Using a professional house clearance company vs hiring a van

No matter what the reason for conducting a house clearance, whether it be a deceased estate, end of tenancy or getting ready for sale; it tends to be quite a stressful process. Even if you have a team of family and friends behind you ready to help on the inevitable ‘moving day’ or deadline, the run-up can be difficult to manage calmly.

There are so many different processes that needed to be undertaken; notifying utility suppliers, clearing, cleaning, getting the property on the market; and each one has a variety of tasks within themselves that need taking care of.

One of the more costly and stressful parts of a house clearance is hiring a moving van. Not only do you have to find a reliant van hire company, pay for it, pay for fuel, find someone to drive it, deal with the anxiety of driving it safely, but you have all of the other jobs to do as well. Jobs like packing the belongings, loading the van, unloading it etc.

Careful planning is so important if you’re conducting your own house clearance, and sometimes, when you to work, have children and other commitments, it can be difficult to fit it all in. This is where we at Clear and Clean House Clearance come in. Here is a comparison of using a professional house clearance company vs hiring a van.

Prior to the house clearance

Professional house clearance

All you have to do is call us, get a quote and book us for your required time. Then you select the items in the house that you’d like to keep and place them in a corner of the room with a sheet over them. We will collect them and return them to you later. Then you can temporarily forget about it, go for coffee or visit family whilst we’re undertaking the whole house clearance.

Hiring a van

Firstly, you’ll spend a lot of time researching the best van hire company to use and seeing if their dates match up with yours. Then you’ll have to pay for the service (taking into consideration additional fuel costs), find someone who is eligible to drive the van who is the right age, has the right qualifications, has been a qualified driver for a certain amount of years etc.

During the house clearance

Professional house clearance

You can sit back and relax or get on with other tasks that you need to complete. We will sort the clearance of the house and then segment the materials. We have great professional relationships with scrapyards, charities, furniture upcyclers and paper recyclers, so we salvage and donate a lot of items we find so they can be given a new lease of life. We’ll then take the segmented materials to be disposed of properly, avoiding landfill. We always try and dispose of items properly so that we aren’t contributing to landfill. We’re just sticking to our ethos and trying to save the planet.

We usually bring 2-3 team members who are professionally trained. Meaning there are more than enough pairs of hands to get the job done.

We provide an extremely sensitive service too. Disposing of items with precious memories can be difficult and we always cater for this; doing everything sensitively. You obviously wouldn’t get the same level of service from van hiring.

Hiring a van

You’ll need to segment all materials into wood, waste and paper and then get everything into the van.

You have to book a van into the tip 1 day before with proof of residency. You’re allowed 1 tip journey per day. Then there’s the manual work of unloading the van and disposing of it in the correct areas in the tip.

If you’re doing most of the clearance alone, that’s a lot of manual work for one person who may not necessarily be trained in manual handling. Additionally, if your friends are helping and they aren’t trained on how to carry heavy items properly, there’s the potential of them being injured. Plus, most people feel obliged to ‘pay’ their friends somehow, whether it be cash or a curry.

After the Clearance

Professional house clearance

After the clearance, we head back to the house to conduct general cleaning tasks and get things back into order. We can even liaise with decorators if necessary. We then hand the property back over to you when it’s ready.

Hiring a van

After the disposal of the rubbish, you may think the hard part is over. But then you need to return the van safely back to its depot and get back to the property ready to commence the cleaning process, which can take much longer than it would if were professionals were doing it.

We think the main thing to consider is weighing up all the costs. Hiring a van may seem like the ‘cheaper’ option; but by the time you’ve hired the van, bought fuel, made several trips to the tip, paid your mates in cash or beer and other costs that can be associated, we think you’ll be surprised at the cost in comparison to a full house clearance team.

If you’d like a free, no obligation quote from Clear and Clear House Clearance, please feel free to give us a call on 07909 846679 or 01452 290086 for a chat.