Estate Cleanouts & Pre-Sale Cleaning in Ottawa
Empty and clean the whole property before it lists.
An estate cleanout empties a whole property: keepsakes and paperwork set aside, usable goods donated, everything else hauled, then a clean so the house can be listed or handed over. We do that across Ottawa and Gatineau, for families and for agents working to a listing date. Settle one thing first. Household goods count toward the value of an Ontario estate, so photograph and list a room before you empty it.
What we handle.
Whether you are settling an estate or prepping a home to sell, we clear it out and clean it top to bottom on one schedule. We work with families, executors, and real estate agents to sort belongings, donate usable items, and haul the rest. The result is an empty, show-ready property that photographs well.
- Full clear-out for estates, downsizes, and pre-sale prep
- Usable furniture and goods donated to local charities
- Coordinated with agents and executors on tight timelines
- Move-out deep clean so the home shows well
Everything the job covers.
Keepsakes and paperwork come out first
Room by room, before anything is loaded: photographs, letters, jewellery, and every piece of paper with a signature on it. Deeds, policies, bank statements and tax records go in one box that stays with the family. The Canada Revenue Agency wants a detailed list of the assets owned at the date of death before it will issue a clearance certificate, so that box is evidence, not sentiment.
Nothing of value leaves before it is valued
Ontario's Estate Administration Tax is charged on the value of everything owned at death, and the Ministry of Finance's page counts goods in that total. The same page says estate representatives must be able to demonstrate values with supporting documents, such as an appraiser's opinion of value, at fair market value as at the date of death, and that a representative who makes a false or misleading statement on the return may be fined at least $1,000. We photograph rooms before we touch them, and we will wait for the appraiser.
Donation, and who gets the receipt
The City of Ottawa's Bulky Waste page lists the charities that take household goods, among them the Matthew House Ottawa furniture bank, Habitat for Humanity and Helping with Furniture, several of which collect. Matthew House issues a gift tax receipt for a predetermined value, cannot accept damaged or heavily worn items, and requires drop-offs to be scheduled. The receipt goes to the donor, so the family books the pickup and we stage the items by the door.
The hazardous shelf, and its honest limit
Half-used paint, pesticides, pool chemicals, propane cylinders, motor oil, expired medication. The City lists all of those as household hazardous waste and takes them at one-day events, but the rules are strict: Ottawa residents only, no load over 100 litres, no container over 20 litres, no electronic waste, and commercial waste prohibited. We box that shelf separately. The run to an event, or to a retailer take-back listed in the City's Waste Explorer, is one the family makes.
Firearms stay where they are
If there is a gun cabinet, read the RCMP's page on transfer of firearms from estates before the room is cleared. An executor may possess firearms left in an estate while it is being settled even without a licence of their own, and is responsible for storing them safely until they are lawfully transferred or disposed of. The Canadian Firearms Program asks for form RCMP 6016 and a death certificate or letters of probate. None of it goes on our truck.
The clean the photographs will show
An empty house is not a listable house. Once the contents are gone we clean what the furniture was hiding: kitchens and bathrooms, inside cupboards and closets, windows and sills, light fixtures, baseboards and floors. Marks where pictures hung and a traffic path worn into a carpet are what a wide-angle lens finds first.
Start to finish.
Walk the property with us first
This visit is for scope and for warnings. Which rooms are sorted and which are untouched, where the paperwork was kept, whether there is a safe, a gun cabinet or an oil tank, and what the deadline is. Stairs, doorways and parking change the day more than the volume does. Call or text (613) 852-4059.
Keep, value, donate, haul
Four piles, and you decide which one anything belongs in. We do not open sealed boxes unless asked. When a family is spread across time zones we photograph as we go so decisions can be made from elsewhere, and anything anyone is unsure about stays in the keep pile.
Clear the property
Furniture, appliances, mattresses, garage and shed contents, basement storage and the loft. We lift, and we dismantle what will not fit back through the door it came in. Metal, electronics and usable furniture come out of the load as it is loaded, not afterwards.
