A three-bedroom house at Moira, DE12, with an outhouse round the back. That was a Friday in August 2022, and it is as good a place as any to start, because it tells you most of what a Swadlincote house clearance actually involves.
The lady who booked it did not live anywhere near. She was over in Staffordshire, the far side of Stoke, and she drove across to meet our team at nine in the morning with the key. Her instructions were short and clear, which we always appreciate. "It is a 3 bedroom house with an outhouse," she wrote, and then the thing that decides half a day's work before anyone lifts anything: "The carpets and curtains do not need to be cleared." No cleaning wanted afterwards either, and nothing hazardous in the place. On parking she was equally direct — "There are no parking restrictions, the van can be parked by the house on the road. It is not a busy road." She was right. Some jobs you spend the first twenty minutes working out where to put a Luton van. Not that one.
The outhouse was the bit that added the time. They usually are. A three-bed emptied of furniture, beds, wardrobes and the contents of every cupboard and drawer is a known quantity — a day, one load, home. The outbuilding is where you find the garden tools, the paint tins, the bags of coal nobody has touched since the last cold winter, the deckchairs with the fabric gone. Carpets and curtains stayed put, exactly as asked, and the team walked her round it before they left. She wrote back the following Monday:
"thank you for your prompt assistance and please thank the team for their hard work and the great job they did"
We passed it on. That is the shape of a good deal of the work around Swadlincote — the property is here, the person responsible for it is somewhere else entirely, and they want the day to go without them having to manage it.
Where we go from Swadlincote
Swadlincote sits in DE11, with DE12 running south and west through Moira, Overseal and Netherseal, and DE15 picking up on the Burton side. We work the lot. Church Gresley, Newhall, Midway, Woodville, Hartshorne, Castle Gresley, Linton, Rosliston, Walton-on-Trent. North of the town we are regularly in DE73 for Melbourne and Ticknall, DE65 for Repton, Willington and Etwall, and further out in DE6 towards Ashbourne, DE56 for Belper, and DE55 up past Alfreton. Ashby-de-la-Zouch is over the Leicestershire line and about ten minutes away, so we take those too.
Several of those places have pages of their own if you are looking for a nearer team than ours. There is house clearance in Derby up the A38, house clearance in Belper further north on the Derwent, and house clearance in Alfreton beyond that. Same crews, same licence, same nine o'clock start.
There is no station in Swadlincote itself — the line through the town carries freight and not passengers, and it has been that way a long while. The nearest platforms are Burton-on-Trent and Derby, with Tamworth another option if you are coming up from the south. Worth knowing if you are an executor travelling in for the day and would rather not drive: get a train to Burton and it is a short taxi ride to most of the DE11 addresses.
The council is South Derbyshire District Council for collections, with Derbyshire County Council behind the household waste recycling centres. Their rules on what a tip will and will not accept from a van are the reason people ring a firm rather than doing it themselves. Turn up in a hired van with a house worth of furniture and you will be turned round.
The kinds of house clearance Swadlincote asks us for
Most of it falls into four or five shapes. They overlap, and a lot of jobs are two of them at once, but it helps to know which one you are ringing about.
Probate house clearance Swadlincote
This is the bulk of what we do in DE11 and DE12. A parent's house, sometimes a grandparent's, and an executor who lives in another county and has a solicitor doing the paperwork. You do not have to wait for the grant to come through before you talk to us — plenty of people ring while probate is still going through, just to have the day pencilled in. We can hold a slot and firm it up later. Where the will names more than one executor, we take instructions from whoever is dealing with the property, and we are happy to speak to the solicitor's office directly if that is simpler than a chain of phone calls.
What makes probate work different from an ordinary clear-out is what gets kept back. Paperwork, photographs, jewellery, anything that might matter later — the team sets it aside rather than binning it, and if you are not there we bag it and post it on. More on our probate house clearance service if you want the detail.
Garage and loft clearance Swadlincote
Garage and loft is its own job around here and often the only job. Houses in Midway, Newhall and Woodville were built with decent lofts and detached brick garages, and forty years later that is where everything ended up: the boxed-up Christmas decorations, the paint, the bike frames, the roof rack for a car sold in 2004. Lofts need a proper ladder and two people, and we bring both. If the garage door has dropped and will not lift, say so on the phone — sometimes we go in through the side, sometimes through the up-and-over on its runners, and occasionally the answer is that a joiner needs to see it first.
