DC's rowhouses and the close-in suburbs' older homes have basements and attics — and that's where decades of stuff piles up. We carry it up the stairs and out, you don't lift a thing. Flat truck-fill price from $325, quoted from a photo, swept clean when we leave.
Send a photo of the basement or attic — flat price back in seconds
Upload a Photo & Get Quote →DC is a rowhouse town, and the older homes across Capitol Hill, Georgetown, Petworth, Bethesda, and Arlington almost all have basements and attics that fill up over the years: old furniture, boxes, tools, holiday bins, a dead water heater. Getting it back up the stairs is the hard part — which is exactly what we do. Point at what goes; we carry it up and out, separate donation from disposal, and sweep the space clean, all priced flat as truck-fill from a photo. Attic, basement, or both in one job. A pre-sale basement clear is one of the best things you can do before listing. (DC adds sales tax at checkout; in MD and VA there's no sales tax on the service.)
Stand at the bottom of the steps and take two or three wide shots. You don't need to tidy first or guess at volume — the tier comes from the picture.
A truck-fill tier comes back in seconds and holds. Tell us what's staying — the tool bench, the Christmas bins — and we work around it.
An insured crew hauls everything up and out through the alley or driveway, splits donation from disposal, and leaves the floor broom-clean.
Basements are priced by how much of the truck they fill, in seven tiers — not four. Publishing all of them matters, because the gap between "most of a basement" and "a full truck" is $195, and you should be able to see where your job lands before you book.
| Truck-fill | Flat price | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| 2/8 truck | $325 | A corner of the basement — a few pieces of furniture and a stack of boxes |
| 3/8 truck | $455 | One cleared-out room or a small English basement |
| 4/8 truck (half) | $580 | A typical rowhouse basement that's been filling since the last owner |
| 5/8 truck | $690 | Basement plus the shelving and workbench that were holding it |
| 6/8 truck | $790 | Basement plus attic, or a suburban basement with the garage |
| 7/8 truck | $890 | A deep, decades-old cellar with appliances in it |
| Full truck (8/8) | $985 | Whole-basement clear-out, floor to joists |
Stair-carry, loading, sweep-out and disposal are inside every one of those numbers. There is no stair fee and no basement surcharge — carrying it up is the service, not an add-on.
Or it's just a few things. Not every basement needs a truck. If what you're looking at is one pile and two appliances, these price individually and the $75 order minimum is the floor:
| Item | Flat price |
|---|---|
| Loose pile — small | $110 |
| Loose pile — medium | $174 |
| Loose pile — large | $280 |
| Contractor bag (each) | $55 |
| 10 bags | $178 |
| Metal shelving unit | $95 |
| Storage trunk | $95 |
| Dehumidifier | $104 |
| Chest freezer | $196 |
| Construction / demo debris | $162 per cubic yard |
| Yard waste | $119 per cubic yard |
$75 minimum on any order. Once the singles add past about $325 the truck-fill tier is the cheaper way to buy the same job — send the photo and we'll quote whichever is lower.
For outside context: HomeGuide's 2026 junk-removal cost research puts a 1-800-GOT-JUNK half-truck at roughly $400–$600 and a full truck at roughly $700–$1,000 — figures quoted after an on-site estimate, not before. Our ladder is visible above and is committed from a photograph.
DC sales tax is shown at checkout in the District. Maryland and Virginia do not tax the service — Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Silver Spring, Rockville, Arlington, Alexandria, Vienna and McLean jobs are quoted all-in.
| Option | Cost | Speed | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| DC DPW bulk trash (311) | Free | Scheduled appointment | 7 items per appointment, single-family and ≤3-unit buildings only, no construction debris — and you carry every piece up the stairs and out to the curb yourself |
| MD & VA county bulk programs | Free | Scheduled / on-call | Montgomery, Prince George's, Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax each run their own program with its own item caps and exclusions; all curbside, none same-day |
| Dumpster rental | Rental + permit | Days on your street | Needs a driveway or a permitted street space — Georgetown, Capitol Hill and Old Town rowhouse blocks often have neither. And you still do all the carrying |
| Rent a truck and self-haul | Truck + fuel + tipping | A weekend | Per-ton tipping: Fairfax County commercial disposal ≈$90/ton (FY2026); Montgomery County's Shady Grove Processing Facility & Transfer Station (Derwood) and Prince George's Brown Station Road Landfill also charge by the ton. Plus every trip up the basement stairs is yours |
| Traditional franchise hauler | ~$400–$600 half truck ~$700–$1,000 full (HomeGuide 2026) | 1–3 days | On-site estimate before you get a price; the number is set with a crew standing in your basement |
| JunkRabbit | $325–$985 flat | Same day when a slot's open | None — photo-quoted tier, carried UP the stairs, debris accepted, donation-routed, swept clean |
This is where the District's rules and a real basement collide hardest. DC DPW bulk trash — booked through 311 or dpw.dc.gov — is a genuinely useful program, and it is wrong for this job on three separate counts.
