We have been doing house clearance in Crieff and across Strathearn — old Tayside — since 2007 — whole houses, single rooms, lofts, garages, sheds, and the odd caravan that hasn't moved since the nineties. Most of what comes to us in Crieff is one of two things: an estate that has to be emptied before a sale can go through, or a let property handed back in a state nobody expected. Here is what one of those days actually looked like.
The key was sitting on top of the oil tank by the back door. That was the arrangement, agreed the night before, because the family member who was meant to meet us couldn't say for certain they'd get there and nobody wanted the day lost over a doorstep wait. So the team let themselves in at nine, walked the rooms, and started at the far end. It was a let property, a full house, several loads by the end of it, and a morning that turned into something more than a straightforward clear-out.
Here's why. Once the wardrobes and the beds and the sideboard came away from the walls, the state of the plaster behind them was plain to see. Damp, and not a recent bit of it either. The team photographed what they found, room by room, because that's what you do — you don't just cart the furniture out and leave somebody to discover it after you've gone. The photographs went straight to the person instructing us, who was, to put it plainly, not pleased. The reply came back the same afternoon: "the damp problem is clearly revealed when the furniture is removed". That set went on to the people responsible for the building. And we were still told to finish the job that day, because the property had to be emptied regardless — it has to be done, go ahead and clear today, was how it was put.
One other thing from that morning, and it's the sort of thing that happens on nearly every clearance. Halfway through, a phone call: could we check whether a small decorated table was still in the living room, because that one had to stay. It hadn't gone. It was set aside, and it stayed. If you're four hours away picturing a room you grew up in, you remember one object at a time, usually after the van's already loading. Ring us mid-job. We'd far rather stop for two minutes than take something we shouldn't have.
Crieff, PH7, and the ground between
Crieff sits in Strathearn, in Perth and Kinross, and the whole town is built on a slope — the streets climb from the Earn towards the Knock, and anyone who's carried a mattress up one of them in February has an opinion about it. The postcode district is PH7. Our own patch here runs PH5 for Muthill and Braco, PH6 for Comrie and St Fillans, and PH7 for the town itself and the country round it. We work the wider PH postcodes as well: PH1 and PH2 for Perth, PH3 for Auchterarder and Gleneagles, PH8 for Dunkeld and Birnam, PH10 for Blairgowrie, PH15 for Aberfeldy, PH16 for Pitlochry. Methven, Gilmerton, Madderty and Fowlis Wester are all on the same run.
A few towns near us have pages of their own, and if the property is nearer one of those than to Crieff you're better off starting there. House clearance in Perth is the big one, half an hour east down the A85 and the office most executors round here already deal with. There's house clearance in St Andrews over in Fife for the smaller east-coast jobs, house clearance in Dunfermline for the south of that county, and house clearance in Alloa on the Forth valley side. Those are the towns a van out of here can reasonably reach and be back from in the day, and we won't pretend to more than that.
There's no railway station in Crieff — the line went in the sixties and the old goods yard has been something else for a long time. The nearest is Gleneagles, about nine miles by the A824 towards Auchterarder, and after that it's Perth or Dunblane. That matters more than you'd think, because a fair few of the houses we empty in this part of Perthshire belong to families who now live in Edinburgh, Glasgow or a good deal further, and they're working out whether they need to be here at all. Often they don't. Gleneagles and back in a day is doable if you want to be present. If you'd rather hand over a key and get photographs at the end, that works too, and we've done plenty of exactly that.
What actually leaves the house
Furniture, beds, wardrobes, sofas, the contents of every cupboard, the loft if there's a hatch we can get up, the shed, the garage, the border of the garden if it's grown into a dumping ground. Fridges and freezers come out under the regulated route because of the gas in them — a chest freezer in an outhouse and a fridge freezer in the kitchen are two separate items to be handled properly, not two things to sling in the back. Sofas, armchairs and any padded seating go through a controlled disposal stream, which is a legal change rather than a choice of ours, and it applies whether the suite is fit for reuse or not.
Anything still usable gets offered on before it gets tipped. Perthshire is decent for this — there are charity shops and reuse projects in the town and in Perth that will take furniture, kitchenware, books, tools, garden gear, and we'd sooner drive something ten miles to a shop floor than five miles to a skip. What can't be reused goes to a licensed transfer station and weighed, recorded and documented. Our waste carrier registration with the Environment Agency is CBDU419679, and if you need the transfer notes for an estate file or for a landlord, ask and you'll get copies.
There are things we won't put in a general load. Paint tins, solvents, gas bottles, asbestos sheeting off an old garage roof — those are separately regulated and they need their own arrangements, and a firm that shrugs and slings them in the back is a firm you should be wary of. Tell us about them when you ring and we'll tell you honestly whether it's us, Perth and Kinross Council's household waste service, or a specialist.
Getting a van to the door
Crieff's older stone terraces and the lanes off the square are tight, and some of the Victorian villas up the hill have long front paths, gravel, and a step arrangement that means everything comes out by hand rather than by trolley. None of that is a problem, it just changes how long the day runs. On the outlying places — Muthill, Comrie, the farm cottages out towards Aberfeldy — it's usually the opposite: room to park, but a longer drive and sometimes a track that wants care in wet weather. Tell us which you've got. A photograph of the frontage and the approach is worth ten minutes of description on the phone.
