How to choose a cleanout company
Which kind of company suits which situation, what to check before you hire, and the questions that matter when nobody can get into the property.
Three quite different kinds of company answer this enquiry, and picking the wrong one wastes a visit at a point when most people have no spare time or patience.
The three kinds of company
- Junk removal and general cleanout crews. Fast, cheap, volume-priced. Right when the contents are going and nobody needs to sort them.
- Senior move managers. They sort, catalogue, distribute to family, arrange sale or donation, and coordinate the move. Right when contents matter and decisions have to be made about them. The National Association of Senior and Specialty Move Managers runs a referral network of roughly 1,000 companies.
- Biohazard and trauma remediation firms. Licensed for hazardous waste, equipped for containment. Right at severity levels 4 and 5, and the only correct answer where there is human or animal waste.
Source: NASMM, About NASMM, checked 2026-07-29
What to check before you hire
- That they will do a walkthrough before quoting. A firm price sight-unseen is a guess that will be revised.
- How disposal is charged, by volume or by weight, and whether landfill fees are inside or outside the quote.
- Whether they are licensed to handle biohazard waste, if the property needs it. Do not take a general assurance.
- Their process for items of value found during the work, and whether that is in writing.
- Whether they handle donation and documentation for tax purposes, if that matters to the estate.
- Insurance covering damage to the property itself, which matters if it is being prepared for sale.
- Whether the crew has done hoarding work before, if that is the situation. It is emotionally different work and not every crew is suited to it.
When nobody can get inside first
With inherited properties it is common for nobody to have been inside for months, or for the person arranging the work to live in another state. Say so up front.
Ask the company to do the walkthrough and send photographs before committing to anything, and ask them to flag immediately if what they find suggests a higher severity level than expected. That single instruction prevents most of the unpleasant surprises in this category.