First, the cap. Bulk collection allows up to seven items per appointment. A basement that has been accumulating since the Clinton administration is not seven items. It is seven items in the first ten minutes, and then a hundred more behind them.
Second, the debris exclusion. DC DPW bulk trash explicitly does not accept renovation or construction and demolition debris. Half the basements we clear in this city have some of it in them — old paneling that came off a wall, a torn-out drop ceiling, the remains of a bathroom someone put in downstairs in 1987, the subfloor from a finishing project that stalled. The moment that's in your pile, the free option is out. We take it, priced at $162 per cubic yard.
Third, and biggest: who's even eligible. The program serves single-family homes and buildings of three units or fewer. Condos, co-ops and apartment buildings of four or more units are excluded outright — those residents are required to hire a private, licensed hauler. If you own a unit in a converted rowhouse with four flats, or a place in a Navy Yard or NoMa building, the free program was never available to you in the first place.
And every appointment is curbside. Even at seven qualifying items, the program's premise is that you have already carried each one up the basement stairs, through the house or the areaway, and out to the street. That premise is the whole reason this page exists.
Across the river and over the line it's the same shape with different paperwork: Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax County each run their own scheduled or on-call bulk programs, each with its own item caps and its own exclusions. Check yours before you count on it — and know that anything over the cap, off the schedule, made of construction debris, or coming out of a condo is our lane by design.
A basement is rarely all garbage, and sorting it on the way out is part of the job. Usable furniture and household goods go to donation — Goodwill of Greater Washington, the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity ReStore (multiple DMV locations), and A Wider Circle in Silver Spring, which furnishes homes for families leaving homelessness. Receipts follow on request; we don't put a dollar valuation on your donation, because that isn't ours to assign.
Metal goes to scrap — shelving, bed frames, the workbench legs, the exercise machine nobody used. Electronics route to the county e-waste programs rather than the landfill. And the item almost every DMV basement has at least one of: anything with refrigerant in it — the chest freezer, the second fridge, the window AC, the dehumidifier — gets EPA-certified freon recovery before it can be disposed of. That's a legal requirement and a real cost; it's inside your flat price, not bolted on afterward.
What's genuinely waste is tipped at the regional facilities — Fairfax County's I-66 and I-95 complexes on the Virginia side, Montgomery County's Shady Grove transfer station on the Maryland side. Disposal in this metro is expensive by national standards, which is exactly why our quote includes it rather than leaving it as a variable.
Here's a thing worth saying out loud, because it separates this market from half the country: DC, Maryland and Virginia homes actually have basements — unlike a lot of the cities we serve, where "basement cleanout" means a garage. That changes the physics of the job entirely. Everything here goes up, not down.
In Capitol Hill, Petworth, Brookland and Georgetown, that means English basements and cellars under Victorian and Federal rowhouses: a narrow straight run of stairs, sometimes a low header at the top, often an areaway door that's narrower than the couch that came in before the door was replaced. We carry up, turn, and go out the rear alley — which is also where the truck sits, because the front of those blocks is permit parking and a cobblestone lane in the historic districts. In Georgetown and Old Town Alexandria we're additionally careful with historic plaster, banisters and finishes; those are local-historic districts and the property care isn't optional.
In Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Rockville, Silver Spring, Vienna, Falls Church and Arlington's single-family blocks, the job is easier and bigger: a full basement plus a garage plus an attic, a driveway to back the truck into, and often a walk-out or bulkhead door that lets the whole thing move without touching the living room. Suburban jobs tend to land a tier or two higher for exactly that reason — there's more space to have filled.
And in the converted rowhouses and condo buildings, we're the licensed private hauler the District's rules require, insured and able to file a COI 48–72 hours ahead where a building asks for one.
