Half of what we clear in Childs Hill is flats, and that settles most of the day before the van is even loaded. House clearance in Childs Hill means shared entrances, a lift somebody else in the block wants at ten past nine, and somewhere legal to stand a tipper. Here is a job that was booked, quoted and finished without the person paying for it ever standing in the room.
A flat clearance in NW4, instructed from Cambridgeshire
The instruction came from a property services team based in Cambridgeshire, looking after a flat in one of the purpose-built courts in NW4, a short run up the road from us. Their brief arrived as a form rather than a phone call, and it said what it wanted plainly: "Please quote to clear based on the preferred option: 3. Clearance and disposal - Sell and Recycle".
That one line changes the shape of the day. A straight clearance is a clearance — everything out, sorted afterwards at the transfer station. A sell-and-recycle brief means anything with a resale in it has to be identified before it moves, set down in the quote separately from what is going for recycling, and accounted for afterwards. So the walk round takes longer than usual, and it happens before anybody picks anything up.
The occupier had not asked to be present. That is ordinary with managed property and it is never a problem for us: we arranged access through the agent, took the keys, photographed every room before we started and again once it was empty, and sent the set back with the paperwork. The load came out through a communal entrance and down in the lift — blankets on the car walls, one man inside and one at the doors so nothing swings into the panelling. Landing swept, lift swept, keys back the same day. September 2025, that one.
Not heroic. But that is most of what house clearance in Childs Hill actually is: knowing that the people living either side of the empty flat still have to get their shopping past your crew.
The blocks along the Finchley Road
Childs Hill runs down to the Finchley Road, and the stretch that carries on towards Swiss Cottage is nearly all blocks — purpose-built, three and four storeys, a lot of them let and re-let. Flat clearance work there tends to arrive in a run: voids between tenancies, loose furniture, mattresses, the odd sofa somebody left because it would not go back down the stairs.
The catch is never the furniture. Part of that stretch sits inside a School Street scheme, so there is no van movement between eight and nine in the morning and none again between three and quarter past four. That leaves a working window of about six hours. Turn up at half eight with one man and you have lost the day, so we book eight till four and send two.
Away from the main road it changes character quickly. The streets behind are 1930s semis and terraces, plenty of them split into conversions with a turn in the stairs at the top; NW11 towards Golders Green has the bigger detached houses where garage and loft clearance is most of the job, lofts nobody has been into for years; NW2 towards Cricklewood is flats above shops with the bins out the back. Same borough, three different days' work.
Two flat clearances in one booking, on the Camden side
Just before Christmas 2019 we did a job that was really two. The client lived in the basement of a house on the Camden side of our patch and needed the flat upstairs cleared, and at the same time had a second flat to empty a few miles further in. One booking, one crew, one load in the end.
Two fridge freezers came out of it. Those cannot ride in a mixed load — they go off separately to be degassed under permit, because the gas in the circuit is the whole point of the exercise. There was a mattress as well, which goes for shredding rather than burial. Both flats had stairs and no lift, which is why we sent the numbers we did.
The date is worth naming: 23 December. Nobody wants a crew in the house that week unless the sale, the tenancy or the estate says it has to be that week. It usually does. The client emailed afterwards to confirm everything was settled and asked us to confirm back by return, which we did the same afternoon.
Where it all goes, and the paperwork behind it
We are registered with the Environment Agency as an upper-tier waste carrier, licence CBDU419679, and every load leaves the property under that registration. What is still fit for use — sound furniture, working appliances, books, decent kitchenware — we would far rather see going out the door to a reuse project or one of the charity shops in the borough than tipped. The remainder goes to a permitted transfer station and comes back as a weighbridge ticket, so there is a written trail from your front door to the sorting floor.
Sofas and armchairs are their own job now. Since the rules on persistent organic pollutants tightened, upholstered seating has to be kept out of the mixed load and destroyed under permit at a site holding the right authorisation. Fridges and freezers are gassed off separately, as above. Mattresses are shredded rather than buried.
A few things simply cannot ride in an ordinary load: part-used tins of paint and thinners, patio gas bottles, car batteries, old fluorescent tubes, anything asbestos. Tell us before the day. Asbestos and gas bottles need their own route and we will arrange it; the rest the Barnet household recycling centre takes from residents, and we will tell you what to put in the boot.
Postcodes, neighbours and getting there
Childs Hill sits at the southern tip of the London Borough of Barnet, wedged between Golders Green, Cricklewood, West Hampstead and the top of Hampstead. We work the whole borough and the districts around it: NW2 and NW11 on the doorstep, NW3 and NW4 next door, NW9 out towards Colindale, N2, N3, N10, N12, N14 and N20 across East Finchley, Fortis Green, Church End, Finchley Central, Muswell Hill, Bounds Green, Southgate and Whetstone, HA8 in Edgware, Burnt Oak and Canons Park, and EN4 and EN5 up through Barnet, East Barnet, Cockfosters and Arkley. Dollis Hill and Belsize Park are on the same round. South of the hill we are in Camden most weeks — NW1, NW5, NW6 and NW8 — and the Bloomsbury end, WC1N, comes up more often than you would think for office and small commercial jobs.
