Clearing a hoarded home in Singapore: what actually happens
Describing a home like this over the phone is hard, and it is normal to find yourself apologising for someone you love while you try.
Here is what the work actually involves, so nobody has to guess before picking up the phone.
It is not a house clearance
A house clearance empties a property. Everything goes, and speed is the point.
A hoarding clearance is different work, because in most cases the person still lives there. The things filling the unit belong to somebody who is alive, who is present, and who has to keep living in that home afterwards. Treating it as an emptying job is how families end up with a clean flat and a person who will not speak to them.
The fastest way to clear a hoarded home is to ignore the person living in it. That is also the way that fails.
The volume is not usually the hard part
Volume is just labour and trips. What makes the job specialist is what tends to be underneath it.
- Spoiled food and organic waste, often well past the point of being recognisable as food.
- Pests, which is why a clearance that is done badly simply moves a problem next door.
- Biological waste, in units where someone has been unwell for a long time and could not manage.
- Damage that nobody could see, to flooring, to walls, and sometimes to wiring.
None of that is visible from the doorway, which is why the unit is looked at in person rather than assessed from a description or a photograph.
How we work through it
- We come and look first. Scope is decided in the room. You are told what the work involves before anything is moved.
- We agree what leaves and what stays, before we start, with whoever has the say. Documents, photographs and anything identified as keepsakes are set aside rather than swept up with the rest.
- It is sorted, not shovelled. Recyclables, general waste and hazardous material are separated as we go, because they cannot be disposed of through the same stream.
- Anything biological is handled as a hazard, with the protection and the process that requires, not as ordinary rubbish.
- Everything we remove is disposed of legally, through the proper channel.
- Then the unit is cleaned, which is the step people forget is a separate job. Clearing a room is not the same as making it habitable.
The full sequence, from the first phone call through to handing the space back, is set out on What happens now.
If you are a landlord, an agent, or handling an estate
You do not have to be family to call. Landlords, property agents and executors deal with this regularly, usually on a deadline, and the practical questions are different: what condition the unit will be handed back in, what has to be replaced rather than cleaned, and how the waste is documented.
Ask those questions on the first call. Any company that cannot answer them plainly is guessing.
How to check a company is allowed to do this
In Singapore the National Environment Agency licenses cleaning businesses, and the list is public. You can look any company up yourself on the NEA list of licensed cleaning businesses. Note the wording: NEA licenses, it does not certify. A company describing itself as “NEA certified” has got the phrasing wrong, which does not by itself mean it is unlicensed, but it does mean nobody checked. Ask to see the licence and check the name on the register.
You do not need the right words for it
If you have never had to describe a home like this to a stranger, there is nothing to be embarrassed about and nothing you need to prepare. Tell us what is there in whatever words you have.
We are a family of four and we do this work ourselves. The people who answer the phone are the people who come.
