Services to Hire When a Loved One Dies

When a loved one dies, the grief and sadness you feel is often made worse by all the tasks that need to be done to plan their funeral, settle their estate and so on. To make things easier on you and on friends and family, note some services or professionals you can hire and how their work can make this time more manageable for everyone.

A funeral planner

A funeral director at a funeral home can handle many unpleasant but necessary tasks after someone's death, including the collection of the deceased person's remains from a hospital, ensuring the death certificate is properly prepared and more. A funeral planner can take this work one step further; they may work with the funeral director to ensure friends and family are personally notified of the funeral plans and may communicate the wishes of the family to the funeral director when it comes to the actual funeral service. 

A funeral planner may also plan a wake, luncheon or other such function after the funeral and burial. Like a wedding planner, they alleviate much of the everyday burden of coordinating all the details of the funeral that a funeral director does not handle, so you don't need to worry about anything being overlooked or forgotten.

Home staging professionals

If you need to sell the home of the deceased, a home stager can help ensure that the house looks its best inside and out. Staging a home means to improve its overall appearance so it appeals to a wide range of buyers, without difficult and expensive renovations or remodelling. A fresh coat of paint, new flooring and updated cabinets, along with some new furniture and artwork a home stager might rent for an open house, can allow a home to sell faster. In turn, the family is not burdened with property they don't want or need now that someone has passed away.

Estate cleaners

In some cases, the home of a deceased person may need an actual cleanout before it can be put on the real estate market. This is especially true if the deceased had a large collection of items that need to be removed from the home, and especially if they were a hoarder, meaning they kept items that should have been put in the trash. Estate cleaning involves removing all these items so you don't need to go through them one by one and cleaning any resultant mould, mildew and other such contamination that is common in the homes of hoarders. Estate cleaning companies can help ensure you don't have to clean alone during a difficult time.