End of tenancy and rented property
Landlords and agents ring us for a straight strip-out between tenants: furniture, white goods, bagged rubbish, whatever has been left in the shed. An end of tenancy clearance in Swadlincote is usually a half-day rather than a full one, and we can work to an inventory if the agent sends one over.
Hoarder house clearance in Swadlincote
Houses that have been shut up for years, or where things have piled high enough that doors will not open. We have done plenty. It changes the order of the day — narrow paths first, then room by room, and everything checked rather than shovelled, because money and documents turn up in these houses more often than you would think. See hoarder house clearance for how we handle it. Nobody gets a lecture.
One room, one item, or just the rubbish
Not everything needs the whole house doing. A single wardrobe down a staircase, a garage full of bags, a piano nobody can shift — those are jobs too, and house rubbish removal covers the loads that are rubbish and nothing else.
How we arrive at a figure
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and describe the property, or send photographs through the form on this page. That is the whole method. Photographs are better than words, and people who send six pictures of six rooms get a sharper answer than people who describe them, because a "full" spare bedroom means four different things to four different people.
We give you a figure before anyone sets off. It does not change once the van is on your drive, unless you tell us on the day that the loft is coming out too — and then we say so before we start, not afterwards.
The day itself
We arrive at nine. If a start time suits you better — one customer over in Ashbourne asked for ten because of the drive in — say so when you book and we will put it in the diary.
You do not need to bag anything up or stack it by the door. The team goes through cupboards, wardrobes and drawers, lifts carpets and underlay where you want them gone, and sweeps through at the end. The team leader photographs the property on the walk round when they arrive and again once it is empty, so you have a record either way. If you cannot be there, we will collect the key from an agent, a neighbour or a keysafe and email you the finished photographs. Anything of sentimental value you have flagged, we set aside and post on.
Reuse first, tipping last
Furniture, tools, books, china, bikes, anything still usable — we look for a second home for it locally before it goes anywhere near a skip, whether that is a charity shop or a reuse scheme. There is a decent amount of that around here; the National Forest planting has brought a fair few community projects with it. What genuinely cannot be reused is taken to a permitted transfer station and weighed in, with a transfer note for the load. Abacus is a registered waste carrier, licence CBDU419679, and fully insured. We have been doing this since 2007.
Some things we cannot put in an ordinary van load at all. Tins of paint, gas cylinders, solvents, asbestos sheeting off an old coal shed roof — all of that needs a different route, and there are a good number of ex-coalfield outbuildings in this part of Derbyshire with cement sheet on top. Fridges and freezers go off separately because of the gas in them, and sofas and armchairs fall under the persistent organic pollutant rules, which means they cannot travel in with general household waste. Tell us on the phone if you think you have any of it, and we will tell you honestly whether it is us or a specialist you need.
How to book us
Ring us and describe the property — how many bedrooms, whether the loft and the garage are full, what the parking is like, whether there is a fridge freezer or a stair lift. If it is easier, send photographs; plenty of people do, and it makes the estimate a good deal sharper than a guess over the phone.
Whether it is a bungalow in Newhall, a terrace in Church Gresley or a cottage out at Ticknall, the process is the same one we ran at Moira: nine o'clock, key in hand, empty by teatime.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Swadlincote
Do you do probate house clearance in Swadlincote, and can you deal with the solicitor? Yes. Most of our DE11 and DE12 work is probate, and we are used to dealing with an executor in one county and a solicitor's office in another. Tell us who is instructing us and who wants the paperwork, and we will keep both in the loop.
Do I need to be there on the day? No. We collect keys from agents, neighbours and keysafes all the time, and you get photographs of every room before and after. If you would rather meet the team at nine and then leave them to it, that works too — that is exactly what happened at Moira.
Can you clear just the garage and the loft? Yes, and it is a common booking. Garage and loft on its own is usually a shorter day than a full house.
What about carpets and curtains? Your call. Some people want them lifted, some want them left for the buyer. Say which when you book and it goes in the notes.
How much notice do you need? Usually a few days. In a quiet week we can sometimes do sooner, and around bank holidays it is longer. If probate is still running, ring anyway and we will pencil a date in.
Are you licensed? On a probate job the invoice goes to the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and it can be settled out of the estate rather than from anyone's own pocket. There is no deposit — nothing is asked for before the work is done.
Registered waste carrier CBDU419679 with the Environment Agency, and fully insured. Every load goes to a permitted transfer station with a transfer note, and we will send you a copy if you want one for the estate file.
