Let's say a house catches on fire. It's still mostly together because the firefighters came, but the one guy who owned it fell down the stairs. (It's also a mansion, and all the butlers got out ok). Let's talk about the guys who would go into the house and clean it out. Who does that? At least who would be the people who sift through it and find stuff that's still intact? Is there any kind of job that has people clean out abandoned houses?

Exactly. There are cleaning services that specialize in fire damage, in flood damage, etc. I had a fire in late 97*, and used one of them. Generally, the insurer knows who they are and how to contact them. There are also services that clean out abandoned houses. Look in the want ads under services.

*I was coughing up black stuff for a week. It was not pretty.

Oh boy! Perfect. Thanks, DG. Do you think specializing cleaners could also be abandoned house cleaners? Or would they usually just work on one or the other? There's not usually too many fires so I'd think they wouldn't be too busy. Also, how long do you think it'd take to clean out a mansion?

I have two friends who used such cleaners after fires when theirs homes had fires. It is a TON of work. The smoke gets into everything and ceilings, curtains, walls, .. everything has to be washed and cleaned.

God forbid if you have a rare doll collection because those are REALLY difficult to clean and actually rarely are put back to pristine order.

Fire damage is a much different type of cleaning than an abandoned house is cleaned so it is likely different companies would specialize in different things.

It takes several weeks to clean a large house because of all the contents to clean. many times fires are confined to a small part of the house but the whole home fills with smoke.

Ah, excellent. Thanks, Sher. Specializing exclusively in post-fire cleaning sounds like it'll work then. Taking a really long time is exactly what I'm looking for.