Did you know that shoppers replace their furniture every 7 to 15 years on average? While it doesn’t happen often, the furniture removal process isn’t always an easy one.
If you have an old dresser or sofa junking up your home, you’re probably looking at options for removal companies. If you choose the wrong company, your furniture removal experience might look uglier than that old sofa!
The following guide will explain how to choose a furniture removal company for the best results.
What Is a Furniture Removal Company?
A furniture removal company helps you get old furniture you no longer want out of houses and businesses. Their services typically include removing things like sofas, chairs, tables, beds, and entertainment centers.
The entire process of removing unwanted furniture is simple from start to finish. First, you must contact a trusted service and set up a time for pick up.
Then, a team of haulers shows up at your home in trucks or vans to load up your old furniture. After your furniture gets loaded, they haul it away to a disposal or recycling center. Sometimes furniture gets collected for donations depending on its condition.
Keep in mind that the removal process may vary slightly from one company to another. For example, an antique furniture removal service might have a different procedure.
Some companies also offer extra services like packing and dismantling furniture. Others might have their customers prepare the furniture for the move on their own.
Licensing and Insurance
When choosing the professional movers, start by making sure potential selections have the proper licenses. It’s especially important if you plan to get rid of paints, oils, or harmful chemicals along with your furniture.
Selecting a licensed removal business lets you know that they’ll remove items safely. It also ensures the safety of the team they send to haul away your junk.
Insurance is also critical for removal services to have. Typically, a furniture removal business needs to have commercial liability insurance, insured vehicles, and workers’ compensation.
Insurance becomes even more important if you have large items like hot tubs to remove. If you want to donate furniture items, it also protects their value in case any damage occurs.
Comparing Furniture Removal Costs
Typically, removal services charge customers based on how many square feet of junk they need to have removed. For furniture removal services, companies might charge based on weight and dimension.
Your location’s distance from the removal service might also affect the final price you pay. If they have to travel a long distance to get to your home, that means they’ll spend more on gas.
Make sure to compare several junk removal services and use their estimate calculators if possible. After that, you can line up each of their costs and determine which company fits your budget the best.
Expect to pay about $550 for an average furniture removal job. If it’s much higher than that, look for a cheaper service. If it’s much lower, it might show that the company doesn’t give a quality service.
Reading Online Reviews
Customer service makes all the difference in most industries and the same goes for furniture removal. Professional removal companies must offer great communication to their customers.
You’ll want to find a friendly removal company that seems helpful and if they don’t, consider it a red flag and move on. It shouldn’t be hard to get a hold of a company or have your removal questions answered.
To save a lot of time on this step, read online reviews for different removal companies. Reading about other customers’ experiences with a company is a useful tool when making your own choice.
Review things like testimonials on their websites, Google Reviews, Yelp reviews, and Facebook comments to gather information. If you come across a lot of five-star and raving reviews, that’s a great sign.
You don’t need to spend a ton of time reading every review out there. Just try to read enough reviews to get a clear idea of how a particular removal company operates.
Tools and Equipment
Different types of furniture removal might require specific types of tools and equipment. At the very least, professional removal services should include trucks, safety eyewear, gloves, masks, rakes, shovels, and garbage bins.
For heavy furniture, they might need different dollys and equipment to help move it out. Some companies even use hydraulic dollys to make moving heavy furniture a breeze.
Accepted Items
Before you hire a furniture removal company, make sure they actually accept the items you want to have removed. Always give them a detailed breakdown of the furniture items you need help with.
A detailed breakdown also lets them know what tools and vehicles to bring to your job. If they have to leave and come back because you surprise them with items, they might add fees.
Typically, junk removal companies accept just about all common furniture items. However, if you need help removing items like vehicles, paint, or oil, you’ll want to call and confirm that they handle those items.
Disposal Methods
It’s important to know where your furniture ends up after a removal service hauls it off. You don’t want your old furniture sitting in a landfill for years.
Ask removal service candidates if they recycle to reduce the environmental impact of your old furniture. Ask if they donate to any charities if they don’t practice recycling. Of course, your furniture must be in usable condition if you want it donated.
Check out the removal companies’ websites and see if they mention eco-friendly practices. If they do, that’s a good sign if you appreciate sustainability. Most likely, they try to reuse hauled-off items and keep them out of landfills.
Recycled Furniture
If the furniture removal service you choose recycles, it’s good to understand the process. First, recycling centers prefer furniture that’s made from wood and metal.
