House clearance in Midhurst usually means an old house, a long drive and one heavy thing nobody wants to think about. On this one it was the piano. An upright on wheels, in a four-bedroom house in a village south of Midhurst, GU29 — rooms, loft, shed and garage, the lot. The booking form came back with the special requirement in the customer's own words: "YES, upright piano with wheels to be removed". Then the line that actually decided how the day ran: "Fridge / Freezer to remain, Washing machine & Tumble dryer may need to be removed, will confirm on the day". Carpets were staying down. Curtains were staying up. Nothing hazardous or verminous in the house, no cleaning wanted afterwards, and on parking the answer was short — "NO we have a drive that can be used".
An upright on wheels sounds easy. It isn't, particularly. Castors on a piano are for shuffling it eighteen inches away from a wall, not for crossing a gravel drive. Once you tip the thing to get it over a threshold the weight goes where it likes. Two men, a set of straps, and no hurry. That is genuinely the whole method. We book the piano into the plan before the van leaves, because it changes how the load is stacked. The heavy thing goes on first and everything else is built around it.
The drive took the van, which made the rest of it straightforward. Ground floor and first floor out first, then the loft hatch, then the shed and the garage. Is nearly always where a four-bedroom house has been quietly storing thirty years of itself. The fridge-freezer stayed where it was. The washing machine and the tumble dryer were confirmed on the morning, disconnected and taken. Carpets and curtains we left exactly as found, because that was the instruction and instructions like that are worth more to us than guesswork. There were a few things to be left aside as well, pointed out on the day and set down in one room rather than carried past us onto the van.
What left the house and where it ended up
Some of it was still perfectly good. Furniture in that condition we'd rather see going back into use than crushed, so we look for a charity shop or a community reuse scheme that will actually take it. And around here that means ringing ahead, because the small shops in North Street and over in Petworth only have so much floor. What can't be rehomed is sorted at the yard: wood, metal, cardboard and clean electricals split off. The residue tipped at a permitted transfer station that weighs the load in and issues paperwork for it. Abacus holds Environment Agency waste carrier registration CBDU419679, and we're insured for the work and for the property we're carrying things out of. If you'd like the transfer notes afterwards, ask — one customer asked for the disposal notes and got them, though they took a week or so to come back to us from the site. We said so up front rather than let them wonder.
Upholstery is the one that surprises people. Sofas, armchairs, sofa beds, footstools and padded dining chairs all fall under the POPs rules, and the rules say the foam can't be shredded or landfilled with general bulky waste. It has to go for incineration at a permitted plant. So a sofa is handled differently from a wardrobe of the same size. It is separated from the rest of the load at the yard rather than tipped with it. A three-section sofa and a footstool are still one sofa for that purpose, which is worth knowing before you start counting pieces.
Getting a van into Midhurst
The town is small, old and built long before anyone imagined a caged tipper. North Street and Rumbolds Hill are busy and tight, the yellow lines are meant seriously. Half the good houses sit behind a wall on a lane you'd drive past twice. Out in the villages — Bepton, Cocking, Stedham, Easebourne, Trotton — the problem flips: room to park. A soft verge, a cattle grid, or a drive with a hedge either side and nowhere to turn a long wheelbase. Tell us what the approach looks like when you ring. A sentence about the drive saves an hour on the day.
Midhurst has had no passenger trains since 1955 (the goods line lasted into the sixties). Is worth saying out loud because people searching from a distance assume we'll arrive by train. We don't, obviously. If you're coming down to meet us for an executor's clearance, Haslemere is the practical station on the Portsmouth Direct line, with Petersfield the other option to the west and Chichester if you're coming round the coast. Our vans come in on the A272 or up the A286 from Chichester. Midhurst sits inside Chichester District, and it's West Sussex County Council that runs the household waste sites, including the one on the edge of town that everyone local uses for a boot-load.
How far we run from here
GU29 is the core of it: Midhurst itself, Easebourne, Bepton, Cocking, Woolbeding, Stedham and the lanes off the A272. We work GU28 for Petworth and the villages the far side of the park, GU27 towards Fernhurst and Haslemere. Down into the PO postcodes for Chichester, Singleton and the coastal side, with Arundel and the Arun valley the same sort of run for us. Petersfield and the Hampshire border villages are no further. If you're not sure whether your lane counts, say the outward code down the phone and we'll tell you straight away. There are separate pages for house clearance in Chichester, for house clearance in Petworth and for house clearance in Arundel, and the same team covers all three.
