Garage cleanout cost in Orlando

The short answer

Garages price by volume:

A one-car garage with a workbench and boxes along one wall is usually a quarter to a half, so $241 to $431. A two-car garage in Hunter's Creek, Avalon Park or Horizon West that has been the family storage unit for a decade is three-quarters to a full truck, $587 to $732. The per-visit minimum is $75.

Why Orlando garages fill up faster than garages elsewhere

Central Florida builds on slab. There are no basements and almost no cellars, so the garage is doing four jobs at once: storage, workshop, laundry room and second pantry.

Add the local habits on top. Hurricane-season supplies get bought in May and stacked against the far wall. The chest freezer lives out there. Pool and lanai gear comes and goes seasonally. Holiday decorations go up into the attic hatch over the garage, and half of them never make it back up. In a two-story Waterford Lakes house, that stack starts three feet deep and grows by a foot a year.

The result is the most common request in this city: a garage where the car has not fit since the year before last.

The heat and humidity problem

A closed Orlando garage in July sits far above the outside temperature and at the outside humidity, which is high. Nothing stored in there is in the condition you remember.

• Cardboard boxes at floor level wick moisture and collapse when you lift them. Pack contents into new boxes before the crew arrives, or accept that the box is going as-is.
• Upholstered furniture stored out there for a summer smells of the garage forever and will be declined at any donation door.
• Particleboard shelving and flat-pack furniture swell at the joints and come apart when moved. That is fine for removal, but it means "I'll sell it" is usually no longer true.
• Paper, photographs and books stored on the floor are often gone. Check before you assume.

None of this changes the price. It changes what you decide to keep.

Per item, for the heavy things

If the garage is mostly a few big objects rather than a mass of boxes, itemizing can be cheaper:

The classic Orlando garage gym — treadmill, bench and a weight set — is $115 + $69 + $93 = $277. If the rest of the garage is going too, compare that against a half truck at $431 and take the lower number for the combined job.

Garage laundry

In a lot of this metro's housing stock, particularly the 1970s and 80s tract homes out through Ocoee, Union Park and Casselberry, the washer and dryer are in the garage rather than a utility room. When they get replaced, the old pair sits in the corner for months.

Priced separately that is $133 + $128 = $261. A stacked combo unit is one item at $189. Say which you have, and disconnect the water before the window if the valve still turns.

What cannot go on the truck

Standard exclusions, and every Orlando garage has at least one of them:

• Half-used paint, solvents, pool chemicals and pesticides. Household hazardous waste goes to your county's designated collection route — check your county's page for the current arrangement.
• Propane tanks for the grill. Exchange them where you bought them.
• Gasoline in mower or generator cans. Drain fuel before the visit, especially generators, which almost every house here owns.
• Car batteries and motor oil, which have their own take-back routes.

Everything else — the furniture, the boxes, the broken exercise equipment, the pile of lanai screen you meant to re-fit — goes.

Timing the job

Book the first slot of the day. A garage with the door up at 8am is workable; the same garage at 2pm in August is punishing, and the afternoon storm will close the door on you anyway.

The other good window is early in hurricane season, before you actually need the garage. People who clear in May have somewhere to put the patio furniture when a storm is coming. People who clear in September are doing it around a pile of soaked cardboard.

How to get the number

Open the garage door, stand at the apron, and take one photo straight in plus one from each back corner. Include the attic hatch if it is full. Send them and you get a flat price back before anyone drives out.

Move the car out before the window. On a slab house there is no alternate route: everything leaves through the garage opening, and a car in the way is the single biggest slowdown on a job like this.

Frequently asked questions