Winter's the honest complication here. The road over to Aberfeldy and the higher ground north of Crieff can be unpleasant in January, and if we think a day's at risk we'll say so and move it rather than have three people sat in a van at the wrong end of Glen Almond.
The kinds of house clearance Crieff actually asks for
Probate house clearance in Crieff
The commonest job on this patch. A house has been shut up since the winter, a sale is moving, and somebody who lives nowhere near PH7 has a list of things to arrange from a distance. A probate clearance runs to an order: anything being valued or kept is marked and left where it is, the rest comes out, then a clean if you want one, then the keys go back wherever you tell us. Photographs of every room once it's empty are usually all an executor a few hundred miles away actually needs. Most probate work here starts with a solicitor's email rather than a phone call, and that suits us fine.
Garage and loft clearance in Crieff
A good share of the calls are garage and loft clearance rather than the whole house — the roof space that's been filling since 1985, the garage the car hasn't been inside for a decade, the shed with the mower and forty plant pots. We take the ladder work off you. If the hatch is small or the boarding underfoot is doubtful, we'll say so before anybody goes up there.
End of tenancy clearance, PH5 to PH7
Landlords and letting agents ring at short notice, usually after a tenancy has ended in a way nobody planned. Rooms where you can't see the carpet, kitchens that need emptying before anyone can assess anything, garages packed to the door. Our team has been in a lot of them and nobody comments, sniffs, or makes a face. It's a job.
Hoarder house clearance and single items
At one end, a house where the rooms have been full for years and the work is slow and sorted by hand, because things worth keeping turn up in it. At the other, one wardrobe, one piano, one bed frame. Both are proper jobs and neither is a nuisance.
Cost, and how we work it out
The short version: ring 0800 046 5555, or send photographs through the form on this page, and you'll have a quote before anything is booked. It's free and it obliges you to nothing. Pictures of each room, the loft hatch and the frontage get you a firmer answer than any amount of describing it down the phone. There's no deposit — the invoice follows the work, not the booking — and where a solicitor or an executor is settling it from an estate, we bill them direct.
Executors, landlords and houses nobody's opened in a while
A good half of what we do across Perthshire is probate and estate work: a house sitting since the winter, a sale going through, an executor with a list of jobs and no time to be in Scotland. We're used to the sequencing — clear, then clean if you want it, then hand the keys back. If items are to be valued or kept, mark them or tell us and they stay put.
One clearance stands out for how little of it the person instructing us ever saw. They never came to the property at all: it was arranged at a distance from the first conversation to the paperwork going out in the post afterwards. The whole house went in a single day — four mattresses, a chest freezer, a fridge freezer, and everything else the place held, four van loads in all, the team going back and forth rather than leaving a second visit hanging over anybody. Then a clean through the empty rooms so it could be handed on. Days like that only work if both sides are straight about what's actually in there, which is the whole argument for photographs before we quote.
You'd be surprised what a house looks like once it's empty and the windows are open.
Common questions about house clearance in Crieff
How quickly can you get to a clearance in Crieff?
Usually inside a week, often sooner where a sale date is pressing. Winter is the honest exception: the higher roads north of the town can put a day at risk, and we'd rather move it than promise it and let you down.
Do I have to be there on the day?
No. Plenty of clearances here are done on a key left with a neighbour, an agent or — as above — on top of an oil tank by the back door. We ring before we start, ring again if anything looks doubtful, and send photographs of the empty rooms at the end.
Can you invoice a solicitor for a probate house clearance?
Yes. We invoice a solicitor, a trustee or an executor direct, and payment can come from the estate rather than out of anyone's own pocket. Tell us when you ring and the paperwork is made out accordingly, with waste transfer notes attached for the estate file.
Do you clear garages, lofts and sheds as well as the house?
Yes, and often that is the whole job. Garage and loft clearance in Crieff is a common call on its own — the house doesn't have to be emptied to get the roof space done.
Which areas around Crieff do you cover?
PH7 for the town, PH6 for Comrie and St Fillans, PH5 for Muthill and Braco, and out from there to Methven, Gilmerton, Madderty, Fowlis Wester and the farm cottages towards Aberfeldy. Auchterarder, Perth, Dunkeld, Pitlochry and Blairgowrie are all on our normal runs.
What won't you take away?
Paint, solvents, gas bottles, asbestos and anything else separately regulated. Fridges, freezers and padded furniture we do take, but by the routes the law sets for them. Tell us what's in the shed when you ring, not on the morning.
Talking to us
Ring 0800 046 5555 or use the form on this page with the town, the postcode district, the size of the property and a rough sense of how full it is. Photographs speed everything up. We'll come back with the days we can do and what we'd want to know before the van leaves the yard — access, parking, anything staying, anything hazardous. Abacus is licensed and carries full insurance, and we'll send the registration details or the certificate to anyone who wants to see them before booking.
The customer whose let property we cleared that February signed off by saying we had been a pleasure to work with, and that we would be recommended. Given how the day started — a key on an oil tank, an empty house, and damp behind every wall once the furniture moved — we'll take that.
