House clearance in Chatham is most of what our week looks like — ME4 and ME5, the tight terraces climbing out of the town centre, the post-war estates up at Walderslade and Lordswood. Some of it follows a death and a grant of probate, some of it is an end of tenancy, and some of it is a garage that nobody has managed to open since about 2011. Here is one clearance off the file, told as it happened, because it shows how these days actually behave once they start.
Two days, two vans, and the job changed under us on the second morning. A three-bedroom house, kitchen extension on the back, attic above, garage beside it, and a garden nobody had decided about until our team was standing in it. Late October, a Thursday and a Friday booked together.
The instruction came by email rather than by phone, because the person arranging it was at work until four or five and could not answer calls in the day. Which suits us fine, and is worth saying if it is you, because we will work off written instructions all day long. Then, part way through, a relative lined up a charity to collect a chunk of the furniture separately, and the scope shrank overnight. Items to be left: the sofas and the double bed in one of the bedrooms, a dresser, two small cabinets and the paintings in the dining room, a cabinet in the master bedroom, the drawers in the upstairs cupboard, the drawers in the downstairs bathroom. The TV cabinets in the living room.
The message that afternoon put it about as plainly as anyone has: "Realistically it is now only finishing the Attic and Garage, everything else can be left."
Which is never the small half of a house, whatever people assume. Attics hold the boxes that were too much trouble to sort out in 1998; garages hold whatever would not fit in the attic. The second van had already been set up that morning and we ran it anyway. The garden was still an open question at the point of booking — "The only thing we haven't quite decided on is the garden" — and that was settled on the day, with the team, standing in it. Perfectly sensible way to do it. Photographs are better than nothing, but not everything shows up in a photograph.
That is how these jobs run. Plans move, someone remembers a shed, a charity gets involved halfway. Nobody minds — until the changes are not written down, and I will come back to that.
Access, hills and parking for a house clearance in Chatham
Chatham brings its own access puzzle, and it is not the one people expect. The town is built up the sides of hills. Plenty of the terraces off Luton Road, New Road and the streets climbing towards Fort Pitt have a flight of steps between the pavement and the front door before you have carried anything anywhere. Add a narrow hall and a turn at the top of the stairs and a three-seat sofa becomes a two-man problem, sometimes a problem that has to come apart on the landing to leave the building at all. Tell us in advance and the right tools are on the van in the morning rather than in the yard.
Parking is tight around the Brook and the Pentagon end, and around Brompton where the streets were laid out for dockyard workers on foot. It is easier out at Walderslade, Lordswood, Hempstead, Weedswood, Princes Park and the Davis Estate, where there are driveways and verges and a Luton can sit outside the door. If the van cannot get within thirty yards, say so when you ring — it goes into the estimate then, rather than being discovered at nine on the day.
Flats matter here too. There are blocks in ME4 and ME5 with stairwell access and no lift, and a flat clearance three or four floors up is a different day from the same contents at ground level. Every armful goes up and back down on foot. It is ordinary work, it just needs to be known about beforehand.
The kinds of house clearance we do in Chatham
Probate house clearance in Chatham
A good share of our Chatham work is probate. Usually the person instructing us is not in Kent at all — an executor two counties away, a solicitor's office handling the estate, a family member who can get down one weekend in three. We can meet you at the door for nine, or take keys, work to written instructions and send photographs before and after. That photographic record is the whole point of a probate clearance done properly: the executor sees what was in the property and what left it, and so does anybody who asks later. Full details on our probate house clearance page.
End of tenancy clearance in Chatham
Landlords and managing agents ring us for end of tenancy work across ME4 and ME5, generally at short notice and generally with a check-in date already booked. A tenant leaves a flat half-emptied, the good furniture gone and the wardrobes still full. We clear it, sweep through, and send the waste transfer paperwork so the file is straight. If it is only rubbish rather than furniture, house rubbish removal may be the more sensible route.
Hoarder house clearance in Chatham
Houses that are badly overfilled — doors that open partway, floors not seen in years, a hall you go through sideways — are ordinary work for us, not a reason to sound doubtful on the phone. We turn up and get on with it. A hoarder house clearance takes longer, needs more hands and often needs the property treated before anyone lives in it again, and none of that is a lecture aimed at whoever has to arrange it. See hoarder house clearance for how those days are run.
Garage and loft clearance in Chatham
Garage and loft clearance is a job in its own right, as that October pair of days showed. In Chatham the lofts tend to be small, boarded halfway and reached by a hatch on a landing, and the garages are often detached and down a shared drive. Tools, tins, bicycle frames, timber, an old fridge in the corner. We can do a garage and loft on their own without touching the rest of the house.
