Most of our house clearance work in Crowborough starts the way this one did. The booking form came back filled in line by line, which we always appreciate. Three-bedroom detached house. Two sheds. Some garden furniture. A fridge and a freezer to be taken, carpets to stay down, curtains to come out. No hazardous or verminous contents, nothing to be left behind. Parking on the front drive, and the customer added that he had permits if the team wanted them. That was a Tuesday in December, on the TN side of our patch, and it is about as ordinary as a clearance gets — which is exactly why it is worth describing. A great many Crowborough houses go the same way. Lived in for thirty or forty years, a shed at the bottom of the garden nobody has properly emptied since it was built, and one working day to get the lot out.
The town makes the job
Crowborough sits high. Beacon at the top, Ashdown Forest starting just past the last houses, and roads that drop away steeply in every direction — that geography ends up in the invoice more often than people expect. Half the older properties here are on a slope, with the front door up a flight of brick steps and the garage cut into the bank below it. A wardrobe that would walk straight out of a bungalow in Polegate becomes a two-man carry on a Crowborough hill.
Then there is the housing mix. Big Edwardian and inter-war villas on the roads off the Beacon, sizeable post-war family houses, the estates around Jarvis Brook, a fair few bungalows built for people who retired up here for the air, and newer closes tucked in behind them. Lofts are the common thread. Almost every clearance we do in TN6 includes a loft hatch someone opens with a torch and a sigh.
Parking is the other thing. Plenty of TN6 addresses have a drive or a hardstanding and we can back the Luton straight up to the door, which saves real time. The narrow terraced roads down towards Jarvis Brook and the older lanes out towards Rotherfield are different — cars both sides, one van's width down the middle, and we may end up walking loads twenty or thirty metres. Tell us which you have when you ring and the estimate will actually match the day.
What a day looks like
We arrive at nine and work to clear the property that same day wherever it can be done. Nothing needs boxing or bagging beforehand. The team empties wardrobes, cupboards, drawers and the backs of shelves, lifts carpets and underlay if you want them gone, and sweeps through at the end. Team leaders photograph the rooms on arrival and again once they are empty, so whoever is instructing us — often somebody two counties away — can see what was there and what is not.
If you can't be at the house, that is normal for us. We collect keys from a neighbour, a managing agent or a relative, and email the photographs afterwards. If there is something small and sentimental you want kept safe, say so before the day and it gets set aside rather than loaded.
Not every job is an estate. One clearance we handled just before Christmas a few years back was a let property changing hands, and it hung on a question the customer genuinely could not answer when he booked: were the floors and windows to be stripped, or left? He had to go back to the landlord and wait. We asked him to let us know by the Friday before, one way or the other, and the answer came through in a single line: "I have had confirmation that we are requested to leave the carpets and curtains for the incoming tenants." So the carpets stayed down, the underlay with them, the curtains and the poles stayed up, and everything else came out. That decision matters more than it sounds. Carpets and curtains lifted are a load in themselves, and lifting gripper rod out of a floor that a new tenant is about to walk into is work nobody wanted paid for or done.
He asked one more thing in the same email: "Also could you tell us more about the cleaning option, what it includes, please." Fair question, and one we get most weeks. A clean after a clearance is booked as its own piece of work, not something the team improvises at four in the afternoon with whatever is under the sink, so it is worth raising when you book rather than on the day. The clearance itself was a Wednesday, the twenty-first of December — right at the edge of the year, when everyone is trying to get a property emptied before the office closes. The team met the contact he had arranged at the property at nine, took the keys, and worked through. He paid it himself rather than passing it to the landlord, and we invoiced him afterwards.
Kinds of house clearance in Crowborough
Not every enquiry is a whole house. Roughly half of what we do in TN6 is a part-job of some sort, and it helps to know that we are happy to take those.
Garage and loft clearance in Crowborough
Garage and loft clearance is a job in its own right, and here it is a common one — the garage cut into the bank under the house, the loft above three bedrooms, and forty years of things put up there "for now". We bring our own ladder and lighting. If the loft is unboarded we work off the joists rather than through the ceiling, and we bag insulation-covered items at the hatch instead of walking them down the stairs shedding fibreglass on the carpet. Garages here often have a dead freezer, a mower that stopped in about 2011, tins and half-empty bottles on a shelf, and a bicycle. The tins and bottles are a separate matter — see below. Everything else comes out and the door is left shut behind us.
Flat clearance and single rooms in TN6
One room, one flat, one garage, one van load. A flat clearance in the sheltered and retirement blocks around the town centre is a regular for us, and so are single rooms in a house where the rest is staying put. Dismantling is part of the work — beds, wardrobes, divans, flat-pack that will never come apart the way it went together — and so is the cardboard that arrives with new furniture. Say which room, which floor, and whether there is a lift, and that is enough to work from.
End of tenancy house clearance in Crowborough
Landlords and agents ring us to get a property back to bare. The two questions worth settling before the day are always the same: carpets and curtains in or out, and who is opening the door. Once those two are answered the rest is straightforward. We photograph before and after, which is what an agent generally wants for the file, and we can post keys back or hand them over at the office.
Where a load goes after it leaves
Everything that leaves a Crowborough property is sorted rather than simply tipped. Furniture, tools, crockery, books and clothing that somebody else can genuinely use are offered on to reuse schemes and charity shops in the area first — Wealden has a decent network of them and we would rather a sound pine dresser found a second house than a skip. The remainder is weighed in and processed at permitted facilities, and the paperwork exists for all of it. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679, and we can send you the transfer notes; the ticket is raised at the weighbridge when the load is tipped, and the paperwork usually reaches you within a week or two. If it is loose rubbish rather than a household's contents, that is house rubbish removal and it is booked the same way.
