Two van loads and a full clean, on the last day of October 2018. The house was in CM1, on the northern side of Chelmsford, and the owner was in Australia — ten hours ahead of us, so our mid-morning phone calls landed at his bedtime in Brisbane. He couldn't be here for it, and said so plainly at the booking stage. A local estate agent whose office was a little way along the same street held the key and let the team in at nine.
We cleared the house through the day, ran a second load the same afternoon rather than come back on the Thursday, and cleaned the three bedrooms and the box room before the keys went back. That's a fair sample of the house clearance work we get in this part of Essex. Plenty of the Chelmsford clearances we're asked to do are booked by someone who doesn't live in the county any more, working through it by email. The house is empty, the sale is moving, and the contents have to come out without anyone taking a fortnight off work. We have been doing house clearance in Chelmsford and the villages round it since 2007, and most of it looks like that one.
A probate clearance in CM1 March 2019
A full content clearance in CM1 in March 2019 — an ordinary house, everything still in it, cleared in a day on two loads. Probate house clearance in Chelmsford usually looks like that. Nothing dramatic: a house that has to be emptied while the paperwork grinds on somewhere else entirely. The person who instructed us wasn't the one holding the estate. That sat with a solicitor's office over in Bristol, and the invoice went there for the executors to settle, which is a normal arrangement and doesn't slow the work down at all. What stuck with us was the note that came back while the invoice was working its way through the estate.
One customer wrote afterwards: "If you are not paid within a couple of weeks can you please let me know as I am anxious that you should be paid for the work done," and left it there. People worry about that. They shouldn't have to, and we'd rather they didn't — we're used to waiting on probate and we don't chase families over it. If you're an executor and you need a figure to put in front of the beneficiaries, tell us the size of the property and what's still inside and we'll give you one on the phone before a date is booked. Photographs on your mobile are usually enough. There's more about how we handle probate house clearance on its own page, but the short version is that the executor decides and we work to that.
Getting in when you can't be there
That October job in CM1 is the one we use as the example when somebody asks how a house clearance in Chelmsford is supposed to work with the person arranging it on the other side of the planet. All of it went by email, at odd hours, and he set the terms of that himself early on: "Please note we are 10h ahead in time zones so midday (UK) will be 10pm (Brisbane time)." So calls were arranged rather than made on impulse, and anything that needed a decision went in writing the evening before ours, which was his morning. The agent held the key, his office was a short walk along the street, and he agreed well in advance to open up at nine and to be a contact number for the team on the day. Address, date, who is opening the door, who to ring if something is not as described — all of it on the job sheet before the van leaves Surrey.
Keys reach us in three or four ways and we're not fussy about which. Special delivery to the office, wrapped and tracked, well ahead of the date. A neighbour. An agent's office. A keysafe with the code given over the phone. Say at the booking where the key is coming from and where you want it to end up afterwards — back in the post, back to the agent, or left in a kitchen drawer for whoever comes next — and it goes on the sheet with everything else.
Tell us the awkward bits at the same time. A second lock the family leaves unlocked for the day. A front door that sticks and needs a decent shove. A side gate that is the only way through to a carport. None of that is a problem when it's written down; all of it is a problem when the team is standing in the road at nine in the morning ringing a phone that is switched off in another hemisphere.
Loads, paint tins and upholstered furniture
A house lived in for twenty years holds things nobody counts when they count bedrooms. Half-used tins of emulsion stacked three deep in the garage is the classic one, and it is worth knowing why they can't simply go in the back of the van with the wardrobes. Paint is liquid waste. It goes to a different point of disposal and it can't be mixed into a general load.
Upholstered furniture is the other one. Since the POPs rules came in, upholstered seating has to be kept out of general waste and handled separately — sofas, armchairs, dining chairs with padded seats, futons, beanbags, office chairs, and loose seat cushions from any of them. Mattresses and bed frames go a separate route again; they aren't seating and don't fall under POPs, but they don't ride in a mixed load either. Fridges and freezers have to be degassed before anything else happens to them.
Gas bottles, solvents, garden chemicals, a shed roof that might be asbestos — we'd want to know before the day rather than find out at eleven o'clock, because the right arrangements take a phone call and not a shrug. None of this changes what we'll take. It changes how it leaves, and where it goes after.
What we won't shift
We leave plumbed-in appliances where the water can't be shut off. If the isolating taps behind a washing machine have seized, dragging the machine out puts water across the kitchen floor of a house that is about to be sold, and the team will say so on the morning rather than after the fact. We don't touch gas connections, and nothing structural comes out — no boilers, no radiators, no fitted kitchens unless that's been arranged as a separate job with the right trade on site.
The other things that stay are the ones you tell us to leave. Carpets to remain for the buyer, curtains and poles to stay up, a cooker the family has already promised to somebody: put it in the booking email and it's on the sheet. Everything else — carpets, underlay, curtains, loft, shed, garage — goes if you want it gone. That's true of every house clearance we do, here and anywhere else.
