Six bedrooms, a large basement and a shed at the bottom of the garden — and not all of it was to be cleared. That is a harder brief than "empty it", which is why the estimator walked it room by room first, marking what was in and what was staying. A basement in December is a lamp job whatever the electrics are doing: the vans carry work lamps and a battery floodlight. South-east London has a lot of old houses with a cellar not rewired since the sixties.
That one was in Chislehurst, BR7, cleared in the middle of December 2022, team at the door for nine. The booked load filled and a second one went out the same day, with two teams on it. Out came a chest freezer, a fridge freezer and a mattress. The annex alongside was booked as a job of its own. Before any of it we sent the standard booking questions — address, date, who has the keys, anything hazardous — and got back: "Please see my responses to your questions in red."
Keston sits on the same run for us. It's in the London Borough of Bromley, postcode BR2, and if you've lived there any length of time you'll know it doesn't behave like the rest of Greater London. The common, the ponds, Caesar's Well, and then fields more or less straight away. A house clearance in Keston is booked out of the same diary and worked by the same teams as everything else on this side of the borough. Neighbouring work takes us through house clearance in Beckenham (BR3), house clearance in West Wickham (BR4), house clearance in Orpington (BR5 and BR6) and house clearance in Chislehurst (BR7), and north of that into the SE postcodes around Penge, Sydenham, Lee and Eltham. Nearest station to Keston village is Hayes, at the end of the Hayes line into Charing Cross and Cannon Street; Bromley South is the other one people use. It's the one our lads tend to give as a landmark when they ring to say they're ten minutes out.
Access, drives and the Westerham Road problem
Keston is easier than most London jobs and harder than it looks. Easier because a lot of the houses have their own drive and there's no permit zone to argue with. The tipper goes on the gravel, the tailgate drops, and nobody's writing a ticket. Harder because the lanes around the common are narrow and hedged. If you meet something coming the other way on the stretch near the ponds, one of you is reversing a long way. The A233 through the village backs up at school time and again from about four. We plan Keston starts for nine so the van is loaded and away before the afternoon build-up. We'll say so when we book you in rather than promising a time we can't hold.
Where the property is a bungalow or a chalet with a long approach, tell us on the phone. It changes nothing about the booking, but it changes what the team brings. A longer barrow run means sack trolleys and boards, and it's better to know than to find out at nine in the morning.
What a full clearance actually looked like
A house in Lee, SE12, gives a fair picture of the middle of the range for a full house clearance on this run. One van load came out of the property, and three mattresses came out with it. Not in the load, alongside it, because mattresses are handled on their own at the transfer station and can't be tipped in with mixed household waste. Three of them out of one house tells you what the job was: bedrooms that had been slept in for a long time and then not at all.
The person settling that one was in Cardiff. Everything went by phone and email — the questions before the date, the confirmation after. No need for anybody to fly across the country to stand in an empty hallway. We do a lot of that, and it is one of the reasons the standing instructions matter more than the chat on the day: what is written down before we set off is what the team works to.
Those separately-handled items are worth explaining, because they're the ones that catch people out. - Mattresses are kept apart from the load — the transfer station takes them on their own line. They cannot be mixed in.
- Fridges and freezers are hazardous waste; they carry refrigerant gas and are de-gassed at a permitted site before anything else happens to them. An under-counter one and a tall fridge freezer both go the same route, they just take a different amount of van.
- POP items. Sofas, armchairs and padded stools contain persistent organic pollutants from the old flame retardants. Since 2023 they can't be mixed with other waste and have to be kept apart and incinerated at a plant licensed for it. That's why we count your soft furniture before quoting rather than after.
Paint is the other one. Tins that are still wet can't ride in an ordinary mixed load, but they can be taken. They go off for bulk recycling, and on a job where there's a shed full of half-used gloss it saves you six trips of your own with the boot lined with newspaper.
Flat clearance in Keston and the BR and SE districts
Flat clearance is its own animal and we book it differently. A house has a drive; a flat has a shared hallway, a lift that may or may not be working, a bin store somebody else's contractor uses. A neighbour on the landing who wants to know what the noise is. In BR1, BR2 and BR3 a good deal of the flat clearance work is in the low-rise blocks behind the main roads, and in SE20 and SE26 it's conversions. Big Victorian houses cut into three, with the top floor up a staircase that turns twice. Tell us the floor and whether there's a lift when you ring. A fourth-floor flat clearance with no lift needs a bigger team and a longer morning, and that is better sorted on the phone than discovered at nine.
Garage and loft clearance in Keston
Not every job is a whole house. Garage and loft clearance is the commonest small one we do around Keston and Bromley Common. The garage that hasn't had a car in it since the nineties, the loft nobody has been into since the boiler was moved. Lofts need a proper ladder and two people, one up and one taking the bags. We won't send a man up a hatch on his own. Garage and loft clearance also throws up the things that can't simply be tipped: gas bottles, old paint, a strimmer with fuel still in it, a fridge that was retired to the garage and then forgotten. Say what you can see from the hatch and we'll bring the right kit.
