Two of the rooms in the Oadby house were so full that the hard part of the day wasn't carrying things out. It was finding the handful of items that were supposed to come with us. A managing agent had put the job in for a property in LE2. Along with a full house clearance there was a small extra instruction: a set of plant pots from the garden was to be recovered and dropped to somebody else. Straightforward on paper. On the day, the occupant stood watching the lads lift pots, decided she'd parted with as many as she wanted to, and told them that was enough. So they stopped. When a person still living in a house says no, that's the end of it — you don't argue a stranger out of their own garden. Fewer pots went than the paperwork expected, we reported back honestly, and the agent took it up with their client.
The agent, quite reasonably, wanted to know why: "I know we discussed the pots being retrieved from the property and there were issues with time and other things on 9th June, but could you ask your team why the plant pots weren't recovered from the property on Wednesday 14th June, when the works were due to recommence?" The answer was the one above, and we gave it plainly rather than dressing it up. That job grew as it went, too. One load became two, and two became three, because every time a wall of boxes came down there was more behind it. Out of that address went an upright fridge freezer and a smaller under-counter one, a television, mattresses, several pieces charged as POP items, and a paint tin that couldn't ride with the general load. Three loads out of one house in LE2 is not unusual round here; the older semis on the Oadby and Knighton side hold far more than they look as though they should.
Woodchip, a small back bedroom and a stairwell in the way
Not everything we get called to in Leicester is a full clearance. Over in Glenfield, LE3, we spent a day stripping one bedroom — about nine feet by seven, with the stairwell eating into it and the paper carried right across the ceiling as well as the walls. The customer had made a start herself and given up. "p.s I should mention it is the dreaded woodchip!" she wrote, which told us most of what we needed to know before we'd seen a photo. Woodchip on a ceiling is slow, wet, awkward work with your arms above your head, and it's the one job people most often begin on a Saturday and abandon by Sunday afternoon. There was a driveway to park on, which helps more than people realise — steamer, sheets, scraper, bin bags, all a few steps from the door rather than a hundred yards up a residential street.
A wallpaper day leaves nothing behind it except paper and paste, so it is a different sort of booking from a clearance and we quote it as its own job.
A clearance day starts at nine at the property. Most house clearance Leicester jobs go out in a single visit. Big ones don't, and the Oadby job is a fair example. The team ran out of daylight and came back on a later date, and that second visit was agreed with the agent rather than sprung on them. Things go wrong occasionally, too. On one clearance a team leader phoned in sick the morning of the booking and we had to say so and move the date. We'd rather do that than send two people who can't finish it.
Eyres Monsell, Glenfield and the estate work
The city and its edge are where most of our house clearance work across Leicestershire happens. Garage and loft clearance comes into a good half of them. The Eyres Monsell estate and Knighton in LE2, Glenfield and Braunstone in LE3, Belgrave and Thurmaston in LE4, Evington and Humberstone in LE5. Then out through the villages of LE7, LE8 and LE9, where the houses get older and the lanes get narrower. Terraces off the London Road end give you a long carry and no parking. The interwar semis have a loft hatch you can actually get a ladder under. The newer estates round Enderby and Narborough in LE19 have driveways and integral garages, which usually means more to shift rather than less.
Probate house clearance in Leicester
A good share of what we do is probate work, and the arrangements are usually the same shape. A solicitor's probate department instructs us, the property is on the market, and the house has to be empty before it can be photographed.
On the invoicing we are plain about it. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and payment can come out of the estate once probate allows it. There is no deposit and nothing is asked for before the work is done. A probate house clearance in Leicester is also slower on purpose. Drawers and the backs of wardrobes are gone through before anything is lifted. Papers, photographs and anything personal go aside for the family rather than in the van. Our probate house clearance page sets out the process in more detail. Plenty of the people who book us don't live anywhere near the house.
We've cleared Leicester properties for sons and daughters in Scotland, in Kent, and once for an executor who never set foot in the place at all. That works fine as long as somebody can get a key to us and we agree beforehand what stays. Photographs by email do most of the rest. We have been doing this since 2007 and can read a room from a picture better than most people expect.
Where a Leicester clearance overruns, nine times out of ten it's the garage and loft. The house itself gets emptied on schedule and then somebody opens the garage door and there are two seized-up mowers, a workbench, four decades of tins and a dismantled bed frame behind it all. Ask us about the garage and loft when you book, not on the morning. It is the single most common reason a figure given over the phone has to be revisited by the team leader on site. Sheds and outbuildings are the same story in the villages.
Some of it can't travel in with the household load at all. Paint, aerosols, gas bottles, solvents, garden chemicals and similar go separately to a permitted hazardous waste site, on a consignment note rather than the ordinary transfer note, and they are handled on their own. Fridges and freezers have to be degassed rather than crushed. Upholstered furniture goes on its own route as well, for reasons set out below. None of that is us being awkward — it's the licence, and the paperwork has to match the load.
