.... as cleaning out hoarders' houses and getting them ready for resale is really hard work.
A few years ago, my sister and I were dealing with selling our uncle's house filled with 60 years of stuff and his huge 2-story garage filled with all sorts of large metal parts (chains, gears, you name it). He lived 4 hours away, so we had to make good use of our time to get a lot done while we were there. It seemed like it might take forever until we decided to call the 800-got junk people.
We quickly went though the items in the house, looking for anything that looked important (papers, keys, credit cards, passports, I.D.s, albums, meds, etc.). Important items...and ones that 'might be important' were set aside -- in clear plastic bags (for us to haul home and go through slowly, in detail). Everything else as we 'processed it' went into black plastic contractor bags for disposal.
Some of the neighbors who stopped by to see what we were doing were the lucky recipients of the refrigerator, microwave, washer & dryer, wheel barrow, and snow blower. (Less things for us to dispose of.)
Luckily our uncle's machine shop was well-organized and in a separate section of the garage. We sold the entire contents to a neighbor.
His old, non-running car (as I mentioned in another post) was donated to the fire dept. for practice putting out car fires.
I call to the 800-got junk folks had them out the next day. They sent 2 trucks and I forget how many guys to load the trucks. We merely pointed out what needed to be hauled away, and the guys loaded the trucks. What had appeared to be a daunting task that would have taken us weeks and weeks...was done in 2.5 days. Money well spent.
The house was in a popular area. The house and garage were sold 'as is' (broom clean) and sold within 2 months. The new owners spent a ton of money to upgrade the house and turned the huge garage into a man cave with giant TV, etc.
omni