What a garage cleanout costs in Columbus

The short answer

Volume pricing, because a garage is never a list. Quarter truckload $241, three-eighths $338, half $431, five-eighths $513, three-quarters $587, seven-eighths $661, full $732.

Rough guide for Columbus garages: a detached single-bay off an alley in Clintonville or Merion Village, cleared to the floor, is usually a quarter to a three-eighths load. An attached two-car in Westerville, Hilliard or Gahanna with a workbench and years of overflow is a half to three-quarters. A three-car in Dublin or New Albany that has never held three cars runs to a full load.

Heavy individual items price on their own: chest freezer $146, lawn mower $65, portable basketball hoop $115.

Why Columbus garages fill up

Six months of Ohio weather, and one bad habit.

The habit is that a garage here is not a place you park, it is a place you put things when it is too cold to deal with them. From November the yard equipment comes in, the patio furniture comes in, the grill comes in, the bikes come in, and the boxes that were going to go to donation stay by the door until spring. Then spring arrives, the yard equipment goes back out, and the boxes do not move.

The freeze-thaw cycle does the rest. Cardboard stacked against a block wall in an unheated Reynoldsburg garage wicks moisture off the slab, softens, and collapses into the thing you now cannot pick up cleanly. Salt tracked in off 270 all winter kills anything metal that touches the floor.

The result is a very consistent Columbus pile: soft cardboard, rusted tools, three-quarters of a bag of ice melt, a dead mower, patio furniture, and a chest freezer nobody has opened since the last time the power went out.

What comes out of a typical one

A worked one: chest freezer, dead mower, propane grill, patio table with four chairs, plus a large pile of loose cardboard and bins. Four patio chairs at $30 each comes to $120. So the run is $146 + $65 + $71 + $89 + $120 + $208 = $699. Compare to a full truckload at $732 and a three-quarter load at $587. If it is genuinely a full bay floor to ceiling, book the ladder.

Alley garages and modern driveways

Access varies more here than in most cities, and it changes how a job runs, not what it costs.

Alley-facing detached garages in Clintonville, Old North, Italian Village, Olde Towne East and Merion Village are actually the easiest jobs going. The truck backs into the alley, the door opens, and there are no stairs at all. The only catch is that some of those alleys are one lane with utility poles, and in winter they are the last thing plowed.

Attached suburban garages in Powell, Pickerington, Grove City and New Albany are straightforward: wide driveway, roll the door up, park in front of it.

German Village and the Brewery District are the awkward end. Small rear garages off narrow brick service alleys, permit-only street parking, a historic district that does not want a dumpster sitting out front for a week. This is exactly where flat-price pickup beats a container.

The right time of year

March and April, hands down. The slab is dry, you can see what you actually have, and you get the bay back before the mower and the patio furniture come out of hibernation. A garage cleared in spring stays clear through the summer.

October is the second-best window, and it is the more useful one, because it is the difference between scraping your windshield in January and pulling into a garage. If the reason you are reading this is that your car sat outside through last winter in Worthington, book before the first hard freeze.

The worst time is February. Everything is frozen to the floor and the alley behind your house has eight inches of packed snow in it.

What we cannot take

Garages hold the chemicals. Expect to separate these out before the pickup:

• Paint, stain, solvents and thinner.
• Gasoline, kerosene and two-stroke mix. Drain the mower and the string trimmer.
• Automotive fluids, antifreeze and used oil.
• Propane tanks, pesticides, pool chemicals and ice-melt bags that have burst.
• Tires, which follow their own rules in Ohio.

Franklin County runs household hazardous waste collection through the county solid waste authority. Check their current schedule and drop-off arrangements, because they change. Everything else on the shelf, we take.

What is included

• Two people and the truck.
• All the loading. You do not lift anything.
• Disposal, transfer and recycling.
• Broom sweep of the slab.
• Refrigerant handled correctly on that chest freezer.

No fuel surcharge, no same-day surcharge, no charge for the fact that your garage is at the far end of a long alley.

Getting an accurate number

Open the door and take one photo from outside, standing where the car would be. Then take one from each back corner. That is enough to size a load.

If you can see the floor across most of the bay, you are at a quarter load. If you can see a path to the back wall, a half. If you cannot get in without moving something, three-quarters or more. Price both ways, itemized and by volume, and book whichever is lower.

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