Treasure hunters: the enthralling, emotional inside story of a house clearance

A soup of stuff sits on the desk in front of me: remote controls, spectacles, a fly swatter, a medication box, a pebble paperweight inscribed with the owner’s name. Even false teeth, lying where they were discarded. This is personal yet familiar clutter: we all have our own version.

I am in the front bedroom turned office and music studio of a stranger. Every conceivable object seems to have migrated here, creating shaky piles of paraphernalia that encapsulate a life’s passion. There is some impressive retro recording equipment, keyboards, a horn, all coated with a thick layer of dust.

No one lives here any more. This frozen scene was left behind when the elderly occupant died around Christmas. I guess the date because of the cards still on the mantelpiece downstairs, next to a treble-clef-shaped candle. Suddenly it feels so intimate that I have to look away.

“I will never, ever get used to going into someone’s house after their death. I will always feel as if I shouldn’t be there,” says Brendan O’Shea. I’m surprised by his emotion, the reverence. After all, this is his job. O’Shea, 44, works in house clearance: the business of stuff; the tidying away of lives. What becomes clear, though, is that he ensures it is done with as little waste as possible and nothing is ever sent to landfill.

His business, Just Clear, launched in south-west London with one van in 2012. Now, eight vans operate from that original yard, each depositing an average of three van-loads a day (the record is 10). There are also franchises across England and Wales, and there is soon to be one in Scotland, clearing 15 to 20 probate properties daily.

Probate – the legal right to deal with someone’s property and possessions when they die – forms more than half of Just Clear’s work. Some other domestic jobs also come up – Marie Kondo is a familiar name these days. Although it is rare, occasionally organised elderly clients call. Like death itself, no one wants to think about house clearance. Usually the clearances go smoothly, though O’Shea says concerned neighbours sometimes call the police when his teams arrive. Then there was the time he discovered three Soviet missiles under some stairs. “They were 3.5ft high,” he says. “We had the bomb squad attend and the whole road was sectioned off.”

O’Shea explains the need for his business: “We are a nation of consumers, and there needs to be someone at the other end taking away the unwanted items, otherwise where does it all go?” He is committed to ensuring as much as possible is recycled or reused. “In the early days, I suppose we were rag-and-bone men. Today, I want to get ecowarriors on board, and ‘people people’ in touch with their emotions.”

Again, there’s that reference to emotion, although waste and salvage – what O’Shea refers to as “commodities” – are business, of course. He used to be a commercial banker, and he spotted the value in waste when a client started redeveloping probate properties. There was a gap in the market for a trusted service, he realised. But although O’Shea can turn on the Dragons’ Den speak, he softens when he remembers his childhood in a “secondhand” household in rural west Kerry, Ireland, and building a “tipper truck” in a school engineering project. “It was almost like destiny,” he says with a smile.

And softness is required. Probate clearance opens a Pandora’s box of feelings: sorrow, decades-old resentments and good old-fashioned greed.

In the music lover’s three-bed semi, before the team can begin clearing, the feelings flood in via anxious phone calls. O’Shea speaks to different “beneficiaries” – those with a material or commercial interest in the property – who worry they haven’t listed all the items they would like, and about where others are going. Memories from childhood crop up: toys built together, piano lessons.

O’Shea has dealt with far more fraught situations. One family feud was so ferocious that the assets were shut in a storage container for two years. In the end, the beneficiaries took only “photographs and glasses”.

O’Shea is neat by nature: his white beard trimmed, his shirt spotless. He is a minimalist, he admits. He can’t afford to be overwhelmed. Not least when he and his team deal with hoarding situations that require them to don disposable suits. He still recalls his first. “The beneficiary said: ‘I have it on good authority he did not use the doors, front or back, for more than 20 years. So climb in the window.’”

And when he climbed in? “There were 42 tons of newspapers inside,” he says. “And a lot of rodents and fleas. It was a warm summer … It took four weeks to clear. There was a lot of faeces and urine in bottles and jars, too. Sadly, that happens a lot,” he sighs. “The biggest question I always have before a hoarding job is: ‘Is there access to the bathroom?’”

His business isn’t seeing any less hoarding thanks to Kondo; since the pandemic he sees more, especially food stockpiling. He speaks without judgment. He has learned a lot about suffering from stuff. “How people keep their home is often in keeping with their mindset,” he says. “If they have a trauma, you’ll almost certainly see that reflected in their homes.” He mentions a house filled with locks – many still in their packaging. “And it can be a second-generation hoard,” he adds. “The parents hoarding and the child continuing. You can clearly see the divide. Rooms pertain to different eras.”

Hoarding was first recognised as a psychiatric condition by the World Health Organization in 2018. “Hoarders will build a fortress of things around them so they can use them as a defence against emotional pain,” explains specialist Dr Stuart Whomsley, a clinical psychologist. Yet as long as our stuff doesn’t “gain too much power” and stop us living a fulfilling life, he believes a meaningful relationship with things is healthy. From infancy, children instinctively define stuff as “mine”. “Things become useful, enable us to do things, become prized,” he says. “They become an extension of our identity, a representation of where we fit in the hierarchy, and the holders of memories.” He’s no minimalist, he says. “Having those extensions of self into things, that’s being human, warm. There is research into hot-desking which shows people are happier if they can bring their stuff in.”

What excites O’Shea, almost as much as avoiding landfill, is discovery. In another extreme hoarding case (a tree was growing through the window, roots inside), he struck gold. “The beneficiary wanted everything tipped but, a week in, we found a cabinet with a brass dragon’s tail and head as handles. We put it into an auction and it reached £60,000,” he says.

