My late MIL was a hoarder. Not old milk cartons, newpaper or rotting food. Knitted cardigans, every letter (not official ones) going back sixty years (including one from me, on her dressing table telling her how much I loved her son which was in a box with a pressed rose), colanders (over twenty), costume jewellery, nice biscuit tins, seashells, shoes (decent ones, not worn out), framed pictures, photographs, books, her parents wartime memorabilia (WW1 stuff and WW2 ration books, gas masks, ARP whistles) scissors and three unused Belfast sinks in the garden. Her father's glass eye (in a beautiful little tooled leather box. I got a right fright opening that!) I could go on.
She had suffered traumatic loss in childhood as well as adulthood, including being widowed twice, the first time as a young mother with children under school age.
A lot of it went to her favourite charity and they took loads of stuff and some of it made a fair bit at auction including two large Victorian paintings,
Some things were moth-eaten and some things did get thrown away. I have all the photos, some of her china, some lovely thick enamelled pans, a very good egg poacher, her pie funnel collection, I could go on but basically useful things or things my husband was sentimental about.
It took weeks of sorting though but it felt more a privilege than a chore.
I have done all of the post-death sorting for my relatives. My father was the worst though. He was piles of newspapers, a bedroom full of unwashed clothes and a kitchen full of rotting food but that was more because he couldn't or wouldn't do for himself. A lot of men of his generation expected women to do all the picking up after them. He couldn't even boil an egg and no interest in learning. I wish I was joking. I wish I could say that was a privilege but it was definitely a chore. There was no-one in the world who loved him because he was a horrible, bitter, controlling, pathologically jealous man.