Do not hire an estate sale company -- it will most likely literally cost you money because they charge for their time, for moving things to be auctioned, for calling the trash hauler to haul away your trash (you will still have to pay the trash hauler). They will take a 40% commission on anything they sell.

Contact your local auction house, or more than one if there is more than one. Have the stuff you think is maybe worth something -- silver, lithographs, antique guns - available. An auction house takes a smaller commission than an estate sale company.

If you want to keep pictures, you can do that. PPs have had good suggestions about how to deal with boxes of photos/albums

If there is usable stuff that you don't want, put it on FB marketplace or Freecycle or whatever. Give as much away as you can.

Call a trash hauler to take the rest away. Don't feel bad. It gave your parents decades of pleasure, and it has served its purpose. Marie Kondo would tell you to thank it for that. I would say thank it for teaching you not to hold on to your stuff, and to try not to acquire so much.

I hope your parents like their new place. They are lucky to have children who look out for them.

Agree with Estate sale.

Also auction houses - look at Weschlers. They'll give you estimates. Sword and other antique-y things might have value, and the easiest way to go is at auction. You pay the auction house a portion of the proceeds, but still it's a way to get rid of it, probably at the highest value you'd get.

Our experience with an estate sale company is even a very wealthy family member's "antiques" are truly junk. There was very little worth anything and would have been easier and cheaper to hire a company to get rid of it or donate. maybe your rich family members have better taste.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We kept 2 pieces of furniture, a set of dishes, a set of mid-mod silverware, photographs, and some jewelry. Everything else from MIL’s 3 level townhouse we sold, donated, or trashed. It was really sad because her stuff was so precious to her that she refused to downsize so that she could move closer to us and we ended up ditching over 3/4 of the things that she valued and prized over being able to spend time with her family. I made a box of photos for us and one for another relative close to her. I threw away any photo of a person my husband couldn’t recognize and I threw away any photos without people in them. Eventually, I will send them out to be scanned onto a CD and then we will throw the photos away.

This advice about photos is good - I went through my parents photos and ditched any photos without people. I did consult other family members about who people I didn’t recognize might be, but if we couldn’t identify them I got rid of them. Then I pared down what we had - my parents would take a roll of pictures of each event, and I didn’t need 6 photos of me in my cap and gown at high school graduation. This took maybe 1,000 pictures down to a couple hundred. I had these scanned and shared the files with my family. There were some good ones I was glad to find.

Looking at your list I’d focus on the photos, and hire an estate sale company to handle the rest.

Agree with this. When you go through photos let go of the guilt about throwing most of them away.

My father died in the Spring and my mom moved in with my sister. Each of us siblings and grandchildren took a few things we cared about and mom took a few pieces of furniture, favorite housewares + all memorabilia stuff. Then she turned the house over to an estate agent to deal with all of it. They just finished the sale and between what the sale brought in and the agent's fee Mom only came out about $100 up and that was mainly because of one expensive item. But, the house is now empty, mom and us kids (who are spread out across the country) didn't have to do anything beyond sorting through papers and photos, and mom can move on to selling the house. She's also well set financially so we didn't care about maximizing the value of selling the house stuff and didn't have any real collectors' items. The priority was making it easy. If you want to maximize what you get for the collectibles you'd probably do better selling those on your own.

Anonymous wrote:We kept 2 pieces of furniture, a set of dishes, a set of mid-mod silverware, photographs, and some jewelry. Everything else from MIL’s 3 level townhouse we sold, donated, or trashed. It was really sad because her stuff was so precious to her that she refused to downsize so that she could move closer to us and we ended up ditching over 3/4 of the things that she valued and prized over being able to spend time with her family. I made a box of photos for us and one for another relative close to her. I threw away any photo of a person my husband couldn’t recognize and I threw away any photos without people in them. Eventually, I will send them out to be scanned onto a CD and then we will throw the photos away.

This advice about photos is good - I went through my parents photos and ditched any photos without people. I did consult other family members about who people I didn’t recognize might be, but if we couldn’t identify them I got rid of them. Then I pared down what we had - my parents would take a roll of pictures of each event, and I didn’t need 6 photos of me in my cap and gown at high school graduation. This took maybe 1,000 pictures down to a couple hundred. I had these scanned and shared the files with my family. There were some good ones I was glad to find.