If your property is in the bigger centres rather than here, the pages for house clearance in Barnet and house clearance in Camden cover those, and house clearance in Edgware covers HA8 up the Edgware Road.
For the crew it is a simple run. Cricklewood station on the Thameslink line is a five-minute drive from most of the NW2 streets, Golders Green on the Northern line is the other way, and Finchley Road & Frognal on the Overground puts you into the NW3 jobs without touching the North Circular. When a job is running long the second van comes down the A41 rather than round the A406, which on a weekday afternoon can be the difference of forty minutes.
Parking, stairs and the things that slow a day down
Half of Childs Hill is controlled parking and the other half is single yellow with a resident bay every third space. We do not need a bay directly outside, but we do need somewhere legal within carrying distance, and for a full house it is worth asking the council about a suspension a fortnight ahead. If that is not possible, say so when you book: it changes how many hands we send, not whether we come.
Stairs are the other one. A first-floor flat with a straight run is nothing. A third-floor conversion with a turn at the top and a narrow half-landing is a different day's work, especially with a sofa bed. We would rather hear about it on the phone than discover it at nine in the morning.
Probate house clearance in Childs Hill, executors and instructions from a long way off
A good share of our probate work here comes from people who do not live in London at all — a son in the Midlands, a daughter abroad, a solicitor's clerk holding the keys. The NW4 job above was instructed from another county entirely and never needed the client on site once, and probate clearances run the same way more often than not.
None of it needs you here. We can collect keys, meet a solicitor's clerk or an agent, photograph the rooms before and after, and hold back anything on a list — paperwork, photographs, jewellery boxes, a specific chair. Executors ask about that constantly and the arrangement is always the same: a written list beforehand, and anything on it comes back to you rather than going in the van.
On the paperwork side, we invoice whoever you tell us to. Solicitors, attorneys under a power of attorney and executors are all normal for us, payment can come from the estate once things are in order, and there is no deposit — the invoice follows the work, not the other way round. If you want the detail on how we handle estates, our probate house clearance page sets it out.
Full houses, hoarder clearances and builders' loads in Childs Hill
Not every job is a whole house. Half-load and full-load runs of strip-out waste for builders, single-item collections, an end of tenancy clearance where the tenant left three rooms of furniture and a broken bed — those are a couple of hours and a couple of hands. If it is just waste rather than a clearance, house rubbish removal is the page you want.
At the other end, houses that have been filling up for thirty years are ordinary to us. No lectures, no photographs on social media, no faces pulled in the hallway. We work room by room, check every drawer for documents and cash before anything goes, and stop whenever the person whose house it is needs a minute. That is what a hoarder house clearance looks like when it is done properly, and we do several a month across the borough.
What house clearance in Childs Hill costs, and how to get a quote
Ring us on 0800 046 5555 with the postcode, the number of rooms and anything unusual — a piano, a shed, a garage nobody has opened since lockdown — or send photographs through the form on this page. Photographs of each room and the loft hatch tell us more in thirty seconds than ten minutes of description. The quote is free and does not commit you to anything, and if we are not the right firm for the job we will say so.
Common questions about house clearance in Childs Hill
Do I need to be there on the day? No. We can take keys from an agent, a neighbour or a solicitor's clerk, photograph the property before and after, and send the pictures over. Plenty of our Childs Hill work is done with the client in another county.
Can you invoice the solicitor or the executor directly? Yes. We invoice solicitors, attorneys and executors as a matter of routine, and payment can come from the estate once probate is in order.
Do I have to sort or bag anything first? Not unless you want to. We clear cupboards, wardrobes and drawers as they are. If there is anything to be kept, give us a written list beforehand and it comes back to you.
What can't go in the van? Paint and thinners, gas bottles, car batteries, fluorescent tubes and anything containing asbestos. Tell us in advance and we will arrange the right route, or point you at the Barnet household recycling centre for the small stuff.
How long does a flat clearance take? A one or two-bedroom flat in Childs Hill is usually a single day, lift or no lift. Big houses with a loft, a shed and a garage can run to two.
Do you take fridges, freezers and mattresses? Yes, but they travel separately — fridges and freezers are degassed under permit and mattresses are shredded. Mention them when you book so the right vehicle turns up.
Whatever the property is — a void flat off the Finchley Road, a probate house in NW11, a cluttered maisonette in NW2 — house clearance in Childs Hill starts with the same phone call. 0800 046 5555, and we will tell you what day we can do it.
