A communal store room is where a good deal of our house clearance work in Tooting starts. In January 2022 a managing agent looking after a residential development in SW17 asked us to empty theirs. We have been going back ever since. That first visit came off as a full load. Bulky odds and ends left behind by residents, plus a mattress and a tin of paint, and those two leave on their own regulated route rather than in with the general waste. By the tenth of March we were there again: a full load and a half load in the one visit, another mattress. A small fridge freezer somebody had swapped out and left standing against the wall.
Bin stores on managed developments fill in a pattern, and it is always the same pattern. A flat changes hands, a new bed arrives, the old one is left on the landing. A fridge freezer gets replaced and nobody wants to own the old one. Somebody redecorates and the half-used tins stay behind. Some of those visits needed an extra pair of hands purely because of the carry distance from the store to the nearest spot a van can legally sit. On that side of Tooting is rarely outside the door.
The flat with the carpets, and a staircase we should have wrapped better
Not everything here is a bin store. In July 2023 we did a flat clearance for a leaseholder on the first floor in SW17. The old carpet out, and the sofa with it, timed around the week the new carpet was going down. Straightforward morning. What followed was not.
Another flat owner in the building had recently had the communal staircase decorated, and marks appeared on the fresh paintwork. The complaint came back to our customer with photographs attached, and our customer wrote to us about it: "It’s quite a wide staircase and so shouldn’t have been a problem."
That is a fair point and it stuck with us. Whose work had marked the walls was never settled. Carpet fitters had been up and down the same stairwell in the same few days, and old rolled carpet and new rolled carpet look much alike by the time either one is wedged round a half-landing. We did not stand there arguing it out. We changed what goes in the van instead.
Old carpet is heavier and far more awkward than anyone expects. The end of a roll catches a corner at exactly shoulder height. In a shared hallway the damage is never only your customer's problem. Corner protection and a runner down the treads now travel with us on any flat clearance above the ground floor, in Tooting and everywhere else. If your building has a freeholder or a residents' association who will want a word about the communal parts, say so when you book and we will plan the carry around it.
Probate and estate work, usually instructed from somewhere else
A good share of our SW17 work is probate work. The people instructing it are very often nowhere near London. Executors live where they live — another county, sometimes another country — so a probate house clearance in Tooting tends to be arranged over the telephone and by photograph. A key coming from an agent, a neighbour or a solicitor's office.
That distance changes how we run the day. Drawers, files and coat pockets are gone through by hand before anything is loaded, and anything that looks official. Deeds, policies, bank paperwork, letters from a solicitor — is set aside in one box and left with whoever is dealing with the estate. Nothing that looks like a document goes in the van. If a valuer is still to come, or a family member wants a last look, we would far rather come after them than before: family and charities taking what they want first is the sensible order. It is the order that makes a probate clearance go quickly.
On the billing side, so that nobody has to ask awkwardly: we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, the payment can come out of the estate rather than from anybody's own pocket, and there is no deposit. The invoice follows the work, with the waste transfer paperwork attached if it is wanted for the estate file. More on how probate work runs sits on our probate house clearance page.
Hoarded properties are ordinary work for us as well. A hoarder house clearance is booked the same way as any other, it is simply slower: the first pass is done by hand looking for documents, photographs and the things of value that are always in there somewhere. Nobody on the crew passes comment on the state of a house. We have been doing this since 2007. There is very little we have not walked into, and there is a hoarder house clearance page if you want to know how those days are organised.
Getting a van to your door in Tooting
Anyone who has tried to load a wardrobe on Garratt Lane at four in the afternoon knows the problem. The A24 through Tooting Broadway is not a road you park a Luton on, the side streets off Mitcham Road are almost entirely controlled parking. The Victorian terraces here have no drives and no side access worth the name. So we plan around it. Early starts are common, and an early morning or a late afternoon slot near the Broadway is often the difference between a twenty-metre carry and a hundred-metre one.
For a full house we will usually ask you about a bay suspension. For a flat above a shop on the Broadway we will ask which door we are using and whether the stairs turn. Tell us the lift only takes four people and we will bring more hands instead of hoping.
The housing changes as soon as you cross out of SW17. Earlsfield and Southfields in SW18 are terraces of much the same age with much the same parking, while Wandsworth town itself mixes that with newer riverside blocks where there is a loading bay to book and a concierge to book it with. Balham in SW12 is conversion flats over shops. Battersea and Clapham Junction in SW11, Clapham in SW4. The newer towers at Nine Elms and South Lambeth in SW8 are lift-and-loading-bay work, where the building manager matters more than the kerb. Putney and Roehampton in SW15 hand you both extremes inside one district: mansion blocks near the river at one end, large post-war estates at the other.
