I was in a house fire three years ago.
A company, paid for by the insurance co, will come to the home and remove everything, including appliances. They will throw out all food products and bathroom products, then take everything else and clean it. The items are cleaned in various ways, depending on what the items are. There are dry rooms for items that can't be washed like appliances, certain furniture items, etc. Clothing/shoes/accessories are usually dry-cleaned or washed in special detergents. They are then folded, and stored until they can be returned to the home or a new home. Photographs and media type items are also cleaned, if necessary one by one. Electronics are cleaned and tested, too.
When you're ready to move back home, you call a few days before and arrange for the items to be delivered. In some cases the people who return the items will arrange the items, hang the clothes etc, but they usually don't unpack boxes.
In my case, the clothing was taken by one company and the furniture by another. The service was excellent.
My fridge didn't work well afterwards, it wouldn't cool down enough. The cleaners said it worked fine and that my landlord had to replace. The landlord said it worked fine before and the cleaners had to replace. In the end, the cleaners replaced, not because they had to, but because I was stuck and they felt bad for me (and I was super-duper nice to them and complimentary on their service
).
Things that were tossed: make-up, all food/spices/condiments, all soap/shampoo/cleaning products/deodorant/perfume, contact lenses.
Things that should have been tossed: about 300 pens that had rolled under furniture, 200 which did not work
and about 75 fake cat toy mice that didn't fare well under cleaning
.
There were some items that couldn't be cleaned---mattresses, a love seat/sofa, pillows. The cleaning company returned them (but took them away when I said I didn't want them) and the insurance company reimbursed the items.