A few categories are handled separately because the law says so. The POPs rules cover sofas, sofa beds, armchairs, padded dining and office chairs, futons, bean bags and loose sofa cushions, because of the flame retardants in the foam. Those cannot be mixed in with general household waste and go to incineration, which is why the team keeps them apart on the van rather than crushing them in with everything else. Televisions and monitors go as electrical waste to a licensed WEEE facility, and fridges and freezers go for degassing.
Paint tins, aerosols, patio gas bottles and old chemicals from the shed cannot travel in a mixed load at all. We do move them, but they are booked as their own item and go to a site that accepts them. On one job we found a small sharps bin in a kitchen; the family took that to their pharmacy, which is the right answer, and we cleared everything around it. If in doubt, mention it on the phone rather than hoping nobody notices on the day.
Estates, executors and probate
A good share of what we do in East Sussex is done for people settling an estate. Probate house clearance in Crowborough is most of our diary in this town, and it is rarely the person who lived there who rings — it is a son in Kent, a daughter in Scotland, or the solicitor handling the probate on behalf of both. We can bill the executor personally, split the invoice between an estate and a beneficiary, or invoice the solicitor handling the probate directly — that gets arranged before the van moves, not argued about afterwards. Payment can come from the estate. There is no deposit for UK customers; the invoice follows the completed clearance and can be paid by card, cheque or transfer. There is more on how we handle those jobs on our probate house clearance page.
These are rarely tidy jobs emotionally, and we try not to pretend otherwise. Instructions change. A relative decides on the morning that the dresser and two cabinets should stay after all. That is fine — tell the team leader and the load is adjusted before anything goes on the van. Probate itself often has not finished by the time the house needs emptying, usually because a sale is moving, and that is not a reason to wait for us.
When we get it wrong
Sometimes we do. A garden, a greenhouse or a driveway is part of the job when it is part of the quote, and if the team leaves something behind that should have gone, we come back and finish it rather than argue the point. The same goes for a room that got missed because a door was locked on the day. Ring the office rather than living with it — we would far rather send a van back than find out months later from a review.
Overfilled houses
Some properties have decades of belongings stacked room by room, with only a path through. We clear those. No lectures, no photographs shown to anyone, no fuss made at the door. What changes is arithmetic, not attitude: a house like that is several loads rather than one, and occasionally two days rather than one. The team brings more hands, more protective kit and a different sorting plan, because the things worth saving in a house like that are usually buried and not obvious. There is a fuller account on our hoarder house clearance page.
Getting a number
Describe the place honestly over the phone or by email — bedrooms, loft, garage, shed, garden, whether there's a drive — and you get a real estimate before anyone turns up, with the van stocked for the right job and the right number of hands booked. A photo or two helps enormously; the form on this page takes them. The estimate is free and it does not commit you to anything. We are licensed and insured, we have been clearing houses since 2007, and the team carry identification.
Around Crowborough
We work right across this corner of East Sussex and over the Kent border. Uckfield (TN22), Mayfield (TN20), Heathfield (TN21), Wadhurst (TN5), Hartfield (TN7) and Forest Row (RH18) are all regular ground for us, as are Hailsham (BN27), Polegate (BN26) and Pevensey (BN24) down towards the Levels. Crowborough itself is TN6, including Jarvis Brook, Boarshead and out towards Rotherfield and Eridge.
Several of those places have pages of their own, so if the property you are clearing is not in TN6 you may want house clearance in Uckfield just down the A26, house clearance in Hailsham on the way to the coast, or, over the county line into Mid Sussex, house clearance in Haywards Heath, which is the bigger town on that side and where a fair number of our TN6 enquiries turn out to have a second property.
Crowborough station is down in Jarvis Brook on the Uckfield line, with Eridge and Buxted the stops either side, and it is a useful landmark for us — plenty of the properties we clear are within ten minutes' walk of it, and plenty of the executors we deal with come down from London on that line to hand over the keys. Household bins are Wealden District Council's job and the county's recycling sites take household quantities; a full house is neither, which is where we come in.
House clearance in Crowborough — questions we get asked
Do I have to be at the property on the day?
No. We take keys from a neighbour, a relative, an agent or a key safe, and the team leader photographs every room before and after so you can see the state it was left in. Most of the Crowborough clearances we do for families are instructed from somewhere else entirely.
Can you invoice a solicitor for a probate house clearance?
Yes. For a probate house clearance we can invoice the solicitor, the attorney under a power of attorney, or the executor personally, and the cost can be met from the estate. Tell us at the booking stage who the invoice should be addressed to and it is set up that way from the start.
Will you clear just a garage or a loft?
Yes — garage and loft clearance on its own is a job we do most weeks in TN6, and there is no requirement to have the whole house done. Same for a single room, a shed or one bulky item.
Are there things you cannot take?
Paint, aerosols, gas bottles, garden chemicals and asbestos cannot go in a mixed load, and upholstered furniture containing flame retardants has to be kept separate and sent for incineration under the POPs rules. Fridges, freezers, televisions and monitors go to licensed facilities for degassing or WEEE recycling. Mention anything of that sort when you book so the right van and the right paperwork turn up.
Which parts of Crowborough do you cover?
All of TN6 — the town centre, Jarvis Brook, Boarshead, St John's, Sweethaws, and out to Rotherfield and Eridge. We are on the surrounding villages the same day if they fall on the way.
How do I get an estimate for house clearance in Crowborough?
Ring 0800 046 5555 and describe the property, or send photographs through the form on this page. That is enough for a real figure. There is no charge for the estimate and no obligation to book after it.
Whether it is a whole house on the Beacon, a flat near the station or a garage nobody has opened since the bulbs went, house clearance in Crowborough is what we do, and one phone call is usually enough to settle it. 0800 046 5555, or use the form on this page.