"Twenty years in a Capitol Hill rowhouse basement — furniture, boxes, a workbench. They carried it all up the stairs, swept clean. Flat price from a photo, same-day. Didn't lift a thing."
"Cleared the attic and basement before listing in Bethesda. Donation-routed, broom-clean, realtor-ready. One fair flat price, no tax in Maryland."
"Old water heater and a basement full of junk, carried up and out. Fair flat quote, no surprises. Highly recommend."
How much does a basement cleanout cost in DC?
Truck-fill from a photo, seven tiers: 2/8 $325 · 3/8 $455 · 4/8 $580 · 5/8 $690 · 6/8 $790 · 7/8 $890 · full $985. Most single basements land between 3/8 and 6/8. If it's really only a few things, loose piles are $110 / $174 / $280 and the order minimum is $75. Stair-carry, sweep-out and disposal included.
Do I carry it up the stairs?
No. Every lift is ours, and there's no stair fee. You point; we haul.
Will DC bulk trash do this instead?
It caps at seven items per appointment, serves only single-family and ≤3-unit buildings, refuses construction and demolition debris, and is curbside — you'd still carry everything up yourself. Condos, co-ops and 4+ unit buildings are excluded entirely and must use a private licensed hauler.
Do you take renovation debris?
Yes — the thing the city program won't. $162 per cubic yard for construction and demo material, $119 per cubic yard for yard waste, $55 per contractor bag or $178 for ten.
Cheaper than a dumpster?
Usually, once you count the permit and the fact that a rowhouse block may have nowhere to put one — and a dumpster still leaves every trip up the basement stairs to you.
Cheaper than a franchise hauler?
HomeGuide's 2026 research puts 1-800-GOT-JUNK at roughly $400–$600 for a half truck and $700–$1,000 full, priced on site. Our $325–$985 ladder is published and quoted from a photo.
Attic and garage too?
Yes — basement, attic, garage and crawlspace in one visit, as a single truck-fill.
What about the old freezer down there?
A chest freezer is $196 as a single item or folded into the truck-fill, and it gets EPA-certified freon recovery either way. Same for the second fridge, the window AC and the $104 dehumidifier.
No — that is the entire point of the service. DC and the close-in suburbs are full of row houses and older homes with English basements and cellars, and getting decades of contents back UP a narrow set of stairs is the hard part of the job. You point at what goes; the crew does every lift. There is no stair fee.
No. DC DPW bulk trash, requested through 311 or dpw.dc.gov, caps each appointment at seven items and serves only single-family homes and buildings of three units or fewer. It also explicitly does not accept renovation or construction and demolition debris. A basement that has been filling for decades is neither a seven-item appointment nor guaranteed to be debris-free. Condos, co-ops and buildings of four or more units are excluded from the program outright and must use a private licensed hauler.
Yes, and this is a real gap in the municipal programs — DC DPW bulk trash refuses construction and demolition debris. Demo material prices by volume at $162 per cubic yard, yard waste at $119 per cubic yard, and contractor bags at $55 each or $178 for ten. Torn-out paneling, old subfloor, drywall from a basement-finishing job and the shelving that came down with it all go in the same load.
Usually, and it is always more predictable. HomeGuide's 2026 cost research puts a 1-800-GOT-JUNK half-truck at roughly $400 to $600 and a full truck at roughly $700 to $1,000, quoted after a crew comes out to look. Our seven-tier ladder runs $325 to $985 and is quoted from a photo before anyone drives out, with the stair-carry included rather than treated as an extra.
Rarely, in this metro. A dumpster needs a driveway or a permitted street space, and the row-house blocks of Georgetown, Capitol Hill, Petworth and Old Town Alexandria frequently have neither. It also does not solve the actual problem: a dumpster sits at the curb, and you still have to carry everything up the basement stairs and out to it yourself. We carry it up for you and the container never touches your street.
Usable furniture and household goods are routed to donation partners including Goodwill of Greater Washington, the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity ReStore and A Wider Circle in Silver Spring, with receipts on request. Metal goes to scrap, electronics to the county e-waste programs, and any refrigerant appliance down there — the chest freezer, the second fridge, the dehumidifier — gets EPA-certified freon recovery before disposal. What is genuinely waste tips at the regional transfer stations.
Yes — basement, attic, garage and crawlspace in one visit, priced as a single truck-fill rather than as separate jobs. It is the cheapest way to do it, since one arrival covers all of it.