Stop counting bin bags. A garage is the only room in the house that's also a shelter, which means the job has a real finish line — can a car fit, with the doors opening — and every decision gets easier once you're measuring in parking rather than tidiness.
Quarter truck $325 · half $580 · full $985 — loading included
Upload Photos & Get Quote →Every other storage space in a house is just storage. A spare room full of boxes costs you a spare room. A basement full of boxes costs you a basement.
A garage full of boxes costs you a parked car — and in this climate that's a cost you pay every single winter morning, in scraped windscreens, cold starts and a vehicle sitting exposed through whatever the sky does.
That's the difference worth holding onto. Clearing a garage isn't a tidiness project, it's recovering a function the building already has. Which is also why "I'll get to it" persists for years: nothing in there is in the way, and the cost is spread thinly across mornings rather than arriving as a bill.
Here's the reframe that makes the whole thing tractable.
The wrong question: how much stuff is in here? That's demoralising, hard to estimate, and doesn't tell you when to stop.
The right question: how much floor does a car need, and where is it currently? A vehicle needs a defined rectangle plus room for doors — and everything else in the garage is either inside that rectangle or it isn't.
That single distinction sorts the entire contents into two piles, and it's a far more useful sort than keep-versus-throw, because plenty of things you're keeping simply need to be somewhere else.
Work through the garage asking one thing of each object.
Can this live on a wall, on a shelf, or in the rafters? Bikes, ladders, garden tools, hoses, seasonal decorations, camping gear, sports equipment. If yes, it isn't your problem — it's a storage problem with a solution you can buy.
Or does it need floor? Furniture, appliances, exercise equipment, the workbench nobody uses, boxes stacked four high, the previous owner's leftovers. These are the actual job, and they're what's standing between you and a parked car.
Then apply the honest follow-up to the floor pile: is this worth the square footage it occupies? A treadmill nobody runs on costs a meaningful fraction of a parking space every winter. How volume pricing works.
Don't guess. Park a car in it and open the doors.
A garage can look transformed — swept, organised, visibly better — and still not hold a vehicle. If you can't open a door without hitting a shelving unit, the job isn't finished, whatever the photographs suggest.
Two things the test catches that the eye doesn't. Depth: bays are often shallower than people assume once a workbench is at the far end. And door swing: shelving along a side wall eats exactly the space you need to get out of the car.
Test it before the removal crew leaves, not the following week. If a second item needs to go, that's a much easier conversation while the truck is still in the driveway.
Some of this is universal, some of it is local.
Outdoor and camping gear that grew faster than the storage did — this is a region where people own equipment, and it lives in the garage.
Kids' outdoor equipment they've outgrown. Bikes, a trampoline at $156, a swing set at $192. These are usually the largest single items and they're often still perfectly good.
The previous owner's leftovers. Paint tins, offcuts, fittings for something that's no longer in the house. Extremely common on a purchased property, and nobody ever deals with it in year one.
Tyres, a set at $117, usually stacked in a corner since a changeover several years ago.
Shelving and cabinets that have outlived their contents — metal shelving $95, storage cabinet $99, filing cabinet $81 small or $101 large.
And the second fridge or freezer, which has its own particular story. Covered properly on the appliances page.
A structural fact that matters more in this city than most.
Colorado Springs has no municipal collection at all. Every household contracts a private hauler, so there's no city bulk pickup to wait for and no annual amnesty week that quietly solves the problem.
Whatever your own subscription covers is written in your service agreement — and a garage full of oversize items sits outside ordinary cart service in every plan there is. How subscription service actually works here · the no-bulk-pickup situation.
The practical consequence: a garage clear-out is always an active decision. It will not happen through accumulation of council schedules, because there aren't any.
Read this before your clear-out day, because it's the one thing that can stall an otherwise finished job.
Paint, solvents, fuel, pesticides, pool chemicals, propane cylinders and batteries are household hazardous waste. We don't take them, and a general disposal facility won't either. They need a proper route.
We're not going to name a facility, a programme or a schedule for you, because we haven't verified one and sending you to a closed door with a boot full of old paint would be worse than saying nothing. Check what household hazardous-waste options are available locally, and do it in advance rather than discovering the problem with everything already out on the driveway.
This category is disproportionately common in garages — it's exactly the sort of thing that gets bought for one job, half used, and shelved for a decade. Nearly every long-held garage has some.
Not hazardous, but not general waste either.
