Most weeks there's a van of ours somewhere in TD5, and house clearance in Kelso makes up a good share of that — the town itself, the streets running off the Square, the newer estates on the edges, and then the cottages, steadings and farmhouses out towards Sprouston, Ednam, Stichill, Smailholm, Roxburgh, Heiton, Morebattle and the two Yetholms. A house clearance in Kelso is rarely only a house, either. There's usually a shed as well, or a garage that nobody has properly opened since the boiler was changed, or a loft with forty years of it sitting on the joists.
We've been doing this since 2007. Insured, licensed as a waste carrier, and used to the Borders — which mostly means used to tracks, gates, soft ground and mobile signal that comes and goes.
If you want a figure for a clearance in Kelso, ring the office on 0800 046 5555 or send a few photographs through the enquiry form on this page. That is the only straight answer anyone can give you: we look at what's there, then we tell you. Nothing you ask for is an obligation, and asking costs you a phone call.
Where it all goes, and the paperwork behind it
Ask for a waste transfer note at the end of the job and you'll get one. More people ought to ask.
That note isn't a courtesy — it's the record of where a household's contents ended up, and if you're an executor or you're selling a property you may well be asked for it. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679.
Nothing gets tipped before somebody has been through it. Furniture that's still sound, kitchen things still in their boxes, books, tools out of the shed, curtains once they've been washed — in a town the size of Kelso there's nearly always a charity shop, a hall sale or a neighbour who'll take that sort of thing off us, and we'd sooner spend twenty minutes finding them than throw a working chest of drawers in a skip. Bicycles and garden tools go quickest. What's genuinely finished with is weighed in at a permitted site and signed for, load by load. Nothing goes over a dyke on a back road, which sounds like a low bar until you've seen what turns up in Borders farm gateways.
Two things we can't put in an ordinary load, and it's worth knowing before the day. Calor and camping gas bottles — those need a separate route, and Scottish Borders Council's own recycling centres will take most of them off you. And upholstery. Sofas, armchairs, padded dining chairs, footstools, futons and beanbags: the regulations now treat the foam and the fabric as carrying persistent organic pollutants, so they travel separately and go for permitted incineration rather than recycling. Tell us how many soft pieces there are when you ring, because they change how the day is loaded.
The kinds of house clearance Kelso asks us for
Probate house clearance in Kelso
Most of the estate work we do here comes to us either from a solicitor or from whichever son or daughter ended up holding the keys. In Scotland the paperwork is called confirmation rather than probate, but everybody still searches for probate house clearance, and it is the same job whichever word you use: the house has to be emptied before it can be sold or handed back, and somebody has to stand in it while that happens, or arrange for us to do it without them.
Probate timescales are not in anyone's control, so we don't push. If the solicitor says wait, we wait, and we'll hold a date. If there's a buyer with a date fixed, tell us that and we'll work back from it. There's more on how we handle estate work on our probate house clearance page.
End of tenancy clearance in Kelso
Landlords and letting agents ring us for the other kind of empty house. A tenant has gone and left a three-piece suite, two beds and a shed's worth of odds and ends, and the property is due to be checked over in a week. End of tenancy clearance is usually quick work — one visit, everything out, floors brushed through, keys back where you want them. If the carpets are staying down, say so and we'll leave them alone.
Flat clearance in Kelso
Not everything in the Borders is a farmhouse. There are flats above the shops in the middle of Kelso with a stair, no lift, and a turn at the top that a sofa argues with. For a flat clearance we want to know the floor, the width of the stair, and whether the van can sit anywhere near the close door. Sometimes the answer is that a wardrobe comes apart on the landing. That's fine — we bring the tools for it.
Garage and loft clearance in Kelso
Plenty of jobs are not a whole house at all. Garage and loft clearance on its own is one of the commonest calls we get from Kelso: the house is fine, it's the garage that's been the family's overflow since 2009, or the loft that nobody has been into since a hatch ladder got stiff. We go up, we hand down, and you don't climb anything.
A five-bedroom emptied down to the furniture
One job stands out for how well the family had prepared, and it's the sort of thing worth describing because most people assume they have to do nothing at all before we come.
Five bedrooms. Booked for a Wednesday in July 2022, and by the time we arrived the family had done the bulk of it themselves — the loft cleared out entirely, the small stuff away, and nearly all the remaining furniture carried down and stacked into one room on the ground floor. What was still upstairs was the heavy end: a large sofa bed, three wardrobes, a couple of chests of drawers and a desk. Two double bed frames were staying, and were marked so nobody touched them. The double garage had been emptied bar a few odds and ends.
The instructions we were given were short and completely clear: "No cupboards need to be emptied and no carpets or rugs lifted or moved." That single line saves an hour of asking on the day.
Then there was the trampoline. Full size, out on the grass, and the request came in with everything else: "There is also a large trampoline outside and we'd be grateful if that could be dismantled and removed too." So it was taken apart before it went anywhere near the van. That sort of thing is exactly why we ask what's outside as well as what's inside — a trampoline, a rotary drier, a greenhouse frame, an old oil tank, they all eat time that a room count doesn't show.
