A house clearance in Gillingham is rarely just furniture. Most of the calls we take are ME7 and ME8 addresses where somebody has died or gone into care, or where a sale has moved faster than the family expected. The job is to get a whole house emptied, swept and handed over in a day or two. We have been clearing houses since 2007, we are an upper-tier licensed waste carrier, and we are somewhere in the Medway towns most weeks of the year.
That is roughly the shape of most Medway work. A house that has held one family a long time, a completion date somebody else has set, and two or three rooms nobody has opened since Christmas.
Rainham, third and fourth floor, no lift
A council maisonette in Rainham, ME8, spread over the third and fourth floors of the block with no lift in it — stairwell or nothing. Three bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, living room, a balcony and a little boiler cupboard next to one of the bedrooms with more in it than you'd expect. The customer had already done the heavy end themselves: cooker gone, beds and mattresses gone, white goods gone. What was left was clutter, and clutter on the fourth floor with no lift is its own kind of heavy.
Two things had to be solved before anyone lifted anything. The three-seat sofa was never coming down that stairwell whole, so it was cut in half on the landing and taken out in two pieces. The big chest of drawers and entertainment unit came apart with a screwdriver rather than being wrestled round the turn. Both were flagged in advance, which is why it went in one day instead of two. When somebody tells us up front about the stairs, the awkward sofa, the door that only opens ninety degrees, we send the right team and the right kit. "Thanks for coming back to me so promptly," the customer wrote when we confirmed. Prompt is easy. Guessing is what turns one day into two.
Where we go in Medway
Gillingham sits in the middle of it, ME7, with Twydall, Wigmore, Hempstead and Parkwood around it and the business park out towards the Rainham side. We're along Watling Street and through the Medway towns constantly. Chatham in ME4, Rochester in ME1, Rainham and Wigmore in ME8, Strood, Frindsbury and Cuxton across the river in ME2, out to Eccles and the Aylesford end in ME20, which is Tonbridge and Malling. As far as the Sittingbourne edge in ME9, which is Swale. Gillingham station on the Chatham main line is our usual landmark when a client is coming down from London for the day and wants to meet the team at the property. A taxi from there to most of the borough is short, and Chatham and Rainham stations do the same job for the other ends. All of it is Medway Council territory, and their household sites take resident loads, but a full house is not a resident load — it goes out commercially, with paperwork.
Several of those places have pages of their own, so if the property isn't strictly in ME7 or ME8, start there instead. house clearance in Medway for the borough-wide picture, house clearance in Sittingbourne once you're over the Swale boundary, and nearer to hand, house clearance in Rochester and house clearance in Chatham. Same team, same vans, same week.
The kinds of house clearance we take on in Gillingham
Probate house clearance in Gillingham
A good share of the diary is probate work, and probate runs to somebody else's calendar. The grant comes through, the agent wants photographs for the listing, and a house that has sat untouched for a year has to be empty by the end of the month. Executors tell us what is staying. A bureau promised to a grandson, the box of paperwork that has to be kept, the photographs out of the loft. And we work round it room by room, with those things set aside in one place rather than trusted to memory. Booking a probate house clearance in Gillingham from another county is ordinary for us; the probate house clearance page covers how the paperwork side runs.
Garage and loft clearance in Gillingham
Half the jobs that start as one room turn into a garage and loft clearance by the second phone call. Gillingham has a lot of post-war semis with a detached garage in a block behind the houses, and a lot of lofts boarded out over the landing hatch, and both fill quietly across thirty years. Tools, tins, camping gear, a dismantled bed frame, boxes of tiles left over from a bathroom done decades ago. Garage and loft clearance in Gillingham wants planning the day before rather than on the morning. Whether the up-and-over door still lifts, whether the hatch takes a proper ladder or only a stepladder in a narrow hallway, whether the shed at the bottom of the garden is coming out as well. Say so when you ring and the team turns up with the right ladder and enough hands to run a chain down the stairs.
Flat clearance and maisonettes in ME7 and ME8
A flat clearance is its own trade. Stairwells with a turn in them, blocks with no lift, a bay outside that belongs to somebody else, a lift you can only book for part of the morning. We dismantle in the room rather than fight furniture round a corner, and we carry the screwdrivers and the saw for the sofa that was built inside the flat and was never coming out whole. Single items and part loads are fine too — a wardrobe, a piano, one room's worth after a tenant has gone; that's more house rubbish removal than a full clearance, but it's the same van.
End of tenancy clearance in Gillingham
Landlords and managing agents ring us with a re-let date already set and a flat full of what the last tenant didn't want. Beds, a sofa nobody would take on, the contents of a kitchen, half a shed. We clear it, sweep through, and send photographs of every room so the agent has something to show before the new tenancy starts.