Tyres are commonly handled through their own channel and acceptance varies by facility. We price a set at $117. If you have a stack that's been accumulating since a changeover, mention them specifically when you book rather than assuming they go in with everything else.
Electronics and refrigerant appliances are the other two that travel differently. E-waste routing · refrigerant recovery.
A garage is one of the better rooms for this, because so much of what's in it is functional rather than worn out.
Outdoor equipment, tools, bikes and kids' gear hold value in a way that used upholstery never does — they're the categories people actively look for second-hand, and a region with this much household turnover keeps that demand steady.
Try that before you book anything. Set the genuinely good items aside, offer them, and give it a fortnight — then have the remainder removed. The difference between clearing a garage and clearing a garage well is mostly this step. The free routes and their limits · what charities actually accept.
And separate the metal. Old shelving, a broken mower, a dead appliance, scrap offcuts — clean metal presented on its own has a collector; the same metal buried in a mixed pile doesn't.
The method matters more than the effort, and it explains why the season is in this page's title.
The driveway is your workspace. You cannot sort a garage from inside a garage — there is nowhere to put anything while you decide. Everything comes out, gets sorted in the open, and only what is staying goes back.
Which is the honest reason to do this before the weather turns. Not vague seasonal urgency — you simply cannot spread the contents of a garage across a driveway that is under snow, and you will not want to be making decisions about a box of camping gear in a wind. The same job in October and in January is the same volume and a completely different afternoon.
Then sort in this order. Hazardous material out first, into its own corner, because that pile needs a destination you have already arranged. Then the wall-and-rafter pile, which goes back in. Then the sell-or-give pile, which needs a fortnight of lead time. What remains on the driveway is the truck pile, and it is the only one you are paying for.
Book the removal for the end of that sequence, not the start. A crew arriving before the sorting is done ends up waiting, or worse, taking something that was meant for the wall. Give the free routes their fortnight first.
| Scope or item | Flat price |
|---|---|
| Minimum | $75 |
| A corner of the garage — quarter truck | $325 |
| Three-eighths truck | $455 |
| A single bay — half truck | $580 |
| Three-quarter truck | $790 |
| A double garage — full 16-cu-yd truck | $985 |
| Each additional truck | Same flat rate |
| Loose pile — small / medium / large | $110 / $174 / $280 |
| Metal shelving / storage cabinet | $95 / $99 |
| Filing cabinet — small / large | $81 / $101 |
| Set of tyres | $117 |
| Lawn mower | $88 |
| Grill — propane / charcoal | $95 / $79 |
| Trampoline / swing set | $156 / $192 |
| Treadmill | $155 |
| Paint, chemicals, fuel, batteries | Not accepted — see above |
No sales tax on the service in Colorado. Full price list · garage cleanout service.
The common shape: reclaiming one bay of a double garage.
A treadmill, an old mower, a set of tyres, metal shelving and a medium loose pile. Itemised that's $155 + $88 + $117 + $95 + $174 = $629.
By volume it comes to roughly half a truck — $580 — so the volume tier wins by $49, and that's what we'd quote.
The pattern is worth knowing: garages usually go volume rather than itemised, because so much of what's in them is loose accumulation rather than nameable furniture. That's the opposite of a bedroom clear-out. The full seven-job comparison.
Not the job. Buy a rack, move on.
The job. Loose bulk drives volume pricing.
High floor cost per hour of use. Treadmill $155.
Try selling or giving away first. Real demand.
$156 / $192. Biggest single items in most garages.
$88, or scrap it free if it's dead metal.
$117 a set — mention them when booking.
$95 — and it's metal, so ask a scrapper first.
Refrigerant recovery required. Details.
We can't take these. Find the local route before the day.
Sort for hazardous first, then it's ordinary volume.
Often a full truck, $985. Sometimes more.
Park a car in it. That's the only measure that matters. A garage clear-out judged by how much left looks like progress and stalls halfway, because there is always more that could go and no obvious moment to stop. Judged by whether a vehicle fits with its doors opening, it has a finish line you can drive into — and it reframes every item on the way there. Anything that can hang on a wall or sit in the rafters was never the problem; the floor is the problem, and the floor is what you're buying back. Do it while you can still work with the door open and spread things down the driveway, sort the hazardous material out well in advance because that's the part that stalls an otherwise finished job, and offer the good outdoor gear to somebody before the truck comes. Then park in it, and notice every cold morning afterwards that you did.