OSU move-out weekend junk removal in Columbus

The short answer

Mid-August is the single biggest junk event in Columbus. Off-campus leases across the University District, Old North and Weinland Park end and start within the same handful of days, and the contents of thousands of houses hit the tree lawn simultaneously.

Prices: queen mattress $103, mattress and box spring set $143, sofa $126, desk $83, dresser $126, particleboard bookcase $100, large junk pile $208. By volume: half truckload $431, full $732.

The one piece of advice that matters: book before the first week of August. During the turnover two weeks every truck in Franklin County is running.

What the turnover actually looks like

If you have not seen it, it is hard to believe. Chittenden, Norwich, East 14th, East 15th, Indianola, Summit, Fourth Street and the cross streets between them all fill at once. Sofas on porches. Mattresses leaning on trees. Particleboard shelving in pieces on the tree lawn. Loveseats in the middle of a lawn where somebody gave up.

Streets that are already one lane with cars parked both sides become impassable. U-Hauls double-park. The same block is being emptied by one group and filled by another on the same afternoon.

It is a genuinely compressed, genuinely local event, and everybody involved, students, landlords, neighbors and haulers, is working the same two weeks.

If you are a student

The arithmetic is simple. Anything left in the house gets removed by your landlord and billed back against the deposit at a rate you do not control. Getting ahead of it is cheaper.

• Split it. A queen mattress set at $143 across four housemates is a small number each.
• List the good stuff free, early. August is the one month of the year when a decent sofa disappears from a listing in hours, because the person moving in three doors down needs one today.
• Do not stack it on the tree lawn a week early. It soaks, it sprawls, and it is the neighbors' complaint, which ends up back on the lease.
• Book one visit, not three. The minimum is $75 per visit, so one list beats three afternoons.

A typical four-person house: two queen sets ($143 + $143 = $286), a sofa ($126), two desks (2 x $83 = $166), a large pile ($208). That is $286 + $126 + $166 + $208 = $786, versus a full truckload at $732. Take the truckload.

If you own or manage units near campus

You already know the season. Three things make it cheaper.

Book the day after, not the day of. Whatever the outgoing tenants told you, the final hour produces more than expected. A pickup scheduled the morning after the lease end catches all of it in one visit instead of two.

Book by volume. Turnovers are never an item list. Half $431, three-quarters $587, full $732. If you have multiple units, book multiple loads in advance rather than calling on the day.

Reserve before August. The last week of July is when the calendar for the turnover two weeks fills. A July booking gets you the window you want. An August 15 phone call does not.

For a portfolio of doubles and half-doubles, a standing schedule across the turnover week is the cheapest way to run it, because the units come back on the market days sooner.

The mattress problem specifically

Mattresses are the signature item of Columbus move-out season and the hardest to shift. Nobody takes a used student mattress secondhand, most charities will not accept one, and a queen is longer on the diagonal than the landing turn in most of the century doubles they are coming out of.

Prices: twin $82, full $94, queen $103, king $114, box spring $92, set $143. Two twin sets out of a shared bedroom is $143 + $143 = $286.

If there is any suspicion of bed bugs, which in dense student housing is worth taking seriously, say so in the booking notes. It does not change the price. It changes whether the mattress gets bagged before it goes down a shared stairwell.

Access in the University District

The housing here is mostly century doubles and half-doubles cut into units, plus three-story conversions. That means interior stairs with a turn, porch steps, no elevators, and a lot of carrying.

All of that is in the flat price. Carry-down from a third floor on Summit is $126 for a sofa, the same as from a garage in Hilliard.

What we do need from you is a parking plan. The streets are permit-heavy and tight, service alleys behind many of the doubles are the better route where they exist, and during the turnover two weeks both are contested. Mention in the notes whether there is alley access and where a truck can sit.

Spring semester and the other dates

August is the big one, but it is not the only one. Late April and early May produce a smaller wave as academic-year leases end and people leave for the summer. December produces a trickle of graduating tenants.

Those are the easy bookings. Same-day is usually available, the streets are drivable, and you can get a morning window without planning around it.

One Columbus-specific scheduling note that has nothing to do with leases: home football Saturdays in the fall make everything inside 315 slow from mid-morning. For anything near campus between September and November, pick a weekday or a Sunday.

What is included

• Two people, all the loading, and the truck.
• Carry-down from any floor, porch, alley or street.
• Disposal, transfer and recycling.
• Broom sweep of the space cleared.
• No stair charge, no surcharge for the season.

Prices in the turnover two weeks are the same as in February. The only thing August changes is how far ahead you need to book.

Frequently asked questions