Wooden furniture might get recycled into soil conditioners, paper pulps, bulking materials for sewage, and compost. The animal industry often uses recycled wood for bedding.
The biomass industry burns recycled wood to for fuel to create electricity and steam. Some wood gets recycled into engineered wood types such as plywood, laminate, and particleboard. For mulch, wooden furniture can’t contain preservatives or treatments.
Recycling centers take wooden furniture and remove any fasteners and contaminants. Then, they process the wood by grinding or chipping it into small pieces. They collect any nails through a nail collection system in the grinding machine.
Metal furniture pieces require a multi-step process before they’re repurposed. After the furniture removal company drops it off at a recycling center, workers sort through the material.
They look for metals such as aluminum, copper, steel, brass, and iron. The recycling center uses magnates and other machines to sort through the metal.
Then, the sorted and separated metal materials go into big industrial shredding machines for processing. At this point, the metal materials get melted down, purified, and solidified in bars or sheets to move to a new location.
You’ll find many recycled metals in appliances, building materials, cars, aerospace materials, doors, and windows. It’s a great use for that desk, chair, or TV that’s sitting around cluttering up your home!
Extra Services
Sometimes you need more than just one piece of furniture removed, so ask about other services. Instead of hiring multiple companies, you might only need one which could save both time and money.
For example, some removal companies also offer move-in and move-out cleaning services. Moving is stressful and time-consuming, so if they clean up after removing items, it’s very helpful!
Some companies have added services designed specifically for cardboard items. Others off large bags for customers to throw their junk in, and then the company hauls it off. Look into added services and it might sway your decision to hire a particular company.
Preparing for Removal
There are a few things you can do before a removal company arrives to help speed up the process. First, make sure there isn’t any clutter on the floor like laundry or toys. You don’t want movers to trip over your belongings and hurt themselves!
Some furniture items might not fit through your doorways without a little help. Remove door stoppers from behind doors to get a few extra inches to work with.
In some cases, you might need to take doors completely off the hinges so that the opening is big enough. Keep in mind that movers can do this on their own, it’s just a way to accelerate your furniture removal process if you’re pressed for time.
If you have to move other furniture in your home to clear a path, make sure you do it properly. Don’t drag heavy furniture or you might damage your flooring. Instead, use a blanket underneath the furniture so that it easily slides from one place to another.
If you’re prepping your home and find that an item weighs too much, don’t try to move it. Just wait until the removal company arrives instead of risking injury or damage to your home.
Financial Benefits
Furniture removal companies use large trucks to get rid of your heavy furniture. Even if you have a truck and break down furniture into several pieces, making multiple trips takes a lot of gas.
They also have skilled team members who understand how to safely move furniture. If you hurt yourself, the medical expenses could far outweigh the costs of removal services.
As mentioned before, removal companies have a lot of pricey equipment that they use to haul away furniture. If you buy the tools and equipment on your own, you might only use them once and waste your money.
Even if you think you can remove furniture on your own, you might have to take off work to do it. If you miss out on money to move furniture, you might as well have hired professionals to do the job.
Time-Saving Benefits
After a long week of work, you don’t want to spend the weekend moving old furniture. Removal services save you time and hassle so that you can do the things you love.
Not to mention, professionals work more efficiently and get jobs done faster. If you need to get furniture out quickly because you’re moving, there’s no time to waste.
You might also learn valuable moving tips throughout the process if you watch what the movers do. This way, you can save time moving other items on your own in the future.
If you injure yourself trying to quickly remove items, it might halt the job for weeks or months. It might seem like a lot of effort to contact and vet different companies, but it still saves a ton of time in the long run!
Life gets stressful and moving junk out of your home doesn’t have to add to that stress. Let the pros do the heavy lifting and spend your personal time relaxing and taking care of yourself.
Choose a Furniture Removal Company
Now you can choose a furniture removal company with total confidence. Finding the right service means you’ll save time and money, and even help the environment in some cases! Don’t let that dingy couch ruin your home’s style any longer.
Remember this guide and don’t forget to ask junk removal services all the necessary questions before making a final decision. Take a look around our blog’s home improvement category for more helpful moving tips.
James Martin is a passionate writer and the founder of OnTimeMagazines & EastLifePro. He loves to write principally about technology trends. He loves to share his opinion on what’s happening in tech around the world.