Pricing, and why we won't guess on the doorstep
We won't guess a figure on the doorstep, and we won't put one on a web page either. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 or send photographs through the form on this page. Rooms, loft, garage, the shed if there is one — and you'll get a figure back for your own property. It is free and it commits you to nothing.
Smaller jobs — a garage, a single room, a garden — don't need a whole van. One in Mottingham, SE9, was exactly that: the team met the customer at nine on a Thursday to take out what had built up in the garden, a wheelbarrow with a flat tyre, bags of cement gone solid, a stack of roof tiles behind the shed, the netting off a fruit cage. The annex beside that Chislehurst house went the same way — three pieces of furniture and an extra man to carry them.
Rubbish removal is the same job in miniature and we do plenty of it in the SE postcodes. A property in Penge, SE20, was booked not by a householder but by a company looking after the place, and it took two visits. A collection, and then a smaller one at the same address afterwards once the rest had been pulled out of the rooms. That happens more than you'd think. People clear what they can themselves, get to the heavy end of it. Ring us for the part that won't go in a car.
If the pile turns out to be twice what was described we say so on the day, before anything else is loaded, rather than adjusting anything quietly afterwards.
Probate, executors and clearing from a distance
More than half of what we do in the BR postcodes is estate work. Often the person instructing us isn't in London at all. A house in Sydenham, SE26, was arranged entirely from Essex, keys through an agent and updates by email; the Chislehurst estate above was settled from Devon, by someone who asked for full breakdowns before anything was signed off, "as I am both Trustee and Executor for the properties". Another was booked from the other side of the capital for a three-bedroom flat where every room was to be emptied. White goods included, fridge, oven, washing machine, dryer, microwave — with one instruction on the form: leave any photo albums if the team find them. They did, stacked on a windowsill in the front room.
That's the standing rule on every job. Papers, photographs, anything that reads as personal gets set aside in the room rather than loaded. If we're not sure we leave it and ask.
Probate house clearance in Keston, and who we invoice
Probate work has its own rhythm. Grant comes through, the agent wants the property on the market. The clearance has to happen in a particular week rather than whenever suits. We can hold a date and move it once if the paperwork slips — it happens, and nobody minds. For a probate house clearance in Keston, or anywhere else in the BR and SE districts, we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate direct, whichever you tell us to. The payment can come out of the estate rather than anyone's own pocket. There's no deposit. The invoice follows the work, not the other way round.
If a house is very full — cupboards you can't shut, a hallway you turn sideways in — say so when you ring. It changes the number of loads and the size of the team, and nothing else. The men have seen it and won't make a remark.
The tip run, and what avoids it
Furniture that's still sound, boxed household goods, books, tools and bikes come off the van separately and go to reuse. A charity shop that takes furniture, or a project that will pass it on.
What's genuinely finished is weighed in at a permitted transfer station and sorted there for recovery. If you're an executor or an agent and you need the paperwork for the file, ask and we'll forward the waste transfer notes; the note is raised when the load is tipped. We send our copy on with the paperwork.
We're registered with the Environment Agency as an upper-tier waste carrier, CBDU419679, and we're insured for the work. We've been doing it since 2007.
The borough tip on Waldo Road won't take a house's worth of contents from a van, and fly-tipped waste traced back to a Keston address is the householder's problem, not the driver's. Which is the whole reason the licence number is on this page rather than buried somewhere.
Getting it in the diary
Ring or email with the address, roughly what's in it, and the date you're working towards. We'll tell you what it comes to, what we can't put in the ordinary load. Which morning we can get a team to Keston. If you're in Hayes, Bromley Common, Downe, Leaves Green, West Wickham or over towards Orpington, it's the same team and the same vans. Bromley is the biggest place on this run and house clearance in Bromley has a page of its own if that's where the property actually is.
The number is 0800 046 5555, and the quote form is on this page.
House clearance in Keston — questions we get asked
Do you actually come out to Keston, or only to the bigger towns? We come out to Keston. It's BR2, same as half of Bromley, and it's on the same run as West Wickham, Hayes, Downe and Leaves Green. A house clearance in Keston village is a nine o'clock start for us, same as anywhere else in the borough.
Can you do a probate house clearance, and who do you invoice? Yes, and we invoice whoever you tell us to. The solicitor, the executor or the estate direct. Payment can come from the estate. There's no deposit, and the invoice follows the work.
We only need the garage and loft cleared. Is that too small? No. Garage and loft clearance is one of the jobs we do most often here. Two men, a proper ladder, and we take away the things the tip won't have off you loose.
Do you do flat clearance as well as houses? Yes. Tell us the floor, whether the lift works, and where a van can stand. A flat clearance in a converted Victorian house in SE20 is a different morning from a ground-floor one in BR2, and we'd rather plan for the stairs than meet them.
What won't go in the van? Fridges and freezers go for de-gassing at a permitted site, mattresses are kept separate, sofas and armchairs are POP items and have to be kept apart and incinerated. Wet paint goes for bulk recycling. Gas bottles, asbestos and clinical waste we won't take at all — we'll tell you who does.
How do I find out what it comes to? Ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs through the form on this page. Rooms, loft, garage, shed. You'll get a figure for your own property and it commits you to nothing.