It happened again last year. Amid stuff piled 5ft high, they found two Q1s, the world’s first fully integrated desktop computer powered by a single-chip microprocessor. Built in the 1970s, the Q1 is a relic of early computing history, and only one other model is known to exist. For months, no auction house would take them. When they finally sold, they fetched £20,000 to £30,000.

Under the district valuer’s guidelines for a probate estate clearance, assets of a sale price of £1,000 and over must be declared, although O’Shea and his team work on the basis of £500, or often less, and rebate beneficiaries.

Another hoarding case, consisting of 4,000 books piled in every corner, literally revealed gold: O’Shea’s team discovered two gold watches in the kitchen. Along with the more valuable books, they raised £60,000. Even a tidy property can conceal treasures. Told to remove everything from a Knightsbridge home, the team spotted two unusual ceramics. They had a signature: Picasso. “The auction house told us they were worth £120,000 each,” says O’Shea. It’s their biggest find to date.

Perhaps the most heartwarming story concerns £16,000 stashed in a saxophone case in a council flat. “The relative had taken out a loan to pay for the deceased’s funeral – she was overjoyed,” says O’Shea.

An average house clearance will yield between £750 and £2,000 at auction, but rare china, quality wood furniture, and jewellery often make the difference.

Some “treasures” can be less welcome. The discovery of a will, for example, “can really upset people, or make people’s day,” says O’Shea. And ashes, also regularly discovered, can prove tricky. The clearance team is sometimes asked to scatter them. “We were asked to take some ashes to an airfield once. We said a prayer,” he says.

So, where to start? In an extreme hoarding case, clearing and recovery must happen in tandem, beginning at the door (or window). Today, in the music lover’s cluttered house, a “treasure hunt” can begin for items on the beneficiaries’ lists, although the teetering piles mean only clearance will reveal some items. Jewellery is proving elusive. A tub of keys looks promising.

O’Shea has previously visited the house to assess it and organise the removal of a car and equipment such as a hospital bed and stairlift. Often, he will send an auctioneer to highlight and remove high-value items before clearance begins.

The team removes large furniture to make space, then groups together books, ceramics, cassette tapes – there are hundreds – and packs up smaller “debris” to be sorted later. If it is thought that items may be valuable, they may end up at auction after all. “There’s a carriage clock,” O’Shea remarks suddenly, spotting it on top of a bookcase. “Oh, it’s light.” That means it is battery-powered and therefore not of high value.

Team member John Williams, 54, talks me through various objects’ journeys. A hefty sofa, too worn for reuse, will end up in the Just Clear yard’s “POPs pile” – objects containing persistent organic pollutants. Much domestic seating contains them and must be taken for separate incineration. A mechanised mobility armchair will be perfect for a charity. “Families love it when I can tell them an item has a new home,” says Williams. The chipboard sideboards? “They’re old, they’ll go in our woodpile.” That rusty clothes airer? “The metal pile.”

What about the knickknacks the family haven’t requested? Coasters, tea-strainers … many will end up in the yard’s warehouse, which buyers, charities and the public can visit. I visited the yard, expecting a depressing graveyard of stuff but came away with an education (and a brass coal scuttle). It is an ordered place that feels full of life, the new beginnings of things. Sorting and separation is key to zero waste clearance. Piles of the same material are “bulked” to be picked up by specialist recycling companies. “If you get enough of anything, you can recycle it properly,” O’Shea says.

What seems like a thousand perishing mattresses slump in a vast pile. A lorry takes them to a company in Kent that specialises in mattress recycling. “They extract the metal and that goes into metal recycling. Then they bale the textiles and it goes to Scandinavia, where they put it into insulation.”

In the metal pile, there is a wheelbarrow, a barbecue and a bed frame. Tyres mount in the rubber pile. Gas canisters line a cage to be picked up by their suppliers. Card is baled for collection. “E-waste” – electronics – go to a company in Kent, too, if not sold for reuse. “The lead and glass is melted, then becomes new products. E-waste is rising every year in the UK,” says O’Shea.

There are headboards, dismantled wardrobes and logs in the wood pile. They will go to power burners for incineration, as will the worst case scenario: dry mixed recycling, where the bittiest bits will land. “Waste to power,” says O’Shea, happily.

Then there are the fridges: many go into direct reuse, but the lower quality ones go to “closed-loop” recycling – meaning fridges make fridges. O’Shea becomes animated: “The plastic gets shredded and goes into new fridges, the metal goes into new metal for fridges.” The rigid foam inside also goes to, yes, new fridges, but additionally, something surprising: prosthetic limbs.

The warehouse is everyone’s favourite place. Long tables showcase a Santa teaspoon, a 2018 Fifa World Cup football, ballroom dancing trophies, a bus conductor’s ticket machine, a tapestry celebrating Shirley and Norman’s “50 years”. A wall of clocks; a wall of typewriters. A gymnasium vaulting horse. A Womble with its nose sewn back on: “I rescued him from a shed,” says Williams.

Do valuable objects sometimes slip through the net? “All the time,” says O’Shea. Recently, two first-edition Doctor Dolittle books were found, selling for £50 each. “And we had a Chinese vase, smashed to pieces and then glued back together. Three auction houses dismissed it but we sold it for £3,000.”

O’Shea goes home happy most days. This ecowarrior may be confronted daily with loss, but he breathes new life into every thing left behind. “What we do is part and parcel of life,” he says. “And there is a lot of hope in it.”