Reuse first, tipping last
Furniture and appliances still worth using are offered on first — a sound wardrobe or a working washer belongs in someone's home rather than in a tipper, and Medway has decent charity shops and reuse schemes. On one Kent job we found homes for a tumble drier, a washing machine and a fridge freezer before the clearance day arrived.
What cannot be reused goes to a permitted transfer station, weighed in and recorded, with paperwork we can send on if a landlord, an executor or a managing agent wants sight of it. Abacus holds waste carrier registration CBDU419679 and is insured for the work. Sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating are handled separately because upholstered furniture falls under the rules on persistent organic pollutants — foam and covers cannot go in with general waste and must be kept apart and incinerated. Fridges and freezers are the same: degassing is controlled and they go to a facility set up for it.
Some things cannot go in the back of a van at all. Half-empty paint tins, solvents, gas bottles and asbestos sheeting off an old garage roof — those need a specialist route, and we will point you at Medway Council's household waste sites instead of pretending otherwise.
Getting a figure, and who we invoice
There is one honest answer to what a house clearance in Chatham comes to: ring the office on 0800 046 5555 or send photographs through the form on this page, and you will get a figure. A one-bedroom flat somebody has already had a go at is not the same job as a three-bed with a full attic and a garage you cannot open the door of. No page on the internet can tell you which of those you have got. Give us the address, the bedrooms, the floor and lift situation, the parking, and anything unusual — a stairlift to dismantle, a piano in a front room, a shed with an old fridge in it. If the estimate has to change once we are in there, we tell you before the work carries on, not after.
There is no deposit. Where the clearance follows a bereavement and probate is in hand, we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, so it is settled from the estate rather than out of a relative's own pocket. Attorneys acting under a power of attorney are the same. Say at the booking stage who the invoice should go to and it goes to them.
Write down what stays
Now the part I said I would come back to. Our teams empty cupboards, wardrobes and drawers completely, lift carpets and underlay where asked and sweep through at the end. That thoroughness is the point of hiring us — and it is exactly why an unrecorded exception goes astray. The October job worked because the list of what was to stay came through in writing, item by item, room by room: the sofas, the bed, the dresser, the paintings in the dining room, the drawers in the upstairs cupboard. Nobody had to remember anything.
So if something must not leave the property. A set of keys, a photograph album, the fire extinguishers mounted in the kitchen, the cooker — put it in writing when you book, and better still, put it in one room with a note on the door. A verbal aside to one man on a busy morning is not a system.
How far we run from here
Chatham sits in the middle of it, Rochester one way over the Medway and Gillingham the other, and we treat the whole conurbation as one patch. ME4 and ME5 for Chatham, Brompton, Luton, Wayfield, Walderslade, Lordswood, Hempstead and Blue Bell Hill, ME1 for Rochester, ME2 for Strood, Frindsbury and Cuxton, ME7 and ME8 for Gillingham and Rainham, ME20 towards Eccles and Aylesford, ME9 and ME10 for Sittingbourne. Kent throughout, with Medway Council handling waste and parking dispensations this side of the boundary.
Neighbouring pages worth a look if yours is not quite Chatham. house clearance in Rochester over the bridge, house clearance in Gillingham the other side of the Great Lines, and house clearance in Sheerness out on Sheppey, which we reach on the same run.
The team travels down by road, but Chatham station on the Chatham Main Line is the landmark most people give for directions. Trains to Victoria, and the high-speed run to St Pancras — with Rochester and Gillingham stations a few minutes along the same line. If you are travelling in from outside the county to open up a house, we can meet you at the door for nine.
Common questions about house clearance in Chatham
How long does a house clearance in Chatham take? Most three-bedroom houses are a day with a full team. Two days if the attic and garage are full, or if there are stairs and no lift and every armful has to be carried down.
Can you invoice the solicitor handling the estate? Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and it can be settled from the estate. There is no deposit.
Do you clear just a garage and loft, without the house? Yes, garage and loft clearance on its own is a normal booking, and so is a single item.
We are landlords and need an end of tenancy clearance quickly. How fast can you come? Ring the office and we will tell you the first day we can get a team into ME4 or ME5. We do not promise a slot we cannot keep.
Do you take fridges, freezers and sofas? Yes, all of them, but they are handled under their own rules — degassing for fridges and freezers, separate handling and incineration for upholstered furniture under the persistent organic pollutants regulations. Mention them when you book so the load is planned properly.
What paperwork do we get? Waste transfer documentation from the permitted transfer station, and photographs before and after. Executors and managing agents usually want both.
Abacus has been clearing houses since 2007, holds waste carrier registration CBDU419679 and is fully insured. For a house clearance in Chatham, ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs through the form on this page.
