What Should You Do with Your Stuff Before You Die?

This is all pointless. The best thing you can have is a trust and living will, etc., that details what/when/why/how, as well as appropriate documents detailing other (life insurance, financial accounts, codes to phones, passwords that you want others to have access to, etc., etc.)

You should also have a detailed document with what you have and what you want done with it when you die. If you want stuff tossed in the trash, ensure you leave money aside in your estate to cover a dumpster or other trash pick up service. The last thing your family needs to deal with is your sh*t. You should have this all set up.

Same goes for your digital life. List this crap out so your family is not stuck holding the bag, especially for financial accounts.

All of this documentation is kept in a binder, the location of which is shared with your spouse or kid(s). If it is in a safe, then you need to have the safe code provided to your attorney, or in a place where people know where to get at it when you die.

If you have done things properly, you have also pre-paid or set money aside for your funeral arrangements. This way, when you die, your family can focus on healing.

On the topic of "death cleaning", it can sometimes become pathalogical. I have in-laws that are becoming obsessed trying not to be a burden but it has made their final years worse. Their home has become inhospitable to visitors - hardly enough chairs for people to sit, no guest room, etc. So family members have to get hotel rooms when they visit. They also tend to just give away heirlooms that other family members want to keep for sentimental reasons without asking if they want them first. Which has led to all sorts of ill will between relatives.

Oddly, for a couple that swear they never want to end up in a nursing home, they ended up bringing the sterile feeling of a nursing home to their own home.

I live a materially minimalistic life (by US standards) as a natural habit anyway, so I have little in the way of obvious junk to clean out before I die.

My death plan is to ensure that I have no debt, and that the electronic information (passwords, certs, locations, etc.) is up to date and available to my family after death. My attorney will be my estate's executor and everything goes to my kids. Any disputes are mediated by the executor, but I doubt there will be.

What I suggest to them is to hire an estate sale company to handle selling off whatever remains after they've taken what they want. That way they don't have to deal with it themselves and will at least get a little bonus cash from it.

if there is a particular thing you want a particular person to have, then give it legally and undeniably before you die.

vultures of many types, come circling and can feast, if it lands in the lap of a court appointed executor