Sadly real wood furniture is not in style now. Young people want furniture made in China.

Check auction houses and estate sales houses.

When my mom moved from my childhood home she chose things to keep, my siblings and I took what we wanted and we did an estate sale followed by junk haulers to completely empty it. She moved several times after that, always to a smaller place, so my basement ended up the staging area for the rest of her stuff. She’s long been able to manage her own life so it’s on me to figure out to do with everything.

I have a graduating college student so I’m sorting her stuff into five piles- trash, donate, sell, keep for setting up an after college house, keep for family heritage. It is a PROCESS.

As of now I have most things organized. I know I should just donate all the stuff I have set aside to sell but it’s hard- each item may be worth $20-$200 and there is so much, probably $10k worth of stuff. I hate walking away from that and could use the money, but it’s so daunting.

When we were closing up my parents' home we listed a lot of furniture for free on Facebook marketplace. People came to the house to pick it up and were heartbreakingly grateful.

I am going through this now - my parents suddenly had to move from their home of 47 years and now we need to sell it. 3500 sf and it's FULL of stuff. We found a "senior move manager" whose company will come in, sort the stuff into trash vs donate vs sell categories, and coordinate all the vendors to take things away. The quote was $9k-ish and didn't include trash removal fees which will be about $5k in the end. We might have made as much as $1k (haha) on selling stuff

In the end we are doing it all ourselves but only because one of my siblings is local (there are 3 of us). We've all missed a ton of work,too and we will barely be able to get the house ready by the time the "season" starts. UGH

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are many estate sale companies that can take care of this for you, OP. Understand that all of their stuff will probably be worth 10% of what you think it's worth!

There's one that's quite active in my area called Caring Transitions.

Caring Transitions is a national chain, so it's likely there's an affiliate wherever you are.

Caring Transitions will hold an online estate sale if they see value in the items, they will take leftovers to Goodwill, and then trash the rest. But they are not cheap as doing it yourself but you are paying for them to take care of everything - an auction house will cherry pick a few items and leave you to deal with the rest. If you are lucky, the money you get from the auction will cover the cost of cleaning out the house.

Anonymous wrote:There are many estate sale companies that can take care of this for you, OP. Understand that all of their stuff will probably be worth 10% of what you think it's worth!

There's one that's quite active in my area called Caring Transitions.

Caring Transitions is a national chain, so it's likely there's an affiliate wherever you are.

Use an estate sale company and count yourself among the lucky if you don’t have to pay to have stuff removed. Don’t concern yourself with where the stuff goes, just get rid of it.

OP, I'm sorry for your loss. Agree with the suggestion to use an estate sale company.

And I say this as someone who's been there--keep the things that are meaningful to you and don't feel guilty about getting rid of the rest. It felt really weird to me that what had been a home was suddenly just "stuff."

If you have any mid-century modern , that might be of interest. Otherwise

Are you in DC? You can send photos to Goodwood or the Christ Child Opportunity Shop in Georgetown. They might take some of it.

You can donate furniture to A Wider Circle in Silver Spring. If you have enough, they will send a truck.

You can also try your local Buy Nothing Chapter.

There are services that will do this. No personal experience but I have been eyeing this one for my dad's house (but he is stubbornly refusing to downsize).
https://www.caringtransitions.com/

Also -- stuff going to Goodwill (if Goodwill will even take it) is better than it going to the dump. If you want someone to take it and get use out of it, rather than it being discarded and destroyed, sometimes the best price is free for the taking (with the new owner having to pay to haul it away).

I'm sorry, OP. Be prepared for getting little to no money. Best case scenario, you might get a little, and second best is you don't have to pay to have it hauled away.

Don't get sucked in by the endowment effect -- because the item once had financial value, and currently has emotional value, does not mean that it's actually valuable to anyone else besides you. Also don't pay to store it or take it into your house on the mistaken notion that if you do the legwork, you'll get a higher price than an auction house or estate sale would (or you'll retain more of the selling price).

Take pictures of anything that you want to remember -- maybe put together a nice photo album on Shutterfly or something. But be prepared that no one else will ever value your folks' stuff like they did or you do.

When my mom passed, I found a consignment store that sold used furniture. They were very picky about what they took, but they sold it and gave me the proceeds less their cut. That was out of state, not sure if there's anything like that around here.

Most of the furniture though, was of no interest to them. Gave it to Goodwill.

Make sure whatever company you use, part of the deal is that "everything goes." My parents struggled for years to clear out all my grandparents' stuff. I don't want to think of how much they paid in storage unit fees. All the typical things applied - nostalgia, not wanting to sell for lower than perceived costs, not being able to throw things out themselves, etc.

The estate company we finally used cleaned out the storage unit as part of the service. I'm sure they threw out a ton of stuff, but it was out of sight and out of mind by then. My parents didn't have to stuff things into trash bags and take them to the dump. So even though the overall profit was not high, the overall result was very valuable.

Estate sales companies enrich themselves, not you.

Call a couple of auction houses to see if they want your stuff. They charge lower commissions than estate sales companies.

If the auction houses don't want it, try Freecycle or Buy Nothing. The idea is not to get money out of it, but not to have to pay to get rid of it.

Finally, there are junk haulers, some of which work with charities so you can donate the stuff. But it may be landfill time.