We went through this ten years ago with my wife's dad. He had a lot of stuff, but he had a lot of hobbies...there was relatively little "junk," and he used a lo

We went through this ten years ago with my wife's dad. He had a lot of stuff, but he had a lot of hobbies...there was relatively little "junk," and he used a lot of it until just a year or two before he passed. Some of it went to fellow hobbyists. Some went into storage. The stuff we just couldn't deal with were sold, along with the house, to a professional flipper who conducted an estate sale, hauled the rest away, and remodeled and sold the house. My mom was smart, for the most part. My parents weren't really big into accumulating stuff, beyond what people without many hobbies accumulate over the years. Twenty years after my dad passed, my mom downsized before she sold the house and moved into and independent living community. We got professional help downsizing further when she moved from independent living to assisted living, and finally got rid of almost everything else when she went into memory care. As much as she'd gotten rid of, she still had an amazing amount of stuff. It was a little easier doing it in stages, I suppose.