Hoarder house clearance in Gillingham
Hoarder house clearance is slower work and we plan it that way: more hands, more loads, gloves and masks, and a careful pass for the things that matter — documents, jewellery, money in tins — because they are nearly always in there somewhere. Nobody gets a lecture. There's more on the hoarder house clearance page.
What happens to it once it's on the van
Furniture with life still in it gets offered on before anything else — reuse projects and charity shops around the Medway towns will take sound sofas, tables, wardrobes and unopened household bits, and we'd far rather they had them than a skip did. Everything else is sorted at a licensed transfer station and comes back to us as a waste transfer note, which we can send you if the estate or the agent needs it on file. We are registered with the Environment Agency as an upper-tier waste carrier, licence CBDU419679, and insured for the work.
Some items travel under their own rules. Fridges and freezers have to be degassed properly. Mattresses are handled separately. Sofas, armchairs, padded dining chairs and cushions count as POP items — the treated foam inside them has to be incinerated through a controlled route rather than mixed with general waste, and that is legislation, not a rule we dreamed up. A fridge freezer comes off a Gillingham clearance most weeks, and mattresses nearly as often, and both go out under those rules rather than into the general load.
What we can't put on the van
Paint tins, gas cylinders, solvents, oils, asbestos sheeting from an old garage roof. None of that can ride in a mixed household load. Gas bottles turn up more often than people think in this part of Kent — old camping cylinders in a shed, a patio heater bottle behind the garage — and they need declaring rather than hiding under a bin bag. Paint can often be dealt with separately, in bulk, through a route set up for it — one Kent client asked us to take the tins away as a separate job and we did, with its own disposal note at the end. Ask before the day and we'll tell you honestly whether it's a yes, a no, or a yes-but-it-goes-on-its-own.
What a house clearance in Gillingham costs
We don't publish rates, and we won't pretend to know your house from a paragraph. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send photographs of the rooms through the form on this page. The loft hatch, the garage, the shed at the bottom of the garden if there is one — and you'll get a figure back for the work. That is the whole answer to the question. Where we can't see something, we say so rather than guess at it, and the team confirms what's actually there on the morning before anything starts.
Executors, agents and landlords
A good share of our Medway diary is bereavement work, and a fair bit of it is booked by people who don't live in Kent at all. A son in Devon, a sister the other side of the country, a housing team clearing a flat before it can be re-let. If you can't be there, a key safe code or a key from the agent is enough. The team photograph every room before they start and every room when they finish, and those pictures go to whoever is paying. We've cleared for solicitors acting for executors and for leasehold management teams. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly when that's the arrangement, payment can come out of the estate rather than out of anybody's own pocket, and there is no deposit to find before the work.
Houses that have got away from someone are ordinary to us. Rooms filled to the picture rails, a hallway you go through sideways, a kitchen that hasn't been used in months — we book the extra loads, keep our opinions to ourselves and get on with it.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Gillingham
How much is a house clearance in Gillingham?
Ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs of each room through the form on this page and we'll come back with a figure for the job. We won't quote off a description of "a three-bed, fairly full" — photographs of the loft and the garage are worth ten minutes on the phone.
Can you invoice the solicitor or the executor?
Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, payment can come from the estate, and there is no deposit up front. Tell us at the booking who the invoice goes to and where the photographs of the finished rooms should be sent.
Which areas around Gillingham do you cover?
ME7 and ME8 — Twydall, Wigmore, Hempstead, Parkwood, Rainham — and the rest of Medway routinely: Chatham, Rochester, Strood and Frindsbury, out towards Aylesford in ME20 and to the Sittingbourne edge in ME9.
Do I have to be at the property?
No. A key safe code, or a key collected from the agent, is enough. You'll get photographs of every room before we start and after we finish, and we'll ring you on the day if anything turns up that wasn't in the plan.
What can't you take away?
Paint, solvents and oils, gas cylinders, and anything asbestos — those can't travel in a household load. Ask before the day and we'll tell you what needs its own arrangement.
How much notice do you need?
Usually a day or two, sometimes the same week if a van is already running that way. Completion dates and re-let dates are the usual pressure, so tell us the deadline when you first ring rather than after we've quoted.
Booking a date
Ring us on 0800 046 5555 or send photographs through the form on this page and we'll give you a figure and a date, usually with a day or two's notice. Tell us the floor, the parking, the stairs and anything that has to stay put, and the van arrives set up for that house rather than an average one. Gillingham, Rainham, Chatham, Rochester, Strood — same team, same week, most weeks.
