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

A local note worth adding: many houses across this area have been in the same family since they were built or bought in the post-war decades. 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, or into the City's free allowances.
4. Special handling. Documents to shred, medications, firearms and ammunition, chemicals, electronics, batteries, tires and refrigerant appliances.

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.
• Military records. Discharge papers, medals and service records matter to somebody, always.
• Immigration and naturalisation papers. Worth flagging here specifically. Across this area a great many families hold arrival documents, naturalisation certificates, old passports and letters that are irreplaceable family history and look exactly like paper clutter in a drawer.
• 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.
• Automotive and industrial memorabilia. Company badges, service pins, plant newsletters, union records and photographs from the manufacturing employers that built this area. 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 — these go to Wayne County, which runs household hazardous waste collections and a voucher program for residents. Check the county's current arrangements before you load the car
• Fridges, freezers and air conditioning units — refrigerant professionally evacuated first
• Tires — City collection only on designated tire days, or a tire retailer or scrap dealer
• 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, and note that ammunition is explicitly excluded from City disposal too
• Confidential documents. Shred rather than dumpster — the City runs free shred days at the DPW Yard on published dates, which is ideal for a house clearance

Mattresses, by contrast, are fine in a container and also count as curbside bulk items within the City's limits.

⚠️ Start with the basement

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

Nearly every house across Dearborn and the surrounding cities has a full basement, and on a home that has been in one family for decades 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, a set of old tires, and very often a second fridge.

Do it first, and in this order:

1. Chemicals, fuel and tires 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. Check Wayne County's current HHW arrangements early — collections and vouchers need planning around rather than fitting in.
3. Appliances set aside for their own route.
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.

Where the City's free allowances fit

Use them deliberately rather than accidentally, because on a full house they run out fast.

• Bulk items: five a week, twenty a year. Spend them on genuine furniture — the big awkward pieces. The arithmetic is here, and twenty does not clear a house.
• Carpet: ten rolls a week, thirty a year, counted separately. Roll and tie it.
• The DPW Yard, third Saturday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. — free, one visit a month, proof of residency, and no rental trucks or trailers. Plan around that if you were going to hire a van.
• Shred days for the paperwork.
• The container for everything else — which on an estate clearance is usually most of it.

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
• Dense older street: 15 yard with swaps — the driveway decides it, not the volume
• Anything involving concrete or plaster: 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, because families spread out while the house stays.

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.
• Do not plan on a rental van and the DPW Yard. Rental trucks and trailers are turned away, and the Yard only opens one Saturday a month.
• Confirm which city the house is in. Dearborn's rules are Dearborn's — Dearborn Heights, Melvindale and the rest are entirely separate.
• Allow for the weather. A January visit can lose days to snow and ice, and it changes what we can do on a sloped driveway.

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.