Alrighty. You’ve done some hard-core thinking, you’ve gone through your cleanup planning checklist, and you’ve set your rules of engagement. Now it’s time to dive in.

There are distractions aplenty in a hoarded home, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed or daunted by the sheer scale of the task ahead of you.

Good news! You can split the cleanup into steps that will help you focus and be as efficient as possible.

It helps to separate tasks like purging, cleaning, sorting, organizing, donating, and hauling garbage. If you try to do them all at once, you end up doing none of them particularly well.

I’ve also noted some steps to help you keep up the momentum and still take care of yourself along the way. Stay in tune with your body and your feelings. That may sound hippy-dippy, but I promise it’s also pragmatic advice: Your body is a great guide that’ll let you know when you really should take a break or when there may be hazards to avoid, such as that particularly funky smell you notice coming from the fridge.

Steps to Clean Up a Hoarded Home 

1. Take a few deep breaths in the fresh air outside.

2. Suit up in any necessary safety gear for cleaning dirty, dank, dusty environments and get your supplies ready:

• Heavy-duty garbage bags for trash (You will need a lot of them.)
• Bags, boxes, or other containers to hold recyclable materials (You can recycle cardboard boxes after you use them – score!)
• Bags, boxes, or other containers to hold items you will donate or keep
• Box or other container to hold documents, important papers, and mail you find
• A marker and painter’s tape or masking tape to label the containers, if you like
• Phone or camera 
• Bluetooth speaker, headphones, or portable stereo 
• Water and healthy snacks

3. Before you get started cleaning, take photos of the carnage.

Trust me. It’s a huge help to have photographic evidence so you can create your own “before and after” shots. This step will be vital to staying motivated. Initially, you are going to do hours or even days of work without really being able to tell that a lot of progress has been made. I took photos at the end of each visit. That way, when I compared the photos from the different visits, I could see the results of the cleanup from trip to trip and track my progress over time.

Note: These photos are also useful if the house is unattended. They’ll give you a visual record of the items inside in case something’s stolen or you need to file an insurance claim.

The pictures don’t need to be fancy. Snap them on your phone, a disposable camera, a point-and-shoot digital camera, a Polaroid, whatever works for you. The artistry is not the point. The point is to have a reminder for yourself that you’re making progress. At the end, you’ll look at the photos and think, “Holy cannoli! We did that? We rule!”

4. Figure out where you’re going to put any containers as you fill them up with trash or other items.

If your situation’s like ours, there’s not a lot of spare room to put stuff. It’s a hoarded house, after all. It helps to develop a system in advance so everyone on the cleaning crew—even if it’s a one-woman or one-man team of you—knows where to put which kinds of items.

Rather than interrupting the cleanup to load bags in the car one at a time for delivery to the recycling center, landfill, or charitable organization, you can be more efficient by picking a centralized spot to put the bags and boxes as you fill them. When you get to the point where you’re ready to make a donation run, you’ll know exactly where to find the right items.

Trash

We definitely put grody trash outside immediately. While we were still getting regular trash pickup, we would fill up the outside trashcan first. Once that was full (almost instantly), we’d put the trash bags out back until we were ready to load up the car and haul them to the landfill. If you’ve rented a dumpster for the cleanout, that’s where you’ll take the trash.

Items to Donate

In the house, we lined up bags of donation items in a row along the wall or in any spare space of a room that we weren’t working on. That way, we could move down the row and know exactly which bags needed to be carted out when it came time to head to Goodwill and other charitable organizations.

Items to Keep 

We put anything we were keeping into 12-gallon Sterilite bins and stacked them together in another area. The bins had latched lids that kept out any dust or other gunk, their opacity protected the items inside from sunlight, and their size was just right for holding a decent amount of items without us being able to overload them or make them too heavy.

Recycling

We’d pile bags and boxes of recycling materials on the front porch. That made it easier to tote the bags directly from the porch to the car for a trip to the recycling center.

5. Put on some music or a favorite podcast.

People have different opinions about this. Some say to not have any distractions so that you can concentrate fully on the task and make decisions thoughtfully. That’s a fine method for a lot of folks.

The silent thing isn’t for me. I need music to keep my energy and spirits up when I’m cleaning. For me, it’s also like being in a coffeeshop, where I actually concentrate better because my mind focuses more fully on my project in order to block out the ambient noise. Listening to something also helps the time fly. It’s easier to work for hours on end when you’ve got autoplay turned on and are eager to hear the next episode of “ID10T” or “2 Dope Queens” or whatever podcast you like. And if you’re working on the project alone, the background noise keeps things from getting too lonely in a gloomy, hoarded house.

