Hoarding Cleanup and Property Cleanout

Hoarding cleanups are environmental jobs, which is why they sit with us rather than with a junk hauling outfit. By the time someone calls, the problem is usually not the volume of belongings. It is what has happened underneath them.

What We Are Usually Walking Into

Under a few years of accumulation we routinely find rodent droppings and nesting material worked into insulation, food waste that has been decomposing behind stacks, plumbing fixtures that stopped working long enough ago that people worked around them, and floors that are wet from a leak nobody could reach. In older houses, the material being moved is sometimes sitting directly on asbestos floor tile or against damaged pipe insulation.

That last part matters. A crew that does not know what transite or nine-inch tile looks like will break it getting a path cleared, and a cleanup becomes a contamination problem. We stop and treat suspect material as an abatement scope instead.

How the Work Goes

• Walkthrough first, with whoever is making decisions. Family, executor, property manager, adult protective services caseworker, landlord. We need one person who can answer questions once we are working.
• Sorting rules set before the first box moves. What gets kept, what gets looked at, what goes. Documents, photographs, firearms and anything that looks like cash or jewelry get set aside for the owner or the estate rather than judged by a crew.
• Clearing in zones, so the property stays walkable and the work is visible day to day.
• Disposal handled properly, with biohazard material separated from ordinary waste rather than everything going into one container.
• Cleaning and treating what is left once surfaces are exposed. See disinfection.
• Naming what remains. Damaged flooring, subfloor, wet framing, a crawl space that needs work. We tell you what the building needs, whether or not we are the ones to do it.

Estates, Rentals and Court Deadlines

A good share of this work is not the occupant calling. It is an executor with a house to list, a landlord with a unit to turn, a family member who lives out of state and has a week, or a property with a code deadline attached. Those jobs are as much about the schedule and the documentation as the labor, so tell us the date you are working against when you call.

How We Handle the Part That Is Not Labor

Nobody in this situation wants their business on the street. We show up in unmarked trucks when asked, we do not photograph a property for marketing, and we do not talk about a job in the neighborhood. Hoarding is frequently tied to grief, illness or a person who is no longer able to manage a house, and the occupant is usually still living there. Crews are told that going in.

Call 704-393-0303 to talk through a property. Tell us the size, the rough condition, who is making decisions, and whether there is a deadline.