We found paperwork and photographs — what should we do with them?
Set them aside, and decide before the sale is priced rather than during it. Paperwork is the one category in a house that is genuinely irreplaceable — deeds, titles, policies and statements cannot be re-bought at any price, and neither can a photograph. Everything else in the house has a replacement somewhere; these do not.
So the rule is simple: nothing made of paper leaves the house with the contents until somebody has looked at it. Not the filing cabinet, not the shoebox in the wardrobe, not the envelopes in the kitchen drawer. Once a clearout is underway, paper is the easiest thing in the building to lose, because it looks like the least valuable thing in it.
Two separate questions sit underneath this, and they have different answers. What the estate's administration needs is your attorney's call, not ours. What happens to the family material nobody has claimed is a family decision, and it is far easier to make before the house is empty than after.
Set aside first, sort later
Pull it out and put it somewhere that is not going to be cleared. Sorting can happen at a kitchen table weeks later; it cannot happen once the contents have gone.
The list of what to look for, and where it hides, is on the executor's checklist — it is the same list, and there is no point in reading it twice.
Executor's checklist for clearing a parent's homeWhat the estate actually needs is not our call
Which documents have to be produced, what has to be kept and for how long, what the register of wills expects — those answers come from the estate's attorney and from the county, and they vary by estate. We are not going to guess at them, and a liquidator who tells you confidently what you may shred is guessing.
What we can say is the practical half: ask that question before the house is cleared rather than after, because it is the only order that works.
Anything with identifying details should be destroyed, not binned
Bank statements, tax paperwork, medical letters, anything carrying a full name with an account number or a date of birth. A skip outside a house that is obviously being cleared after a death is not a private place, and a bag of paper in it is readable by anyone who wants to read it.
Destroy that material rather than throwing it out. This is the one piece of advice here that is not about value at all — it is about the fact that an estate clearout is visible from the street.
Photographs, letters and anything nobody has claimed
Family photographs and letters have no resale value and are irreplaceable, which is an awkward combination: they are worth nothing to a buyer and everything to the one relative who would have wanted them. That relative is often not the one clearing the house.
Ask around before the sale rather than after. If nobody wants them, that is a decision the family has made deliberately, which is a different thing from a box that went out with the furniture because nobody thought to ask.
Photographs of the house and its contents are worth keeping for a different reason — an executor accounting for what was in a property is glad of them later.