Brian, back in 1999 my aunt passed away at the age of 97, and she had no children. My uncle had died in 1968, and my aunt never remarried. Myself, my brother, and my cousin and his wife all got together and drove the 5 hour drive to clean out her house.
When we walked into the house, there was a path from the front door to her bed. Another from the front door to the kitchen sink, and the rest of the house was full 6'-8' deep from the floor up! The basement also was full, but no paths! It simply filled from the far end, right up to the basement stairs!
She had saved every piece of mail she had gotten since my uncle died! We had my cousin's SUV with utility trailer, and my brother's pickup truck, plus utility trailer behind it. With the PU and two trailers we made 9 loads to the city dump! But the bad part was when we had the PU, and one trailer full of old mail, and my cousin had some paper money fall out of one of the junk mail envelopes! Everyone's stomach fell, as we realized the full truck, and partially full trailer needed to be emptied to look inside all the junk mail envelopes! We emptied the trailer first, and began transferring from truck to trailer as we searched each envelope. Then picked up the previous load and checked the envelopes as we loaded the truck again! By the time we got rid of all the envelopes, and trash, we found $2400 in small bills stuffed in various places!
The 4 of us spent three full days going through and hauling trash. Then we returned one trailer and rented a U Haul truck to load all the good stuff that we found mixed in with the junk. It appeared my aunt had actually only used half of her bed, as one half had stuff piled about 3 feet high, so only one side was open to sleep on.
My cousin was her investment broker, and when he read the will it stated that her home and 5 bungalows she rented would go to the church. Her investments were to be shared equally amongst her 38 nieces and nephews! Each of us got a check for a little over $5,500. My cousin said that regardless of what she had for bills, etc., she never missed sending him a check each month to go into her investment fund. He couldn't talk her into spending it on herself for a trip, or something.