Calligraphy paper sold for 90,000 yen, old video game console sold for 190,000 yen… “I should have done it”, organizing the living instead of the parents.

Spring is the time when new life begins. You may begin to worry about the size of your room due to a move or a change in environment. More depressing to clean up than your current residence is your parents’ house, which has been untouched for a long time. According to some estimates, the cost of cleaning out a family home can range from several hundred thousand to a million dollars. In order to avoid huge costs, it is important to get into the habit of tidying up on a regular basis.

Age has nothing to do with starting a prenatal cleanup,” says Kensuke Shibata, a.k.a. “Cleaning Up Shibata-kun,” who works for a company in the Kanto area that cleans out belongings, organizes prenatal cleanups, and cleans out trash. He has been attracting attention for his radio and SNS activities, such as speaking at an event with Shuichi Takizawa of the comedy duo Machine Guns, and disseminating information on reuse and social issues. We interviewed Mr. Shibata about how to efficiently organize his life (all statements in parentheses below are his).

How to determine whether to organize before one’s death or to organize one’s belongings

Even if you are having a hard time smoothly organizing your prenatal care, there may be a solution to your problem in a surprising way.

In fact, there are cases in which organizing one’s belongings is better suited to the task of organizing one’s parents’ home. Cleaning up the family home is all about the parent-child relationship. Multiple factors such as whether you have a good relationship with your parents, whether you have siblings, your parents’ assets, whether your parents are willing to clean up, and whether your parents’ home is close by can determine whether you need to proceed with a forced arrangement before your death.

For example, if you do not have a good relationship with your parents and they have assets, you can deal with either prenatal care or liquidation of their belongings depending on their intention to clean up. However, if you do not have a good relationship with your parents, they have no assets, their home is far away, and they have no intention to clean up, you may not force yourself to go through with prenatal care and consider liquidation of their belongings.

If the parents do not have the will to clean up, they will say “Enough, I will not do it” and give up. This can lead to mutual stress and mental and physical exhaustion, and in the worst case scenario, it can even lead to a breakdown of the parent-child relationship. Conversely, if the parent-child relationship is good and there is ample funding, there is a high likelihood that the project will proceed successfully.

If the relationship between the parents is bad and there are no assets or inheritances, it is said that liquidating the belongings of the deceased will go more smoothly.

“Unless you ask a very malicious company, they will find all the rights and passbooks you need for inheritance, and sorting out the belongings is definitely faster,” he says. In the case of “I don’t need any photos or memories”, he said. If your child knows where important documents are kept, you can usually finish sorting in a day, since all you have to do is put away what you don’t need.

The most time-consuming part of organizing both living and deceased items is sorting through memories. If you are close to your parents, he says, prenatal organization is an opportunity to successfully sublimate memories.

He says, “Personally, I think it’s better to organize things before one’s death, because it’s a good way to get rid of things you don’t have. It allows parents and children to sort out whether or not they need the items, and to dwell on memories, such as “This is the hat my father used to wear. The past is stored in the family home. You can dig them up, pull out only the memories from the past, and decide whether to throw them away or reuse them.

The key to prenatal care that avoids disputes with parents is “change of ownership.”

The most common catalyst for prenatal care is moving away from home. Although it is extremely difficult to move away from the home you have lived in for many years, there are many advantages to prenatal care.

“If you have the money and the understanding of your parents, I recommend moving. You will move into a room that is large enough for the number of people you have, and you will inevitably have to reduce the amount of belongings you can take with you. If you own the house when you move out, it is a great opportunity to discuss your inheritance. You can also clear out your belongings, and personally, I think moving to an assisted-living facility would be a relief,” he said.

However, moving itself is not an easy task. We asked Mr. Shibata about his unique method of cleaning up without having to relocate and without having to deal with his parents.

Parents want someone else to use the things they receive from others. In that case, we take back the parents’ unused items. For example, they would take a gift blanket or towel that was lying around and say, “Give me this,” and then leave more and more of the things they received from their parents in the children’s room when they were living at home. They change the ownership of their belongings to themselves. That way, when their parents pass away, they can decide for themselves what to do with the things in that room.

By the way, a box of blankets as a gift can be sold for one yen if each one is listed on Mercari. I wish those flea market apps would make it easier for the elderly to understand (laughs). If the parents’ generation hears that their items have been sold rather than thrown away, they will be more likely to let them go,” he said.

Mr. Shibata, who has seen many cases of organizing belongings, says that age is not a factor in starting a prenatal care program.

He says that age is not a factor in starting a prenatal care program. As long as you have the awareness that you are going to organize before your death, the timing to start is anytime. But it is difficult to tell elderly people to think that way. If you are approaching parents in their 70s or 80s now, first ask them if they are willing to organize before their death as soon as they realize that they need to clean up.

Moldy half-sheets of paper fetch 90,000 yen! Junk that looks like trash but fetches a hefty price

Dishes, which are often put out for disposal in the average household, are treated as dumping garbage, which also costs money to dispose of. What should we do to avoid as much cost as possible when disposing of unwanted items?

We have no choice but to purchase items with the disposal of the waste in mind. Blocks and bricks are also dumping waste, so they cost money to dispose of. Takizawa-san of the (comedy duo) Machine Guns said, “When you buy blocks, you should think that you will never be able to part with them (laughs).

There have also been cases where we have had contractors buy out the unwanted items and the cost of the work has been waived. VCRs and recorders tend to be discarded as oversize trash, but there are collectors, so even junk can fetch a price!　The one that consistently fetches a price is the SONY portable player. The first generation of portable players can fetch several hundred thousand dollars.

Perhaps, junk sleeping in your parents’ house can become a pile of treasures.

If you think you can get a good price for it, the best thing to do is to sell it on Mercari or Yahoo! Even if you don’t know the information about the item, if you post a picture and write the model number, people will know if they see it. The most fine play I have ever seen was a half-sheet of used, moldy calligraphy paper that I was about to throw away. I was about to throw it away, but when I put it up for auction, it fetched 90,000 yen!　Another item that went for 190,000 yen was a NINTENDO 64, a game console designed exclusively for Pokemon Jet ANA. If you think something looks valuable, you can put it up for auction.

A man who lived in a garbage mansion and died alone.

Mr. Shibata’s recollection of the scene of an uncluttered house was unimaginable.

He was a man who lived in a garbage mansion. He liked motorcycles and had a lot of helmets. When the workers grabbed the helmet that was in the back, they found it was a skull. …… Of course, we stopped the work and called the police.

Finally, based on Mr. Shibata’s experience in cleaning up, there are some things that should be sorted out by oneself before one’s death.

His daughter says, “My late father was a strict and boring man. But when I cleaned up, I found a lot of adult videos in his sack (laughs). (Laughs.) It is better to clean up such things before his death so that there will be no embarrassment later.

It seems that in order to get off to a good start in life, it would be a good idea to start by cleaning up your personal belongings.

PROFILE] Kensuke Shibata was born on September 25, 1985 in Hokkaido. He formed the comedy duo “Roku-Roku-San-Roku” in 2007. Since then, he has been active mainly in live comedy performances. Currently, in addition to his duo activities, he is also a member of a company that cleans up afterlives and belongings, and cleans up trash. In addition, he and comedian Gurinpisu Ochiai form a unit called “The Cleaning Brothers,” which helps sort and clean up trash in accordance with the community and provides reuse support. Known by the nickname “Cleaning up Shibata-kun,” they share information on social networking sites and through lectures.