What a whole house cleanout costs in Georgia
This one is counted in loads rather than rooms. A trailer reaches its weight before it reaches its walls, so a heavy three-bedroom can take more trips than a light four, and every load after the first is another drive out and another drive back.
What it comes down to
The number of loads. The dense end of a house sets that count and the bulky end just fills the gaps around it, which is how two identical floor plans end up at different prices. Every extra load is a round trip, and the further out the house sits, the more each one of those is worth avoiding.
What you are actually moving
Most of these are a sweep. The house is going on the market, or the family already took what it wanted, or the contents are not worth the hours it would take to go through them, and the instruction is that everything left standing goes. That's what makes it a different job from an estate cleanout, where deciding what stays is the point of the exercise. A sweep moves faster per cubic foot than a sort. When part of the house is one and part is the other, say which rooms are which.
Where it ends up
A house leaves as ordinary household waste, and the interesting part isn't the class of it, it's the arithmetic. Getting rid of it is settled by weight, and a trailer has a weight it can legally and safely carry, so the trip is worth thinking about as the unit of cost rather than the pile. Each load carries the drive out, the drive back and the time at the far end whether the trailer went out full or half full, so a well packed load spreads that overhead across far more of the house than a lazy one does, and a house forty minutes from Rome pays the drive on every single trip rather than once. Getting the loading order right, heavy first and bulky last, is one of the few genuine savings available on a job like this, and it costs nothing but planning.
Sorting is what brings the disposal half down, because separated material is handled more cheaply than a mixed trailer. On a full-service job we do that sorting. On a rental it's yours, so it's worth deciding what goes where before the first thing goes in.
The work itself
Stairs are the second axis and the one people forget to mention on the phone. Anything above the ground floor gets carried twice, once down and once out, and a turn at the top of a staircase decides whether a sofa leaves whole or leaves in pieces. Basements do the same in reverse, with the added problem that a basement is where the heavy things went to be forgotten. A single-story house with a door at each end is mostly walking, and walking is quick.
What moves the number
- How many loads it becomes, which weight decides rather than room count
- Stairs, and how much of the house sits above or below the ground floor
- Whether it is a straight sweep or has rooms that need going through first
- How close the trailer can park to the door, and what the driveway does after rain
- How far the property is from Rome, since every extra load repeats that drive in both directions
- Whether the power and water are still on, because a dark house in July slows everyone down
Where estimates go wrong
- Counting bedrooms, when what sets the price is what those bedrooms weigh
- Describing the house and leaving out the crawlspace, the porch and whatever is under the deck
- Assuming one visit covers it, when the trailer decides that and not the calendar
- Forgetting the storage building and the carport, which is often what turns three loads into four
Estimates are free, and you get the number before anything starts.
Questions about whole house cleanout
Is this the same thing as an estate cleanout?
Different job. An estate cleanout runs slow because somebody has to look at everything before it moves. A whole house cleanout usually carries the opposite instruction: what the family wanted is already gone and the rest is ours. If part of your house is one and part is the other, tell us which rooms and we'll stage the work around it.
Can you do it in one day?
That depends on the load count rather than the room count. A house that fills the trailer a couple of times is a different day from one that keeps filling it, and we'd rather say so up front than run out of daylight partway through. Send photos of the fullest rooms and we can tell you which one you have.
The house is upstairs and down. How much does that change?
More than square footage does. Everything on the upper floor gets brought down before it goes out, and a narrow turn at the top of the stairs decides whether the big pieces leave whole. Mention what is up there when you call and the number we give you will hold.
Can we do part of it now and the rest later?
Yes, and sometimes it is the sensible way round, especially if a room is still being lived out of or a family member has yet to walk through. Splitting a house across two visits does mean two sets of trips instead of one, so it is worth doing on purpose rather than by accident. Tell us what the timeline looks like and we will lay it out so nothing gets driven twice.
Foreclosure Cleanouts
Bank-owned and pre-sale properties emptied and swept, against the date on the file.
Want the real number for your job?
Send a photo and the town. We'll price it before anything moves.