Cleaning an Old Family Home Room-by-Room
Navigating the overwhelming task of clearing decades of memories
When we lost Marsha's mom in January 2024, we joined the countless families who face a ubiquitous challenge: clearing out a lifetime's worth of belongings from the old family home.
50+ Years of everything
Marsha's parents had lived in their home since the 1970s. Her father’s carpentry skills resulted in a finished basement that was never updated for sentimental reasons. Her father’s handyman skills, handed down to her older brother, kept appliances working that most people would have replaced decades ago. At the same time, Marsha’s mom and dad kept every artifact from their lives as a family.
The sheer volume feels paralyzing. Some examples, include::
Original furniture from five decades ago
Children's clothing, toys, sporting goods, and art projects carefully preserved
Working appliances maintained through repairs rather than replacement
A garage full of tools, including drill press, table saw, sanders, planars, etc.
Japanese cultural items requiring special consideration for donation
But the real challenge isn't just the stuff. It's the emotional weight that comes with every decision, and the mental load.
Multiple passes are exhausting
Most of this load has fallen on Marsha’s brother, as he has been living in the home for the last 24 years, first after moving in with their mom following the death of their dad and now on his own as he clears out the house. Still, as an outside observer, I am seeing that Marsha's brother’s approach of making multiple passes through the entire house, sorting items thematically rather than by location, was creating more work than progress. Each round results in revisiting the same overwhelming spaces over and over. I believe that these iterations not only create more physical work but may also compound the emotional exhaustion.
After reflecting more on this topic, I believe room-by-room is the way to go. Marsha and I will try to implement a first step with this room-by-room approach on our next visit to the family home.
Focus on a single room
We'll start with Marsha's childhood bedroom. While much of the stuff in the room is from Marsha’s childhood, their mom also began storing her things there and used the room as her own personal home office. This room is a contained space where Marsha can have primary decision-making authority, but it also enables her to start tackling some of their mom's belongings to help reduce her brother's burden.
We intend to categorize every item in the room, with one of the following categories:
1. Keep for Marsha
Must fit in our vehicle for the trip back to Portland
Items with clear personal significance or utility
2. Keep for a named family member
Requires text message approval from the intended recipient
Must include a concrete plan for getting the item to them
3. Donate Now
Items we can immediately load and deliver
Japanese items: Hosekibako (Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Washington thrift shop)
General items: Goodwill
Specialty items: Research appropriate donation centers (like we did for the bicycles to Recology)
4. Donate Later
Larger items requiring pickup (Habitat for Humanity)
Items needing brother's approval before donation
5. Recycle/Dispose of Now
Items we can immediately take to the Factoria Transfer Station
6. Recycle/Dispose of Later
Items requiring brother's approval before disposal
7. Not Sure Pile
Sometimes it is unclear what to do so rather than spend enormous time agonizing, best to set aside and keep going
Separate designated area to prevent decision paralysis
We are allowing ourselves multiple days for this project, with plenty of breaks in-between.
The parallel project of Marsha’s vinyl collection
Back when iTunes came out, we already ripped all of our CDs. However, we never did this with the vinyl records. We never had a turntable, so we just left all of the old vinyl records at her mom’s house. So, while Marsha focuses on her bedroom contents, I'll tackle her vinyl record collections, with the following approach:
Cross-reference albums with our iTunes library
Check availability on Spotify
Identify rare items (like 12-inch singles) for future digitization
Hopefully, getting all of this preserved digitally will allow us to simply give away or sell Marsha’s vinyl to a record store.
Supporting Marsha’s brother
A key objective is to lighten the mental load on Marsha's brother, who has felt the weight of this daunting responsibility. By tackling a complete room and providing clear recommendations for their mom's belongings in that space, we hope to:
Demonstrate that rooms can actually be finished completely
Reduce the number of decisions he needs to make
Show tangible progress that can motivate continued effort
Respect his grieving process while offering our support
This is the plan. I’ll write about how it went in a future post!
For others facing this challenge
If you're in a similar situation, here is the summary of my suggestions as someone both watching and living this experience. (By no means are these suggestions a statement of fact or “best practice.”):
Start small. Choose one contained space rather than trying to tackle everything
Create clear categories. Stick to them
Don't let "maybe" piles grow. They become overwhelming
Respect family dynamics. Recognize that there is a person carrying the primary load.
Research appropriate donation centers. Do as much of this research in advance as possible.
Plan for immediate removal. Find your transfer station for recycling and disposal. If you don’t have a transfer station that handles both recycling and disposal, there is always 1-800-GOT-JUNK.
Our goal right now is simply progress, not completion.
In the real world, we already know that the room-by-room process isn’t perfect. In some cases, there is some interdependence between rooms. For example, we’ve already found that an item in one room might need to be grouped with items in another room to evaluate which one (or ones) to keep. So, there have been items that do get looked at twice.
Still, by going through every item in one room entirely, we hope to create a template that can be replicated throughout the house. The aim is to make an overwhelming task feel manageable, one room at a time.
Do you have any tips for us?