Most house clearance in Nottingham begins with a few photographs sent over on a phone, and most of the time those photographs tell you the truth. Now and again they don't. This page is about the work itself across the NG postcodes — one Nottingham job in detail, and the ordinary weeks that run around it.
The Carlton house that kept giving (NG4)
March 2023, out at Carlton in NG4. A house to be emptied before it changed hands, booked off the pictures, ordinary enough on them. What the pictures could not show was the sheds.
The list, by the end, was not your average front room. An upright fridge freezer. A washing machine. Thirteen pouffes and upholstered garden chairs — POP items, because upholstered foam has to be kept apart from the ordinary load and destroyed rather than tipped. Forty-five tins of paint. Three tyres, still on their rims. Three car batteries. Paint, tyres and batteries can't travel in with the general waste, and each of them goes where it is meant to go.
It ran to four loads across two days, which was not the shape of it when we set off. Two loads went on the first day. Then we spoke to the customer to confirm we'd be back on the Monday to finish, because a job that crosses a weekend wants saying out loud rather than assuming. Little of that shows up anywhere afterwards, but it's the part that makes a two-day house clearance painless for whoever is holding the keys: they know what happened today and what happens next.
We were straight with her the whole way. On the third load the team found more tucked in one of the sheds — another seven POP items, three more tyres, three more car batteries — and rather than press on and spring it on her at the end, we stopped, told her exactly what had turned up, and asked whether she wanted a fourth load to finish the house. She said go on. Good humour, at the end of a long two days.
There was the cooker, too. She had raised it herself before we came: *"Just checking in my original message I mentioned the electric cooker as a specific item that needs to go but it's not in the pictures."* A wired-in electric cooker has to be disconnected before it can be moved, which is exactly the sort of thing worth flagging at the booking rather than on the morning. It went. So did the washing machine, which she checked on separately — *"Thank you, and the washing machine?"* — and the team had already taken it.
If there's a lesson in that clearance, it's the one that runs through all our house clearance work in Nottingham. A shed door opening onto a wall of stuff is not something a photograph can warn you about. So we say it the moment it happens, and we finish the house rather than downing tools at the point the job stopped matching the pictures.
The rest of a Nottingham week
That one was a big one, but a normal week across the NG postcodes is a mix. Half a flat's worth out of West Bridgford one day; a full three-bed in Bulwell the next; a probate bungalow in Gedling where the family want a room left untouched until they've been through it. Some are in and out by lunch. Some, like the Carlton job, run to a second day, with photographs of the cleared rooms sent over at the end so whoever booked it — often a son or daughter who lives nowhere near — can see the place stands empty. We work to the job in front of us rather than a script. And if the house needs less than you think it does, we'll say so.
The day tends to start early, because parking is easier before the school run and a gap outside an older terrace is a thing you take when you can get it. Two or three of us, a walk round the whole house first — loft hatch, garage, anything down the bottom of the garden — and then a room at a time, the heavy things first, so nothing has to come back down a staircase twice. If you want something kept back, say so on that first walk round and it gets marked before a single item is lifted.
Probate, and clearing for the family who can't be there
A lot of the NG work is a house being wound up. Someone's parent, usually, and often an executor sorting it from the other end of the country. Probate house clearance in Nottingham fills a good part of the diary some weeks, and we keep it simple: the solicitor or the executor kept copied in, and a slow walk through the drawers and the backs of wardrobes before anything is loaded — because a long-held house holds more than anyone expects, and the personal things want setting aside for the family, not skipping.
Executors at a distance get exactly what the Carlton customer got. A call before we start, a call the minute anything changes, photographs of each cleared room at the end. Some probate jobs come with a surveyor's paperwork in the file — a RICS probate valuation done before the estate settles — and some are just a family standing in a front room not sure where to start. Either way the day runs the same, and a probate clearance doesn't get rushed because somebody's train home is booked.
For a figure on a probate house clearance in Nottingham, ring the office on 0800 046 5555 or send photographs through the form on this page.