6. Start with any obvious trash or a particularly pressing cleanup project that must be tackled before you move on to cleaning out paper and objects.

For example, get any rotting food and other noxious waste out of the house. You might want to start with the kitchen or the bathroom for this reason. It’ll make for a healthier work environment.

Plus, you’ll build your confidence by quickly getting rid of things for which you have no emotional attachment. Consider it a warm-up for the tougher, more sentimental stuff.

7. Once you’ve taken care of any pressing environmental concerns, pick a room. Any room.

I recommend starting with a smaller area, like a galley kitchen or a bathroom. You will get a boost from being able to clean something quickly. Getting an early win under your belt will energize you for the next task.

8. Work on a particular section of that room, such as the kitchen counter, and don’t move to another area until you’ve finished cleaning that spot.

Another option is to set a timer and work for a specific period of time. Commitment and focus are key.

You may get distracted due to all of the visual noise around you, but it’s important that you don’t hop around from project to project or room to room. That only makes you feel scattered and wastes time. Plus, if you only do tiny bits on multiple areas, it’ll make it that much harder to see any visible progress, which can really take the wind out of your sails.

9. Use your designated containers for things you will Trash, Recycle, Donate, and Keep as you work on the room or project you’ve chosen.

You can also have a collection pile near the door for anything that belongs in another room. Wait until you’re done with your current cleanup task or are on a break before you leave the room to return those things to the proper areas. Remember, you want to maintain your focus and your cleanup flow.

10. Set important papers and mail aside to review later.

I mentioned in my earlier post about getting a container into which you can chuck any kind of potentially important mail. Toss any mail or paperwork into the container. Save the sorting and reviewing until later, when you’re not in the middle of a cleaning session.

11. Take frequent breaks.

Physically, it can get hot in a Tyvek suit and respirator. Emotionally, it can be exhausting going through garbage and thinking about your loved one’s life, or your own pain, or how much you hate paper. (Did I mention there was a whole lotta paper in our parents’ house?)

Sit down. Listen to some music. Go outside. Take a longer break and watch a silly cat video or ridiculous sitcom so you can have a laugh. Do whatever you need to restore your spirits for the next round of cleaning.

Here’s a good stress reliever: Gather any glass bottles and jars that you can’t return for a cash deposit, and head over to the recycling center. Smashing glass is a terrific way to safely get out some of your frustrations without hurting anyone. (Just be careful with your aim.) I love recycling. 🙂

12. Drink water often and keep some healthy, protein-rich snacks handy.

You’ve got to stay hydrated and fueled up for the manual labor of cleaning. You will discover new muscles at the end of each day because they will be sore from all of the bending, hauling, stooping, standing, crouching, stretching, and running around you’ve been doing. Give your body some protein, healthy fats, and other nutrients to keep going strong.

I’d pop a Nuun tablet into some water to get some extra electrolytes when my energy started flagging. I also packed a lot of RX Bars and coconut butter for quick, paleo-friendly snacks that kept my blood sugar from going bonkers. Without a coffeemaker in the house, I’d also tote my own Bustelo packets to mix with hot water for a snappy caffeine fix.

13. Take items to trash, recycle. or donate. 

Once you’re done with the cleanup for the day, or you decide to take a longer break and get out of the house, load up your vehicle and head out to the recycling center, charitable organization, or landfill and drop off all the bags and boxes you worked so hard to fill. Don’t let the stuff hang around overnight if you can help it. It’s a thrill to get so much stuff out of the house in one fell swoop.

Take some pictures of what you’re hauling off. Many landfills will weigh your vehicle before and after you drop stuff off so they know how much to charge you based on the amount of garbage you brought, and they’ll give you a receipt that lists the weights. I kept those receipts as another tangible way to track how much work we’d done and how much progress we’d made. When you realize you’ve cleared out literally TONS of junk, it’s pretty astounding.

14. Take photos again.

When you’re ready to call it a day, go back through the house and take photos of the areas that you worked on. The pictures will be part of the “Yeah, I’m Totally Rad” photo album you’ll create for yourself that reminds you of that time you tackled a hoarded house and won.

Hope and joy,

Rachel