Garage and loft clearance in Chelmsford, and the things nobody's opened
Garage and loft clearance is half the day on a lot of Chelmsford houses, particularly the post-war semis out towards Springfield and Broomfield where the loft has been the family's overflow cupboard for forty years. A boarded loft with proper stairs and a light in it makes the day considerably shorter than a hatch and a stepladder, and it's worth mentioning either way when you ring, because it changes how many of us come.
Garages hold the awkward residue — the things that don't fit in a car boot and that nobody wanted to decide about. Dismantled furniture. Tools. A bicycle nobody has ridden since the children left. Where most of the furniture has already gone to family, what's left is usually exactly this, and it still takes a van.
Full houses don't put us off either. Rooms you can only get a door half open on, a hallway with a path worn through it, forty years of newspapers — we've done plenty and we get on with it quietly. Nobody gets a lecture. Anything personal or valuable the team turns up — jewellery, coins, photographs, documents, cash in a tin at the back of a wardrobe — is set aside and you are told before it goes anywhere.
Where the contents go
Furniture and household goods with plenty of use left get offered to charity shops and reuse schemes locally, and the electricals go for testing where they're worth it. Scrap metal is separated on the van. What can't be reused is tipped at a permitted transfer station and sorted there, and we keep the transfer notes for every load in case anyone wants sight of them. Abacus holds waste carrier's licence CBDU419679 and is insured for the work.
Chelmsford and the villages around it
The CM postcodes cover a lot of ground, and we work across all of it. In the city that's CM1 and CM2 — Springfield, Great Baddow, Broomfield, Writtle — with CM3 covering the villages round it: Danbury, Boreham, Hazeleigh, Mundon, Heybridge, Great Totham and Little Totham, Langford, Cold Norton, Steeple, Tollesbury, Tolleshunt Major and Tolleshunt Knights, and out to Burnham-on-Crouch, Maylandsea, North Fambridge and Tillingham on the water. South Woodham Ferrers, Witham, Tiptree and Ingatestone we're in most months. The business post that arrives on CM92, CM98 and CM99 belongs to the same city, though nobody lives at those.
Access is easy enough. The team comes off the A12 and picks up the A414 or the A130 depending which side of the city you're on, and the vans park at the kerb outside most of these houses without any special arrangement. Where it gets tighter is the terraces near Chelmsford station and the older streets off Moulsham Street — if there's a permit bay or a narrow entry, tell us and we'll plan the day around it. Ingatestone station and the villages beyond it are the same run for us.
Flat clearance in Chelmsford is its own kind of day. The blocks put up round the city centre over the last fifteen years have a lift, a loading bay you're expected to book, and a caretaker who would rather know on Monday than find a tipper across the entrance on Wednesday. Give us the floor, whether the lift is big enough for a sofa, and the name of whoever manages the building, and the flat clearance goes as quietly as a house does.
We also work the towns round about, and several of them have their own pages: house clearance in Colchester up the A12, house clearance in Brentwood on the London side, and house clearance in Epping out towards the forest. If your job sits between two of those, ring and we'll tell you which team is nearest on the day you want.
Price and booking
On cost there is one honest answer and it isn't a table. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 with the address, the number of bedrooms, and whether the garage and loft are in scope, or send photographs through the form on this page, and you'll get a figure back for that job. Photographs from a mobile are enough; you don't need to tidy first.
Where the house clearance is part of an estate we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and payment can come out of the estate rather than anybody's own pocket. There is no deposit — the invoice follows the work, not the booking. Executors ringing from another county, or another country, is the ordinary case in Chelmsford rather than the exception, and it doesn't complicate anything.
Chelmsford City Council and Maldon District Council both take a dim view of waste left at the kerb, and rightly — everything leaves the property on our vans, documented, with the transfer notes to show for it.
Questions we get asked in Chelmsford
Can you invoice our solicitor, and can it come out of the estate? Yes. Where the clearance is part of an estate we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and payment can come out of the estate rather than anybody's own pocket. No deposit is taken.
Nobody can be at the property. Can you still do it? Yes. We collect a key from an agent, a neighbour or a relative, clear the house, and email photographs of the empty rooms the same day.
Do we need to sort or bag anything first? No. The team empties wardrobes, drawers and cupboards, and lifts carpets and underlay where you want them gone. Tell us what must stay and it is set aside.
Are the garage and loft extra work? They are part of the job if you say so when you book. It is worth mentioning both on the phone, because a full garage can hold more than a bedroom.
What can't go on the van? Paint, thinners, garden chemicals, gas bottles and anything that looks like asbestos. Fridges, freezers and upholstered furniture travel, but on their own controlled routes.
How long does a house clearance in Chelmsford take? Most three-bedroom houses are done in a day. A very full property, or one with the loft, garage and garden as well, can run into a second.
