What a garage cleanout costs in Portland

The short answer

Volume pricing, published:

Where Portland garages typically land:

• Detached single-car off the back of the lot — the standard 1920s Portland garage, barely big enough for a Model A and certainly not for a modern car. Quarter to half: $241 to $431.
• Attached two-car on a post-war ranch in Parkrose, Roseway, Gresham, Beaverton or Tigard. Half to three-quarters: $431 to $587.
• Carport only, which is common on east Portland and Milwaukie ranches. Usually a quarter at $241, and usually wetter than the owner expects.

Visit minimum is $75.

Why Portland garages fill differently

The old detached garage in this city stopped being a garage decades ago. It is too narrow, the door is a swing or a tilt-up that sticks, and there is no driveway apron worth backing onto. So it became storage: the bikes, the camping gear, the paint, the lawn mower, the boxes from the last move, and the furniture that was too good to throw out when it came out of the house.

The specific Portland problem is that these buildings are unheated, uninsulated, single-wall, and frequently have a roof that has been green with moss for years. Nine months of wet air moves straight through them. That means:

• Cardboard boxes fail when you lift them. Every time.
• Particleboard shelving and flat-pack furniture has swollen at the base and is not donatable.
• Upholstery that went out there for storage is mildewed through.
• Tools have surface rust, camping gear smells, and anything paper has gone soft.

This is why garage cleanouts here reliably come in one fraction higher than the owner estimated. The volume looks the same, but almost nothing is divertible, so almost all of it goes on the truck.

Item pricing if the garage is only half a problem

Where the garage is mostly a few identifiable things rather than a wall of boxes, item pricing beats the ladder. Common garage contents:

Worked totals, addition shown:

• Lawn mower + two bikes + propane grill: $65 + $37 + $37 + $71 = $210
• Treadmill + weight bench + weight set: $115 + $69 + $93 = $277
• Chest freezer + storage cabinet + large junk pile: $146 + $74 + $208 = $428

That last one is $428 against a half load at $431 — near enough identical, so take whichever describes the job better.

Bagged material

If the garage has already been sorted into bags, price it that way instead: 10 bags $132, 15 bags $196, 20 bags $259, 25 bags $322, 30 bags $385, 40 bags $449, 50 bags $575.

One Portland caution on bagging. Do not bag things up and leave them outside the garage overnight waiting for pickup. Between October and June a bag of debris left on the driveway will take on real water weight and the bag itself will fail when someone picks it up. Bag it the morning of, or keep it inside.

Access: the bit that varies most across the metro

This is where inner Portland and the suburbs genuinely differ.

Inner eastside — Cully, Montavilla, Foster-Powell, Sellwood, Woodstock, Kenton. The garage is at the back of a deep narrow lot with a long strip driveway beside the house, or reached only on foot. The truck sits on the street, which on those blocks means finding a gap between parked cars, and the crew walks it out. That walk is often 60 or 80 feet. It is not billed separately.

Ladd's Addition and a handful of older blocks genuinely have alleys, which makes the job faster.

East Portland and the suburbs — Powellhurst-Gilbert, Parkrose, Centennial, Gresham, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard, Happy Valley. Attached garage, real driveway, truck backs up to the door. The easy version.

Same published prices in all of them.

What to pull out before we come

Set aside anything genuinely reusable and give it a weekend. Portland moves tools, bikes, lumber and building materials well — the reuse and salvage outfits in this city are real and they will take useful stock. Every box you divert is a smaller fraction on the ladder.

Also separate anything hazardous. Paint, solvents, pesticides, motor oil, propane cylinders and car batteries are not general junk and they go to household hazardous waste rather than on a truck. Check the current intake rules at the Metro facilities before you load them into your car. Half-used cans of exterior paint are the classic find in a Portland garage, and there are usually more of them than you remember.

Timing

Do this in the dry window if you can. July through September you can stage the whole garage out onto the driveway, sort it on the concrete, and see what you actually have. Try that in January and you are sorting damp boxes in the dark under a dripping eave.

If it has to happen in winter, keep everything inside the structure and let the crew do the carrying. There is no seasonal pricing either way — a quarter load is $241 in February and $241 in August.

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