The "leave that, take this" clearance
Half the instructions we get are mixed rather than total. Take the three-piece suite, the armchairs and the dining chairs; leave the kitchen appliances, the carpets, the curtains and the blinds for the buyer. Empty the dresser but leave the dresser. Strip the wardrobes and the under-stairs cupboard, take the pictures off the walls, and don't touch the loft because the family have already been through it. That mixture — some rooms stripped, some left exactly as they are — is one of the commonest jobs we get. It works best when somebody is there for the first ten minutes to walk the team round and point. A note taped to a door works too. What doesn't work is a list written a fortnight ago against a house that's since had two carloads taken out of it.
Where we cover, and how we get there
The LE postcodes are our patch here. LE1 is the city centre. LE2 covers Knighton, Clarendon Park and Eyres Monsell in the city, plus Oadby just outside it. LE3 takes in Glenfield and Braunstone, LE4 is Belgrave and Thurmaston, LE5 Evington and Humberstone.
Out from there we work LE6 around Ratby and Groby, and LE7 through Syston, Birstall and the villages towards Hungarton. LE8 covers Blaby, Countesthorpe and Great Glen, LE9 Earl Shilton and Broughton Astley, and LE19 Enderby, Narborough and Lubbesthorpe. Leicester railway station on London Road is the landmark most people give us for the city centre; Syston, Narborough and South Wigston stations serve the outlying jobs.
Past the city we work the county on the same days, and house clearance in Nottingham up the A46 is the same week's driving: house clearance in Loughborough to the north, house clearance in Hinckley out towards the Warwickshire border, and house clearance in Market Harborough down the A6. Vans come in off the M1 and M69 and load kerbside. If the street needs a permit or a bay suspending, say so when you book. Leicester City Council and the borough councils each run their own rules, and a resident-permit terrace is far easier to sort a week ahead than at nine in the morning.
Hoarder house clearance in Leicester
Alongside full clearances we do hoarder house clearance, verminous work, a standard clean after the clearance, a garden cut-back where the back garden has gone over, and wallpaper stripping on its own. A hoarder property gets bagged as we go, doors and windows open throughout, and nobody on the team makes a face about it. We ask two plain questions first — anything hazardous, any sign of vermin — so the van comes stocked and the hours are allowed. Then it is room by room, textiles bagged apart, and a careful watch for the money and paperwork a full house swallows. Hoarder house clearance has its own page if you want to read it before ringing.
What happens to it all
Anything still usable is offered on before it's tipped: furniture in decent order, working white goods, books, tools and bric-a-brac go to charity depots and reuse projects wherever one will take them. What's genuinely finished goes to a permitted recycling and transfer site, weighed in and recorded, and the Waste Transfer Note comes back to you as proof of where your things ended up. That can take a fortnight to come through from the site; we chase it and forward it rather than let it drop. On one job the note was slow because the van broke down on the way back and sat at a garage before it could be unloaded — we told the customer exactly that, rather than inventing a reason.
We're a registered upper-tier waste carrier, licence CBDU419679, and we carry public liability and goods-in-transit cover; the certificates go out on request and solicitors ask for them fairly often. Upholstered furniture — sofas, padded armchairs, beanbags, office chairs — is now handled apart from everything else, because the old foam contains persistent organic pollutants and has to be destroyed on a controlled route. That is why upholstery is listed separately on a quote rather than lumped in with the rest of the load.
We give a figure over the phone or from photographs before anyone drives to Leicester, and the team leader confirms it after walking the property, so there are no surprises halfway through the afternoon. The estimate is free and commits you to nothing.
Common questions
Do you clear the garage and loft as well as the house? Yes, and it's worth saying so at the booking stage. The garage and loft are counted as part of the job but they change the volume more than any room in the house, so we'd rather know in advance than discover it at noon.
Can you invoice the solicitor, and can it be paid from the estate? Yes. On a probate house clearance we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and payment can be made from estate funds once they are released. No deposit is taken beforehand.
How much notice do you need? A few days is usually plenty. If a completion date is fixed, book earlier — end-of-month Fridays go first everywhere, Leicester included.
Do I have to be there? No. A key, a key-safe code or an agent letting us in is fine, as long as we've agreed in writing what stays and what goes.
Can you do it in one day? Most house clearance Leicester enquiries turn out to be a single-day job. Three-storey houses, hoarded houses and anything with a full garage and loft may run to a second visit, and we'll say so before you commit rather than after.
What can't you take? Paint and chemicals, gas bottles, asbestos and anything sharp or clinical without notice. Tell us and it gets handled properly on a separate route.
Ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs of the rooms. A phone number, the postcode and a rough idea of the date is plenty to start with, and we'll tell you what a house clearance Leicester side of the county is likely to involve.