Garage and loft clearance is its own animal in these streets. The terraces run to a loft hatch with a ladder and thirty years of boxes above it. Where there is a garage at all it is usually in a block behind the houses, behind a door that has not opened easily since the last person tried. Say so when you ring: a garage and loft clearance in Tooting wants different kit, an extra man and a different shape of day to a room-by-room job. We would rather know that the week before than at eight in the morning.
Where the load actually goes
Furniture and white goods still worth using are offered on to reuse schemes and charity shops around here before anything goes near a tip. South London has plenty of them and they are picky, which is fair enough. The remainder is weighed in at a permitted transfer station, sorted for recycling there. The transfer notes are kept on file if you ever need to show where a relative's furniture went. Our waste carrier licence number is CBDU419679.
Two things get separated on sight. Upholstered furniture — sofas, armchairs, padded dining chairs, footstools — falls under the POPs rules, meaning the treated foam has to be incinerated rather than shredded and cannot be mixed into a general load. And chemicals: half-used tins of gloss, thinners, camping gas canisters, old car batteries. Those need a booked route of their own, so flag them early and we will arrange it rather than leave them standing in your hallway.
Merton residents can take their own small stuff to the reuse and recycling centre at Garth Road in Morden; Wandsworth's is over at Smugglers Way. Neither will accept a trade load, which is exactly why our vans go to a transfer station instead.
Where we work from here
Tooting sits in Wandsworth, but this branch works either side of that boundary and either side of two more besides. SW17 is the core of it — Tooting Broadway, Tooting Bec, Furzedown and Summerstown. North of that, SW18 covers Wandsworth, Earlsfield and Southfields, and if the property is on that side then house clearance in Wandsworth is the page you want. SW12 is Balham. SW16 takes in Streatham, Streatham Vale and Norbury, SW11 is Battersea and Clapham Junction, SW4 is Clapham and the common, SW8 is South Lambeth, Nine Elms and the Vauxhall side, and SW15 is Putney and Roehampton.
Going the other way, SW19 covers Wimbledon, South Wimbledon and Colliers Wood — that corner has its own page, house clearance in Wimbledon — and SW20 is Raynes Park, West Wimbledon and Merton Park. Across the Merton boundary, CR4 is Mitcham and Eastfields, where house clearance in Mitcham covers the ground in more detail, and SM4 is Morden and Lower Morden, which belong to house clearance in Morden. CR1 is the odd one in the set: it sits in the Croydon postal area but carries no ordinary delivery addresses, so if a search has put CR1 in front of you, the streets actually meant are the Mitcham and Norbury side of the border. We are on those most weeks. All of this is Greater London, split between the Wandsworth, Merton, Lambeth and Croydon councils.
Tooting Broadway on the Northern line is the marker we use for timings. Tooting Bec a few minutes up the road and Tooting's own Thameslink station handy for anyone coming in off the Sutton loop. Morden is the end of the line and the far edge of our regular round.
Prices, and how to get one
There is no figure on this page, and there is no figure anyone can honestly give you for a house clearance in Tooting without seeing what is in the rooms. What fills a van is rarely what people expect. A one-bedroom flat with a full loft above it can beat a three-bedroom house that somebody kept on top of for forty years.
So do it the short way. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and walk us round the rooms over the phone, or send photographs through the form on this page. One per room, plus the hallway, the stairs and the loft hatch if there is anything above it. You will have a figure in the same conversation. The quote is free and puts you under no obligation whatsoever.
For estate work it is as set out above: we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, payment can come from the estate. There is no deposit to find before we start.
Questions we get asked in Tooting
Can you invoice the solicitor or the executor?
Yes, and that is how most estate jobs run. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, payment can come out of the estate rather than from your own account, and there is no deposit. The invoice follows the work, with the waste transfer note attached for the file.
How much is a house clearance in Tooting?
Not something anyone can answer blind, and we would rather not guess in front of you. Ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs through the form on this page. You will have a figure in that conversation.
Will you take a single item?
Yes. A mattress, a fridge freezer, a sofa, one wardrobe off a landing. A fair share of our store-room visits on managed developments are exactly that. A single-item collection is booked the same way as a full clearance.
Can you clear a hoarded house?
Yes. A hoarder house clearance in Tooting runs like any other clearance except slower. The first pass done by hand so that paperwork, photographs and anything of value come out before the volume does. Nobody on the crew passes comment.
Do I need a parking suspension?
On the terraced streets off Mitcham Road and Garratt Lane, usually. We will say so when we look at the job. We can apply to the council for the bay ourselves if you would rather not deal with it.
How long does a clearance take?
A flat clearance is normally a morning. A full house with a garage and loft is a day, sometimes two. We will tell you which it is before you commit to a date rather than discover it at four in the afternoon with half the loft still up there.