Clean to the listing date
The deep clean is timed to the photography rather than to our schedule, so the shoot walks into a finished house. If flooring or a wall needs work before the camera arrives, we say so instead of cleaning around it.
Three garbage items a fortnight will not empty a house.
The City of Ottawa's curbside garbage collection page sets the limit at three items every two weeks, where an item is one bag, one bin under 140 litres and 15 kg with a removable lid, or one bulky item. Furniture counts as a bulky item. Anything above the limit has to go out in a City branded yellow bag, large bulky items and furniture cannot be bagged at all, and what is left behind gets a courtesy tag instead of a collection. Two more rules catch estates in particular. The City's Special items page excludes appliances from collection outright, naming stoves, refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, dryers, dishwashers, hot water tanks, furnaces and oil tanks, and it excludes electronic waste on the same page. So the fridge, the chest freezer downstairs and the old television are three problems the curb will never solve. At three items a fortnight, a full house is a multi-year project, and listing dates are shorter than that.
What drives the price.
An estate cleanout is quoted on what leaves and how it has to leave, never by the hour. What moves the number: how much of the house is contents rather than fittings, the weight of it, stairs and doorway access, how much sorting you want done rather than doing it yourselves, whether goods are staged for a charity pickup or loaded straight onto the truck, and whether a deep clean follows. A firm listing date costs something too, because it compresses a week of work into two days. Two things sit outside the price and should: appraisal, which belongs to an appraiser, and household hazardous waste, which the City's events reserve for residents and refuse as commercial waste. Tell us the property, the deadline and roughly how full it is on (613) 852-4059, and the number comes before anything is lifted.
Estate & Pre-Sale Cleaning, answered.
Still unsure? Call or text (613) 852-4059 and we will tell you straight.
It is priced by the job, on volume, weight, access, how much sorting is wanted and whether a clean follows, and we quote before anything is loaded. A three-bedroom bungalow with a finished basement and a full garage is a different job from an apartment the family has already stripped of personal items, though both get called an estate cleanout. One photo of each room is enough for a first number.
Ask the estate lawyer rather than us, but here is why it matters. Ontario's Estate Administration Tax is calculated on the value of everything owned at death, goods included, and the Ministry of Finance requires estate representatives to demonstrate those values with supporting documents. The Canada Revenue Agency wants a detailed list of assets before it issues a clearance certificate, and a representative who distributes assets without one can be personally liable. Photograph and list first.
Usable furniture and household goods go to donation. The City of Ottawa's Bulky Waste page lists the charities that take them and notes that several of them collect. Matthew House Ottawa issues a gift tax receipt for a predetermined value, will not take damaged or heavily worn items, and requires drop-offs to be scheduled. Metal and electronics are separated as we load. Disposal is what is left over, not the first move.
Usually, and it turns on three things: how much is in the house, whether the family has decided what it is keeping, and access. The part that slips is rarely the hauling. It is a keep pile still being argued over on the morning of the clean. Give us the photography date when you call and we work backwards from it.
Those are household hazardous waste, and the City names paints, pesticides, pool chemicals, propane cylinders, motor oil and pharmaceuticals among them. It runs one-day drop-off events on set dates and lists each year's schedule on its household hazardous waste page. The rules: Ottawa residents only, nothing over 100 litres in a load, no container over 20 litres, no electronic waste, no commercial waste. We box that shelf separately and the family makes the run.
Yes, and agents and executors book this work regularly, usually when the family is out of province or too far into the process to want another site visit. We need one named decision maker, written confirmation of what is being kept, and the listing date. What we will not do is decide on someone else's behalf which of their parents' things were keepsakes.
Where these facts come from
The City's Special items page is where the appliance and electronics exclusions above come from. It is the list that decides what the curb will never take out of a house, whatever the three-item limit allows in a given fortnight. The household hazardous waste page carries the drop-off rules and each year's event dates.
Need estate & pre-sale cleaning?
Call or text for an up-front quote. Same-day and next-day service across Ottawa and Gatineau.