Clearing a family home is not really a junk removal job. It's a sorting job with a junk removal job at the end of it, and the order you do things in matters more than who you hire.
Here's how it actually goes.
Before anything: confirm you have the authority
You need the right to dispose of the contents. Usually that means you're the estate trustee, or you're acting with their consent.
If probate is still working through, or if beneficiaries haven't agreed about who gets what, settle that first. A cleared house can't be un-cleared, and "I thought nobody wanted it" is not a defence anyone enjoys mounting to their own family.
Sort in this order
1. Documents first. Wills, deeds, insurance policies, tax records, bank statements, share certificates, military records, passports. Check every drawer, envelope, book, and filing box. This is genuinely the most important pass and the one most often rushed.
2. Cash and valuables. Cash turns up in books, coat pockets, envelopes taped behind drawers, freezer bags, and tins. Jewellery ends up in odd places. Older relatives who lived through uncertain times often didn't keep money in banks.
3. Photographs and anything irreplaceable. Photos, letters, home video, family papers. Set them aside even if nobody has decided who wants them yet — this is the category people most regret losing, and it's the category that looks most like rubbish in a pile.
4. Anything genuinely valuable. Antiques, tools, musical instruments, coins, stamps, art. If you're unsure whether something has value, that's worth an hour with an appraiser before it's worth a trailer.
5. Then decide about the rest. Furniture, appliances, clothing, kitchen contents, books, decades of accumulated stuff.
Only once step five is decided should you book a truck.
What we see people get wrong
Booking the haul too early. The sorting always takes longer than expected. Book once the decisions are made, not to create a deadline that forces them — that's how things get thrown out that shouldn't be.
Underestimating the basement. A basement that's been filling for forty years is very often more volume than the entire ground floor. Same for garages, sheds, and crawl spaces.
Assuming furniture is worth money. Some is. Most isn't. Solid wood furniture from the mid-century can be genuinely valuable; a 1990s particle-board bedroom set is a disposal cost no matter how much it cost new. Charities are increasingly selective, and rightly so — donating something unsellable just moves the disposal fee to a charity.
Doing it alone. Not a cost problem, a wellbeing one. Sorting a parent's house by yourself is heavy in a way that has nothing to do with lifting.
What it costs
A full house is normally more than one trailer:
| Scope | Typical | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Single room or partial clearout | Half to three-quarter load | $379–$619 |
| Small home, contents only | One full trailer | $629–$799 |
| Bungalow with full basement | Two trips | $749–$1,500 per trip |
| Larger home, garage, outbuildings | Three or more trips | Quoted per trip |
All before HST. Prices include labour, loading, disposal, and Regional tipping fees.
Heavy material is the variable that catches people. A workshop full of old tile, paving stones, or bagged concrete costs more than the same volume of furniture, because Durham Region charges $375 per tonne for fill material against $175 for general waste. Photograph it separately and it gets priced correctly rather than becoming a conversation on the day.
If you're not local
Plenty of estates are handled by someone who lives in another province or another country. That works fine.
Photos of each room are enough for us to quote the job. We can coordinate access with a realtor, a lawyer, or a neighbour holding a key, and we'll send photos of the cleared property when we're done so you can see how it was left.
The thing to protect against remotely is the sorting step. If nobody local has gone through the drawers, have someone do that — or have us set aside anything paper-like rather than loading it. Say so when you book.
Timeline that actually works
Weeks one to three: sorting. Documents, valuables, photographs, decisions. Longer if family are coming from a distance to go through things.
Week three or four: donation runs and anything being sold. Do this before the haul, so the truck takes only what's actually going.
Then: book the cleanout. Photos, quote, scheduled day. Hauling itself is one to two days for most homes.
After: if the property is being sold or rented, it usually needs a proper clean once it's empty. Worth lining that up for the day after the haul rather than a week later. If it's going to market, the sign can go up just as fast — True Sign Group installs next-day across Durham Region and photo-confirms it, the same way we confirm a cleared property.
One thing worth saying
If there's a firm closing date on a property sale, tell us when you book. A house that must be empty by a specific day is not the time to hope for a same-day slot, and northern Durham addresses are scheduled windows rather than same-day service anyway. Told early, it's easy to plan around.
Send photos for an estate cleanout quote, or read what we can and can't take before you start sorting.
Frequently asked questions
We run junk removal across Durham Region — Oshawa, Whitby, Ajax, Pickering, Clarington, Uxbridge, Scugog, and Brock. We price jobs from customer photos so the number you're told is the number you pay.