Looking at your list I’d focus on the photos, and hire an estate sale company to handle the rest.

We kept 2 pieces of furniture, a set of dishes, a set of mid-mod silverware, photographs, and some jewelry. Everything else from MIL’s 3 level townhouse we sold, donated, or trashed. It was really sad because her stuff was so precious to her that she refused to downsize so that she could move closer to us and we ended up ditching over 3/4 of the things that she valued and prized over being able to spend time with her family. I made a box of photos for us and one for another relative close to her. I threw away any photo of a person my husband couldn’t recognize and I threw away any photos without people in them. Eventually, I will send them out to be scanned onto a CD and then we will throw the photos away.

I'm a minimalist. My parents and in laws were not. My FIL lived in a 5 story townhouse for 60 years - filled to the brim with stuff. We took a few boxes of items - some books, paintings, one small piece of furniture and my FIL's coin and stamp collection which we sold (together they went for almost 30,000, which more than paid for 1-800-Got Junk to clear out the rest of the house.) We selected 2 decorative pieces to give to each of our kids one day. That's it. Same thing for my parents home - sold some stuff but most was given away to friends, extended family or Catholic Charities. Very little that you can sell these days and my parents had very good taste - we consigned a few things but most was not selected for sale. I miss my parents and FIL every day but never once have I thought I should not have thrown out those photos or given away the dishes or dining room set. We kept one family photo album from each side to pass down as well as genealogy records which they both had Don't want to burden our kids with all the rest. It's hard, expensive and a pain to downsize. Don't feel guilty about it - it's part of life.

Re: old photos and documents
When my MIL passed, we went to clean up her condo. After coordinating with siblings, we sent 3 huge cartons of photos and memorabilia to another sibling who wasn't able to help with the clean-up. That sibling's contribution to wrapping up MIL's affairs was to take over the photos. They have a laptop a large hard drive and a scanner. They hire a local high school student to come over 1-3 days a week after school (sometimes longer during the summer) and they scan and try to date/identify photos (many have notations on the back). Things that can't be scanned can be photographed digitally. After all is done, they plan to make copies of the hard drive for each of the surviving children so each has a copy of the photos. Some interesting documents. We found my MIL and FIL's original marriage certificate and my FIL's discharge papers, plus information about the first house where the kids were born.

Re: silverware
Do you know if the silverware is a collectable or expensive set. If so, you can contact places like replacements.com and see if they will purchase. Many times if there are good name china or silverware especially in lines that are no longer produced companies like replacements.com will purchase sets of them so that they can sell replacements to people who, for various reasons, no longer have a full set and want to complete their sets. We've bought and sold several individual pieces of higher name brands with them.

Re: antique gun
Do NOT destroy the gun. If you want to make sure it is safe, you can pay to have the barrel filled or blocked so that the weapon is no longer usable. But you do not want to destroy something that may be a collectable. We lose so much history because people destroy antiques instead of selling them to collectors. And this as someone is who rabidly anti-gun, but the gun is no longer really a weapon (and you can ensure that it no longer is), but a piece of history.

You need an estate liquidation service. Look on NAPO to start.

Anonymous wrote:This thread is a reminder to stop buying random junk. Because one day it will be junk that will burden your kids.

+100. If you need the dopamine hit through the purchase, then buy it and return it the next week!

Anything that was in or around vermin and their poop is biological hazard and needs to be disposed as such Never just wipe down or launder and keep these items.

Once you remove them from the frames and albums, they are actually pretty easy to parse through for the keepers. Anything that was a duplicate, scenery, and unidentifiable people are thrown out.

Even 1000s of photos are pretty easy to look through; you can quickly figure out whether or not each one is worth it to you to keep or discard.

I always hate seeing old portraits (especially of children, for some reason) for sale at antique stores. There is a real sadness for me that no family members existed or cared to preserve these.

If there are any decent ones of family members or important places, hang on to some. Once they're trashed they are lost to you and future generations.

But then again, I'm a bit of a romantic with a history degree...

I think the photos are the least valuable thing and seem like the biggest burden. You really don’t need photos of these things. Maybe you could use the profits of the yard sale to hire a teen to discard all “scenes” and only keep people.

This thread is a reminder to stop buying random junk. Because one day it will be junk that will burden your kids.