Cleanouts
Estate Cleanout Checklist for Melbourne and Brevard County
A sequenced estate cleanout checklist for Brevard County homes: executor order of operations, what never goes in the can, where a slab-on-grade Florida house hides everything, and honest sizing.
Estate work is the steadiest thing we do. Roofing spikes after a storm and condo turnovers cluster in spring, but estate cleanouts run flat across all twelve months in Brevard County, because we have a large older population living in homes they have held for thirty, forty, sometimes fifty years. Melbourne, Palm Bay, Satellite Beach, Suntree, Viera, the older streets off Eau Gallie Boulevard and Aurora Road: the houses turn over, and somebody in the family has to empty them.
I have been running roll-offs on the Space Coast since 2015, and the families who struggle are almost never the ones short on effort. They are the ones who started with the container, because the container feels like progress. So this is the order of operations we give people, written for a Florida house.
Do not order a container first
The most expensive mistake in estate work is filling a can before anyone has looked properly at what is in the house. Once it goes over the rail it is gone. Take these steps in order, and take direction from the estate's attorney over anything here — the lawyer knows facts about this estate that a checklist cannot.
- Secure the house. Change the locks, or at least know who holds keys and garage remotes. Leave the AC running — a closed-up Florida house with the air off grows mould in days, not weeks.
- Confirm who has authority. In Florida the court-appointed personal representative is the one who can lawfully dispose of estate property. Until letters of administration issue, inventory and secure — do not discard.
- Locate the documents. Will, deeds, vehicle and boat titles, insurance policies, bank and brokerage statements, safe deposit keys, military discharge papers. Rarely in a file cabinet — usually a closet shoebox, a dresser drawer, taped inside a nightstand, or the freezer.
- Appraise before anything leaves. Coins, jewellery, firearms, tools, art, furniture with a name on it — get eyes on it before a single load moves. An appraiser walking a full house costs a morning.
- Distribute to family. Set a date. Anything unclaimed by then moves on. Open-ended distribution is how a cleanout stretches into a year.
- Sell or consign. Estate sale companies here will work a Melbourne house in a weekend if the volume justifies it.
- Donate. Brevard thrift and reuse outlets take clean furniture and household goods, and some will collect.
- Then dispose. That is where the roll-off comes in, and by then you know what size you actually need.
Probate rules and timelines get amended, so confirm the legal side with the estate attorney and check current guidance at Brevard County before committing to a schedule.
What never goes in the can
I tell crews to stop and flag rather than guess. In a long-held Brevard house, the things worth stopping for:
- Paper savings bonds — still redeemable, often bundled with birthday cards.
- Deeds and titles for property, vehicles, boats and trailers.
- Photographs, slides and film reels. Once in the load, unrecoverable.
- Military and space-programme service records and memorabilia. A Brevard-specific one, and it comes up constantly: discharge papers, unit patches, medals, launch badges, Cape and KSC contractor credentials, mission photos, Apollo and Shuttle-era press kits. Half the retirees here worked a programme or served at Patrick, and the family often has no idea what any of it is.
- Coins and currency — loose jars, rolled halves, silver certificates.
- Tools. An old hand plane or a full Snap-on drawer is not scrap.
- Jewellery, including costume pieces mixed into dresser trays.
- Firearms and ammunition — through law enforcement or a licensed dealer, never a container.
Our estate cleanout service is built around that: we stage, we do not decide. Anything ambiguous goes on a table, not over the rail.
Slab on grade: there is no downstairs
If the family is flying in from Ohio or New York, reset expectations. Florida houses sit on a concrete slab. There is no downstairs to empty. Fifty years of accumulation lives in five places: the garage, the attic, the Florida room or screen room, the shed, and a rented storage unit nobody remembers until a bill arrives. That last one catches people out on nearly every job — check the bank statements for a recurring monthly debit.
The garage is usually the biggest single contributor to the load; the attic is the most underestimated. A Melbourne attic in August runs brutally hot, over a pull-down ladder onto a concrete floor. Nobody works up there alone in the afternoon.
Room-by-room checklist and what it means for sizing
| Area | What usually hides there | Stop-and-check items | Volume impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary bedroom | Dressers, mattress sets, closets, decades of clothing | Jewellery trays, documents taped under drawers, cash in pockets | Moderate — bulky but light |
| Spare bedrooms / office | Filing cabinets, desks, boxed paper, exercise equipment | Bonds, deeds, policies, photo albums, service records | Moderate — paper is heavy |
| Kitchen | Small appliances, decades of cookware, pantry stock | Cash in tins, jewellery in freezer bags, coin jars | Moderate — dense, fills fast |
| Living / dining | Sofas, recliners, china cabinets, CRT sets | Appraisable furniture, china, art, electronics for recycling | High — upholstery eats cubic yards |
| Florida room / screen room | Rattan and wicker, patio sets, cushions, rugs, plant stands | Anything humid-stored that still looks good but is not | High — almost always a full-loss category |
| Garage | Shelving, workbench, tools, paint, pool chemicals, fuel cans, fertiliser, tyres | Hazardous separation happens here; tools and hardware have real value | Very high — the biggest single area |
| Attic | Decorations, luggage, boxed keepsakes, old insulation | Photographs, military and NASA-era memorabilia, heirlooms | High — light but enormous in volume |
| Shed | Mower, edger, hoses, hurricane shutters, lumber, more chemicals | Drain fuel from equipment before disposal | Moderate to high — often metal-heavy |
| Rented storage unit | Whatever did not fit twenty years ago | Everything — treat it as an unopened second house | Wildcard — can double the job |
| Yard and lot | Overgrowth, palm fronds, dead hedge, limbs, landscape timber | Must ride as a separate clean load | Separate container, not part of the house total |
Humidity does the work you cannot see
This is the part out-of-state families argue with me about. Anything stored in a Florida garage or unconditioned attic for years is usually further gone than it looks. Upholstery grows mould inside the foam long before it shows on the fabric. Particleboard swells at the bottom edge and delaminates. Books cockle, paper goes brittle, and photographs fuse to each other and to album sleeves in a solid block.
