The room that never gets dealt with
Cleanouts stall for the same reason every time: there's no obvious first move. It isn't one big item you can point at, it's four hundred small ones, half of them in boxes nobody has opened since the last move. Add a Buffalo basement — stone walls, a bulkhead that doesn't open, a staircase built for someone smaller than you — and a Saturday project turns into three years of avoidance.
We start at the door and work back. Everything that's going leaves the room by hand, gets sorted on the truck into donate, recycle and disposal, and the floor gets swept before we pull out. What took you three years to not start takes us most of a day.
What comes out of a typical cleanout
- Boxes, bins, totes and bags of unsorted household goods
- Old furniture, mattresses and rolled-up carpet
- Shelving, workbenches and storage racks
- Broken appliances, tools and lawn equipment
- Tires, bicycles, exercise equipment and toys
- Paneling, drop ceiling tile and scrap lumber
- Holiday decorations and stored seasonal items
- Paper, books, magazines and old files
- Loose metal, pipe and leftover building material
You don't have to sort it first
People apologize for the state of the room before we've even walked down the stairs. Don't. Sorting in advance is the single biggest reason a cleanout never happens, and it isn't necessary — we do the sorting as we load. What we do ask is that you walk the room with us first and point out anything that stays: a toolbox you still use, a box of photographs, the good Christmas ornaments. We mark those and work around them.
If we find something that looks important
We come across paperwork, photographs, documents, cash and jewelry more often than you'd expect, usually inside a box that looks like nothing. Anything that looks personal or valuable gets set aside for you rather than thrown on the truck. You decide what happens to it, not us.
Hoarding and heavy-accumulation jobs
If the room is packed floor to ceiling and it's been that way a long time, that's still a job we'll take, and we'll take it without commentary. These jobs need a bigger crew, more hours, and sometimes more than one day. Tell us honestly what we're walking into when you call so the estimate reflects reality and nobody's day gets derailed.
What we can't take on this job
We do not remove hazardous waste or chemicals — no paint, solvents, motor oil, gasoline, pesticides, pool chemicals, asbestos, propane tanks, or medical waste. That material is regulated and has to go through a licensed hazardous-waste channel. If you're not sure what something is, call and describe it and we'll point you to the right drop-off. See the full list.
Where we work
We serve Buffalo, the Northtowns and southern Niagara County, which covers Buffalo, Kenmore, Tonawanda, Amherst, Williamsville, Clarence, Grand Island, Cheektowaga, North Tonawanda, Wheatfield, Pendleton and the Town of Niagara, plus the eastern and southern Erie County towns of Depew, Lancaster, Sloan, West Seneca, Elma, Lackawanna, Blasdell, Hamburg and Orchard Park. Full list on our service areas page. Just past the line? Call anyway — if the job makes sense we'll come, and if it doesn't we'll tell you rather than waste your afternoon.