Probate, executors and clearances run from a distance
A fair share of the work here is an estate. Somebody has died, the house has been standing shut for months, and the executor lives two counties away with a completion date already agreed. That's a normal week for us: keys from a key safe or a local agent, a start time confirmed the day before. A video or photographs of every cleared room sent through afterwards so you can see the state it was left in without driving down. One executor asked for pictures of the rooms once the team had finished and we sent them the same evening. Anything found that looks like it matters — medals on a mantelpiece, loose coins in a drawer, photograph albums, documents — gets left out on a surface and pointed out, not binned. On one clearance we left the medals and the coins exactly where they'd been found and filmed them before we shut the door.
Probate house clearance in Midhurst runs on paperwork as much as on vans, so we keep the billing side simple: we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, on the executor's say-so. Payment can come out of the estate rather than from anybody's own pocket. There is no deposit. The invoice follows the work, not the other way round. If you want the detail of how we handle estates generally, it's on the probate house clearance page.
What we can't put on the van
Half-used tins of paint, thinners, gas bottles, oils, asbestos sheet, car batteries and anything else classed as hazardous need their own route. Paint we can take if you ask in advance. It goes off for bulk recycling separately, but it can't just be slid in among the furniture. It only takes a line on the booking form. One customer flagged the shed contents before the day and it was loaded and routed properly instead of being discovered at eleven o'clock. Say what's in the shed and the garage when you book.
What it costs, and how to get a figure
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 with the address and a rough idea of what's in the house, or send photographs of the rooms through the form on this page, and you'll get a figure back. That is the whole answer on cost. Nobody turns up to look at the piano and then sucks their teeth at you on the doorstep. Nobody needs to walk you through arithmetic on the phone. What we do want from you is the shape of the job: rooms, loft, garage, outbuildings, the pile behind the greenhouse. Anything unusual like a piano, a safe or a shed with no door on it.
Houses that have got away from someone
Some places are packed to the ceiling. Boxes to the landing, a loft that's been filling since 1978, rooms nobody has walked through properly in years. We do a good number of those and no one on the team pulls a face about it. It's furniture and paper and old clothes, we've seen a great deal of it, and the day passes much like any other. Just slower, and with more sorting. Verminous or heavily soiled properties we'll also take on, but tell us beforehand so the right kit is loaded before the van sets off. There's a hoarder house clearance page with more on how those days are run, and a house rubbish removal page if it's a part-load rather than a whole house.
Garage and loft clearance in Midhurst
Bungalows and gardens are a Midhurst speciality, in the sense that half the retirement housing round here has a greenhouse and a shed behind it. A garage and loft that have been doing the work of a spare room since the seventies. On a two-bedroom bungalow job we cleared the greenhouse, the shed, the weed piles heaped up in the garden and the contents of the loft, leaving the insulation in place, while the white goods stayed for the incoming owner. A garage and loft clearance on its own is a perfectly normal booking for us. No need to empty the whole house to get us out. That kind of instruction — this goes, that stays — is easy to work to as long as it's written down before the day.
Common questions about house clearance in Midhurst
Do you do probate house clearance in Midhurst? Yes, and a good deal of the work in GU29 is exactly that. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, payment can come from the estate, and there is no deposit to find first.
Can you clear just the garage and loft? Yes. A garage and loft clearance, a single room, a shed, or one heavy item on its own are all normal bookings. Whole houses are simply the commonest.
Will you take an upright piano? We will. Say so when you book so the straps and the second pair of hands are on the van — see the piano removal page. Uprights on castors still need lifting properly, castors or no castors.
What happens to things I want left in the house? They stay. Tell us on the booking form or point them out on the morning and they'll be set aside in one room. Carpets, curtains, fitted appliances and light fittings are the usual ones people ask us to leave.
How quickly can you come to Midhurst? Usually within the week, and sooner in a quiet spell. Abacus has been doing house clearance since 2007 and Midhurst is a short run for our vans. A date is normally easy to agree on the first call.
Ring 0800 046 5555 with the address and a rough idea of what's in the house, and we'll give you a date and a figure. If you'd rather send photographs of the rooms through the form on this page first, that works just as well. Plenty of our house clearance work round Midhurst is booked entirely by email.