Dates mattered on that one too, and the family were honest about it in advance: "Preferably not between 16-23 July as we're away then (but if that's the only time slot available, we'd try to arrange for a neighbour to be around)." We found a day that suited. It usually can be found, if you tell us early.
When the person in charge lives a long way from Kelso
A great many Borders clearances are arranged by somebody who isn't here. Families move away, a parent's house sits empty at Kelso, and the person holding the keys is in Aberdeenshire, or Kent, or somewhere south of the border entirely, trying to sort it around a job and a train timetable.
That works. It works because we treat it as a job where you can't see us. We photograph the rooms as we go and send them through, we ring when the loads change, and if the keys need putting back in a safe or posting through a door, we say where we've left them. If there's cash, jewellery or paperwork turned up in a drawer — and there often is, in the back of a wardrobe or a biscuit tin — it's set aside for the family, not carried out.
Trust is the whole thing when you can't be there, and we'd rather earn it in small, boring ways than talk about it.
We don't always get it right. There's been a day in the Borders when a family got a team who were brisk when they should have been quiet, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise. It changed how we brief crews going into a house where the family are standing in the hall.
Getting to you, and getting the van in
Kelso hasn't had its own railway station since the mid-sixties, when the line through to Berwick was lifted. The nearest working platform now is Tweedbank, at the end of the Borders Railway near Galashiels, or Berwick-upon-Tweed on the east coast line if you're coming from the south. Practically speaking we come by road: the A698 in from Coldstream, the A6089 down from Gordon and Lauder, the A68 for anything Jedburgh way.
Access is the thing that varies most round here. In town, the streets off the Square are narrow and the van needs somewhere sensible to sit, so it's worth having a word with a neighbour about a space. Out of town it's tracks — postcodes that only take a driver to the end of a farm road, cattle grids, a low bridge, gates that need leaving open so the lads can reverse in rather than turn on soft ground. And signal. There are corners of TD5 where a mobile is decorative, so give us a landline as well if you have one and we'll ring from the road rather than standing on your doorstep waving a handset about.
Tell us about the track, the bridge height, the mud, the parking. None of it is a problem if we know.
What a house clearance in Kelso costs, and who we invoice
On cost the page says one thing, and it's the honest one: ring 0800 046 5555 with the address and the room count, or send photographs through the form on this page, and you'll get a figure. Quotes are free and they don't commit you to anything.
Who pays is a different question, and it's the one executors actually want answered. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly — you don't have to put a clearance on your own card and claim it back afterwards. Payment can come out of the estate, and we're used to waiting on funds being released. There is no deposit. The invoice comes after the work is done, not before.
Hoarder house clearance in Kelso is ordinary work to us, and nobody makes remarks about it. A house that has got badly overfilled over the years takes longer and needs more sorting, and we say so at the walk round rather than halfway through the afternoon. We've seen the range.
Where else we go from here
The same run covers Coldstream, Duns and Eyemouth over to the east, Cockburnspath on the coast road, Jedburgh, Hawick and Newcastleton to the south, and across Roxburghshire, Selkirkshire and Berwickshire. West of Galashiels we're into Peebles, Innerleithen, Walkerburn and West Linton. TD postcodes throughout the eastern Borders, EH once you're up the Tweed valley towards Peebles and West Linton — Scottish Borders Council throughout.
We cross the border and the city boundary as well. There's a page for house clearance in Alnwick and one for house clearance in Hexham if the property you're dealing with is down in Northumberland, and house clearance in Edinburgh for anything up in the city. Executors quite often have one house here and another somewhere else entirely, so it's worth knowing.
Ring the office with the address and the room count, or send it through the enquiry form with a couple of photographs if that's easier. We'll tell you the figure, the date we can get a van to Kelso, and what the paperwork will look like at the end.
Common questions about house clearance in Kelso
Can you invoice a solicitor or executor on a probate clearance?
Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and payment can come out of the estate rather than anybody's own pocket. There is no deposit, and the invoice follows the work.
Do I need to be at the property on the day?
No. Keys can come from a neighbour, a solicitor or an agent, and we send photographs of every emptied room the same day. Plenty of Kelso clearances are run for someone several hundred miles away.
Do I have to sort or pack anything first?
No. The team empties cupboards, wardrobes and drawers as they find them, lifts carpets and underlay if you want them gone, and sweeps through at the end. Tell us what is staying and it stays.
Do you clear hoarded or heavily packed houses?
Yes, and it is a routine booking. Say what the crew will be walking into so the right kit comes out, and if there is spoiled food or vermin in among it, say that too.
Is there anything you cannot take?
Paint, thinners, garden chemicals, gas bottles and asbestos cannot travel in a mixed load. Fridges, freezers, mattresses and upholstered furniture all go, but each on its own permitted route.
How far out of Kelso do you come?
Across TD5 and the rest of the eastern Borders, and over the border into Northumberland. Say the postcode on the phone and we will tell you straight away.