The heavier, let-go houses
The Carlton house was a crowded one, and it's far from the heaviest sort we take. Hoarder house clearance comes our way often across Nottingham, and we take it on without a fuss or a raised eyebrow. A couple of plain questions first — anything hazardous, any vermin, any food gone off — because the answers decide what the team carries with it and how many days the house is going to want. Then it's a room at a time, the soft things bagged apart, and a careful eye out for the cash, the documents and the jewellery a full house tends to swallow. If the state of a place has kept you from picking up the phone, put that aside. We've seen worse, and said nothing.
Flat clearance, garage and loft clearance
Not every booking is a whole house. Flat clearance is its own job in the NG1, NG2 and NG7 blocks: the lift has to be booked with the building manager, the loading bay is timed, and a van cannot always stand outside. We ring ahead and arrange it rather than turn up hopeful. Student flats around NG7 come up every summer, usually full of mattresses and desk chairs nobody wanted to carry down.
Garage and loft clearance is the other half of it. Post-war semis in NG5 and NG8 have a garage at the end of the drive that has not opened in years, and a loft above it holding suitcases, tiles and a water tank somebody replaced and left. Garage and loft clearance on its own is a normal booking here — we bring the ladders and do the carrying, and nothing needs bringing down to the hall first.
What we take, and the awkward stuff
Furniture, white goods, carpets and underlay, beds and mattresses, the contents of the sheds, the loft and the garage. The awkward items are routine here rather than a problem: pianos, wired-in cookers, full freezers, upholstered pieces that fall under the POP rules, and the paint, tyres and batteries most firms won't touch. What can't go in the van at all is asbestos, gas bottles and anything clinical — those want a specialist, and we'll tell you who to ring rather than have a guess at it.
Whatever still has wear in it gets offered round the Nottingham charity shops and reuse projects before anything else is decided. What nobody can use is booked into a permitted waste site, and the transfer note comes to you for the file if you want it. We're registered waste carriers, licence CBDU419679, and we've been clearing houses since 2007.
Parking, and the council
On the tighter streets in the NG1 centre and the older terraces around it a full day can mean a bay suspension or a permit — from Nottingham City Council in the city, or Nottinghamshire County Council out at Carlton and Netherfield. It takes a few days to arrange and you'll usually need the van's registration, so it's worth a word when you book. We can't sort it for you. But we'll tell you exactly what to ask for.
Where we work around Nottingham
Nottingham is NG1 in the middle, NG2 for The Meadows and West Bridgford over the Trent, NG3 for Sneinton, St Ann's and Mapperley, and NG4 out to Carlton, Gedling and Netherfield. NG5 covers Sherwood, Arnold and Bestwood Park, NG6 is Bulwell and Basford to the north, NG7 takes in Lenton, Radford and Hyson Green around the universities, and NG8 runs west through Aspley, Bilborough and Wollaton. Out past the ring road we are regular in Beeston and Stapleford (NG9), Long Eaton (NG10), Clifton and Ruddington (NG11), and the villages of NG12, NG13 and NG14 towards Cotgrave, Bingham and Burton Joyce. North of the city it is Hucknall (NG15), Eastwood and Kimberley (NG16) and Kirkby-in-Ashfield (NG17). If you're outside these postcodes, ask and we'll tell you straight whether we cover it. Three of those neighbours have pages of their own: house clearance in West Bridgford over the river, house clearance in Beeston out to the south-west, and house clearance in Arnold up the Mansfield road.
Up the M1 we do house clearance in Sheffield, the bigger city north of here, on the same week's driving.
Nottingham station sits on the Midland Main Line, with the tram threading right through the centre of town, and between the students, the moves and the downsizes the city turns over the whole year round. A house needs emptying somewhere across the NG postcodes most weeks. And plenty of the people typing "house clearance Nottingham" into a phone are doing it from two hundred miles away, about a house they haven't stood in for years.
Nottingham house clearance — the questions we get
Why should I use you? Because we've cleared houses right across Nottingham since 2007 — from the tidy pre-sale jobs to the four-load Carlton kind — we're licensed and fully insured, and you'll get a straight answer over the phone rather than a doorstep sell.
How much does it cost? Ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send photographs through the form on this page, and you'll get a figure for your own house. That's the only honest way to answer it — we don't quote blind, and we don't quote off the doorstep.
How and when do I pay? On a probate house clearance we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and payment can come out of the estate once probate allows it. There is no deposit, the estimate is free, and the invoice follows the work rather than coming before it.
