IN A NUTSHELL:
Hire Steri-Clean. Hire them. Do it. They're professional, thorough, fast, amiable. They tackled my project, lived up to their original quote, and were friendly, helpful and, when I needed it, compassionate.
THE LONG VERSION:
Folks, if you have taken on the responsibility of cleaning out a hoarder's home, please read on. I have some good advice for you.
Why listen to me? I just managed the clean-up of my aunt's home after 45+ years of her hoarding activity. I was completely unprepared for this task and made tons of mistakes, which makes sense. Chances are that I'll never clean out a hoarder's domicile again. So I'm not going to learn from experience.
But you can learn from mine. Hire Steri-Clean.
The first company I hired charged an exorbitant fee for a full cleanup of my aunt's house. I paid the fee because they appeared to be the most professional of the crews I found online. How could I know better?
I hired them to clean out the house, but most importantly, I hired them to review every scrap of paper they found inside.
Understand that my aunt's case was particularly tough. There were piles of junk as high as 8-9 feet throughout her two-story house, 75 percent of which was paper. I desperately needed to retrieve my aunt's financial information--she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and could not recall where her bank accounts were. All of the material in the house had to be examined.
About ¾ of the way through the cleanup, the crew foreman--who barely spoke a word and was unresponsive and indifferent when I asked him for information or help--had clearly given up on the document review. I walked into the house one afternoon during the cleanup and found him and one of his workers shoveling material into a plastic bag without examining it at all. I ordered him to stop and told him I needed to reconsider whether we would continue with the rest of the job.
When they left the house, I examined the area they had just been cleaning. At random I picked up an envelope from one of the piles and inspected its contents. Inside was the certificate for a municipal bond that my aunt had opened in 1987. Upon its maturity, which was only a few months ago, it was worth more than $80,000.
They were about to throw it away.
I thought about all the other information that might have been lost before I stopped them--financial information like this, to be sure, but also family correspondence and photographs. What had we lost already because of their carelessness?
I hired Steri-Clean to finish the job.
When I brought Jim out to review the site, he impressed me with his depth of experience related specifically to hoarding. Turns out that many companies tackle hoarding as a side hustle. But Jim was drawing on deep familiarity with situations like my aunt's. In our first meeting, he outlined the problems I had experienced with the previous company before I even shared my story with him. He could see what the situation was and quickly laid out a plan for how to handle the rest of the hoard.
Impressed by his insight, I hired his team. In a very difficult situation fraught with a thousand choices, it was by far the best decision I made.
Document retrieval and review was obviously the most important thing to me. His team removed and sorted every significant record or valuable for me to inspect and laid them out on tarps in the backyard so that I could review them at my leisure. They never pressured me to make decisions. One of the valuable things about their approach was how they separated the process of document review from the actual cleanup; these two tasks took place in separate areas of the property, so there was no pressure to decide the fate of an object or a document that was seconds away from being thrown in the dumpster. In cases where I couldn't determine the value of certain objects--jewelry, for instance, which is something I know nothing about--his team members helped me make informed decisions.
They also knocked out the heavy cleanup--furniture, old clothes, etc.--quickly and thoroughly. When they were unsure about anything, they called me in to ask for my direction. It was a complete 180 from the first company's approach. By the time they were done, they had rescued countless valuables and documents from my aunt's home, including old photographs and audio recordings of my family.
Cleaning out a loved one's hoard is not fun. I felt assaulted on all sides by sadness and loss. And as much as I needed honest, professional, and knowledgeable help, I needed understanding and empathy.
In every instance, that's what I got from the Steri-Clean team. I wish I had hired them from the beginning of the cleanup, not just for the great work they did, but for the fact that I looked forward to spending time in their company.
Do yourself a favor; hire them.
John
PS--If you have any doubts about how to proceed, I am willing to speak to prospective customers to answer a question or two. Let Jim know read more
