree among the family who wants what, in writing if there is any tension
• Check whether anything is specifically bequeathed
• Have anything potentially valuable appraised rather than guessed at

One local note worth adding: many of these houses have been in the same family since they were built in the 1950s or 60s. That means original purchase paperwork, decades of tax records and sometimes the original deed are still in the house. Do not clear a filing cabinet or a desk without someone reading it first.

The four-pile method

1. Keep. Family members are taking it. Label it with a name.
2. Sell or donate. Set a deadline — if it has not gone by then, it moves to disposal.
3. Dispose. Into the container.
4. Special handling. Documents to shred, medications, firearms, chemicals, electronics, batteries, appliances and refrigerant equipment.

Nothing goes into a fifth "decide later" pile, because the decide-later pile grows until it swallows the project.

Things people throw away and regret

• Paperwork not checked. Savings bonds, share certificates, insurance policies, deeds and cash turn up inside books, tins and drawers with genuine regularity.
• Photographs, slides and negatives. Once gone, gone. Mid-century families photographed constantly and stored badly.
• Military records. Discharge papers, medals and service records matter to somebody, always.
• Costume jewellery. Frequently sorted into disposal by people looking for real gold. Some of it has genuine collector value.
• Tools. Hand tools and workshop equipment are collected seriously, and a well-kept mid-century workbench often holds decades of quality.
• Local and industrial ephemera. Worth flagging here specifically. Households across north county hold aviation and aerospace memorabilia, union records, company badges, plant newsletters and photographs from the manufacturing employers that built this area. It looks like paper clutter and some of it is genuinely collected.
• Anything in the freezer or a coffee tin. Older people of a certain generation did not always trust banks.

What cannot go in a container

• Paint, solvents, fuel and garden chemicals — the St. Louis Household Hazardous Waste facility on East Hoffmeister, by reservation at hhwstl.com. Bring proof of address, stay in your car, card only. Contact them first if you have more than 100 pounds, which on a house like this you very well might
• Major appliances — the regional landfill refuses them, so they need a scrap metal or appliance recycling route
• Fridges, freezers and air conditioning units — refrigerant professionally evacuated first, and then still a scrap route rather than the container
• Whole tires — refused unless chipped or shredded; a tire retailer or scrap dealer instead
• Electronics — televisions, monitors, computers
• Batteries of every kind, including those inside power tools and mobility scooters
• Propane cylinders and aerosols, including "empty" ones
• Medications. Pharmacy take-back
• Firearms and ammunition. Contact the police for guidance — do not transport them to a container
• Confidential documents. Shred rather than dumpster
• Yard waste — kept separate from everything else

Mattresses, by contrast, are accepted and listed explicitly among household waste. Bulky, but no special handling.

⚠️ Start with the basement

The single most important piece of local advice on this page.

Nearly every house in north St. Louis County has a full basement, and on a home that has been in one family for fifty years it holds more than the rest of the house combined. It is also where every prohibited item lives.

A typical basement here holds: paint from four decades of redecorating, fuel for the mower, motor oil, solvents and adhesives on a workbench, batteries in tools nobody has used since the nineties, the chest freezer, and very often a second fridge.

Do it first, and do it in this order:

1. Chemicals and fuel out before anything else moves. Once boxes are stacked in front of a shelf, the shelf gets forgotten and the fuel can ends up in the container.
2. Book the HHW reservation early — it is appointment-based, so it needs planning around rather than fitting in.
3. Appliances and tires set aside for their own routes.
4. Check for damp damage. Anything that sat wet is heavier and may need different handling.
5. Then start on the volume.

Getting it up the stairs is the real work. Place the container as close to the door you will actually use as we can get it — fifteen extra feet of carry, repeated three hundred times, is the whole job.

Room by room, in the right order

1. Basement, garage and shed

Mostly disposal, little emotional weight, and it clears staging space. Also where the hazards are.

2. Kitchen

High volume, quick decisions. Check tins and containers before anything goes in.

3. Bathrooms and laundry

Fast. Medications to one side.

4. Spare rooms and closets

Where the paperwork hides. Slow down here.

5. Living areas

Furniture decisions, and the first genuinely emotional room for most families.

6. Main bedroom and personal effects

Slowest. Do not schedule anything else for this day.

7. Yard, patio and any remaining structures

Keep the yard waste separate — it is a different stream. Work outdoors in the morning through the summer; the humidity here is not a joke.

Sizing the container

• Apartment or small unit: 15 yard
• Two to three bedroom house, basement not included: 20 yard
• Three bedroom with a full basement: 30 yard, or a 20 with a swap
• Long-held family home, everything going: 30 yard, and plan for a second
• Property with outbuildings or acreage: 30 yard and a metal pile, at minimum
• Anything involving concrete or soil: a separate small container

Household contents are bulky and light, so these jobs generally size up — and the basement is what pushes them up a size. We schedule estate work with longer rental windows as standard, because they do not run to a tidy timetable.

Coming in from out of town

A common situation here, because north county families have spread out a long way while the house stayed.

If you are travelling in to clear a parent's house in a single week, tell us the dates when you book. We will have the container on the driveway the day you arrive rather than three days into a week you cannot extend, and we will schedule the swap before you need it rather than after.

Four practical notes for a compressed visit:

• Book before you travel, not once you arrive.
• Book the HHW appointment before you travel too. It is reservation-based, and a basement full of chemicals will not wait for a free slot.
• Confirm which municipality the house is in. North county is a mosaic and a Florissant mailing address does not always mean Florissant — it affects who to call about anything municipal.
• Allow for the weather. A January visit can lose days to ice, and a July one loses the afternoons to heat and humidity.

Consider professional help when the property has been hoarded, when there is pest activity, when biohazard is involved, or when nobody in the family is local. There is no failure in that.