So photographs and documents come out first and go into air conditioning immediately, even if the sorting waits. Upholstered furniture out of a screen room or garage is rarely donatable, however good it looks. If the house sat closed with the AC off, treat visible growth as a separate scope and read up on mould and water damage cleanup in Melbourne before crews start hauling.
Out-of-state families and a narrow window
A big share of Brevard estate jobs are snowbird or seasonal-resident homes. The family lives in Michigan or Massachusetts, they have flown down for nine days, and the house has to be empty before the flight home. Book delivery before you land, not after you have walked the house. We run same-day and next-day delivery across Melbourne plus next-day swap-outs, which is what keeps a compressed schedule moving. Set the appraiser and the estate sale at the front of the window, not the back.
Condos and 55-plus communities
Beachside condo associations and the 55-plus communities around Melbourne and Palm Bay have their own rules, and they are enforced. Expect limits on where a container sits, how many days it stays, whether it may occupy visitor parking at all, and in high-rises whether you get service-elevator access and during which hours. Some boards want written notice or approval first. Get it in writing before we roll. We set protection boards under every drop, but pavers, shell driveways and short beachside aprons still need a conversation. If the can has to sit on a public street, check whether a permit applies in Melbourne; requirements get updated, so confirm with the City of Melbourne directly.
Pre-1980 houses: stop and test
Historic Downtown Melbourne, Eau Gallie and parts of Melbourne Beach have 1920s–1950s stock, and plenty of Brevard housing predates 1980. In those houses, popcorn or textured ceilings, resilient floor tile and the black mastic under it, and pipe insulation are all suspect for asbestos. A cleanout that becomes "while we are here, let us pull the ceiling and the old tile" is no longer a cleanout. Stop and test. Florida DEP and the Department of Health regulate asbestos, and demolition generally triggers inspection and notification. We cannot accept asbestos-containing material in any container, in any quantity. In pre-1978 homes, disturbing painted surfaces brings in the EPA's lead Renovation, Repair and Painting rule and its certified-firm requirement. Rules change — verify with Florida DEP and the EPA before anyone puts a scraper to a ceiling.
The garage chemicals and the overgrown lot
Every long-held Florida house has a garage shelf of pool chlorine and shock, fertiliser, gasoline and two-stroke mix, paint, solvent, driveway sealer, pesticide and old car batteries. None of it goes in the container. It goes to a Brevard County household hazardous waste drop-off. That matters more here than most places, because the Indian River Lagoon is already under stress and stormwater reaches it fast. Nothing gets poured out, nothing goes down a drain. Our list of what can and cannot go in a Brevard County dumpster covers the rest, and Brevard recycling and disposal options handle electronics, metal and mattresses.
Outside, Florida separates yard trash from solid waste. If the lot has gone feral — and on a house that sat vacant a season, it has — palm fronds, limbs, hedge and grass ride as a separate clean load to a mulching facility. Mix a bag of household trash in and the load gets reclassified at the scale. That is what our yard waste removal container is for, and it runs alongside the house can, not instead of it.
Sizing: a full Florida house is rarely one container
People ask for one can and hope. A three-bedroom Melbourne house with a full garage, a loaded attic, a screen room and a shed is usually two pulls of a 30 yard roll-off, or a 30 for the bulk plus a smaller can for the tail. Furniture and mattresses are volume, not weight, so you run out of cube long before capacity. A condo or a small two-bedroom can genuinely finish in a 20 yard, and a garage-and-shed scope often fits a 10 yard. If demolition enters the picture — terrazzo, tile, block — that dense material wants its own smaller can, not the furniture load. Our size guide for Melbourne homeowners walks the comparison. On most estates: start with the 30 and plan on a swap.
Pace the work, and let people stop
The last thing, and I mean it. This is not a normal cleanout. Somebody in that house is going through a drawer of their mother's handwriting. Plan shorter days than you think you need. Put one person on documents and photographs only, away from the hauling, so nobody makes a keepsake decision while carrying a dresser. Do the impersonal zones first — garage, shed, attic — and leave the bedroom and the desk for a day with time to sit down. Families who schedule three long days almost always need five.
Wes Collins founded this company in 2015 and we handle estates the way we would want ours handled — licensed and insured, flat-rate pricing, protection boards under every container, next-day swap-outs so a compressed out-of-state schedule does not stall, and drivers who know that a box marked "Dad's Navy stuff" gets set on the porch, not in the can. If you are working an estate anywhere in Melbourne, Palm Bay, Viera, Suntree or the beachside, call (321) 341-7478 or reach us through the contact page, and we will size it honestly and stage it in the right order.
Questions this guide did not answer? Call (321) 341-7478. We would rather spend two minutes on the phone than have you order the wrong container.