How to Clear Your House: A Step By Step Guide

Clearing a house is no easy task. Undertaking this job fills most people with dread. But if you are positive, organised and efficient, you can clear a home quickly and with minimum stress. Here are some vital tips to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Step 1: Plan Your Time

If you have a deadline for the Bathroom renovation to be finished, work backwards and decide how much work needs to be done on each available day. Block out time in your calendar. In general, clearing one room between two people takes between half a day and a full day, depending on your clutter levels. Give yourself enough time to complete the job otherwise you will end up stressed and exhausted.

Step 2: Decide on Destinations

Decide where each item is going to go as you clear a room. You probably have a few categories including keep, donate, recycle, throw. You may want to include more options such as donate to charity, give to friends, sell. Use a coloured sticker system, allocating one colour for each destination. At its simplest, the system would be green for keep, red for bin, and orange for donate, for example. Label everything you see.

Step 3: Remove Your Stuff

Next, move all the items so the same coloured stickers are grouped together. If you are moving to a new house, you may want to put all the green items straight into your van or car. If you’ve got a lot of things to dispose of, hire a skip and put the red-stickered items straight in there. If you don’t have the time to dispose of or recycle anything, hire a house clearance service. House clearance Tewkesbury experts will go through it all and take it away from your property to sell, donate, or trash. You could do this yourself but it is time-consuming to take mountains of things to charity shops and make listings on eBay.

Step 4: Be Careful With Documents

You may be tempted to toss any paper documents straight in the recycling bin so you don’t have to worry about it. But financial documents and anything with your personal details on it could be used to steal your identity. Get a shredder and destroy these documents permanently. Also, take care not to throw out any documents you may later need. This is vital if you are clearing a deceased friend’s or relative’s house. You never know when you may need an official document as it could relate to a will or probate claim.

Step 5: Take Care of Your Health

Moving items around creates considerable dust. Wear a dust mask, if necessary, and open all the windows as you clear. Be careful when lifting heavy items. Always follow safe lifting procedures. Work closely with someone else so you don’t overstrain yourself moving items around. If you have any health concerns, hire a clearance firm right from the start. A house clearance is not worth giving yourself lasting problems over.