AARP Online Community and Discussion Forums - How Did You Handle the Cleaning Out Process?

GailL1 · ‎06-11-2025

Once you have lost a loved one, it takes a while to get around to all those chores that one has to do at sometime or another.

So when and how did you handle the cleaning out of the personal effects of your deceased loved one? Did you ask someone to help you? Did anybody offer to help you when you were ready?

Hardest thing I have ever had to do - took a while to get started; maybe a year. My nephew helped me tremendously - he was about the same size as my husband so he took a lot of the nicer clothes and hats. I still see a shirt that is familiar every once and awhile - that’s been almost 20 years ago; yep, the nephew takes care of things he really likes.

I saved some really special things like one of the hats that he wore often and looked so great in - I made an acid free box and used acid free tissue paper to wrap it - last I looked at it, it was still like new. I had tried preserving my brother’s high top tennis shoes that we bought him in 1990 when he came home from a long hospitalization and died shortly thereafter but I did not preserve them so when I looked at them 16 years later, they had just disintegrated so if you want to keep something forever, I learned that you have to pack it well. I am hoping someday that I will give this hat to our grandson. He never met his granddad so the hat and a few other personal things like my husband’s pocket knife, compass and some military-related things will be what I will give to him someday.

There are a few other things I kept too but they were more of a personal nature - his hairbrush, well, when he had hair, his sunglasses. Some of the things he made when he was in art school like small sculptural pottery or ceramic pieces.

But all in all, almost 20 years later, it has been sort of dwindled down to the really important stuff.

Good luck to any of you that have to get through this someday - take your time and I do think it is better to have somebody there with you cause it really is emotional and hard to do. Some things bring smiles, some tears.

My husband was a very positive person - the last words he said to me after we had said our goodbyes since we did have this chance was that he was off to his next big adventure. And being the spiritual person that he was, said that now all his lifelong questions about the hereafter would be answered. I hope he found happiness in the next life - I think he did.