What a garage cleanout costs in the Washington DC area

The short answer

Garages price by volume:

Named items that come out of garages here price separately if the rest is light: lawn mower $65, riding mower or lawn tractor $152, snow blower $71, bicycle $37, tires as a set of four $87, single tire $22, rolling tool chest or workbench $100, metal shelving $71, ladder $33.

A DC garage is not one thing

This metro has three unrelated structures that all get called a garage, and they clear differently.

The suburban two-car. Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville, Falls Church, Annandale, Vienna, Springfield, Fairfax. Attached or detached, driveway in front, wide door. Easiest possible job. Also the fullest, because a garage with easy access accumulates for twenty years.

The alley bay behind a rowhouse. Capitol Hill, Brookland, Petworth, Takoma, Mount Pleasant. A single-width brick or cinderblock structure opening onto a service alley, often with a door that sticks and a roof that has leaked at some point. The constraint is the alley: whether a truck can turn into it, and whether a neighbor's contractor van or construction dumpster is blocking it.

The carriage house. Georgetown, parts of the Hill, older Alexandria. Sometimes converted to a dwelling, sometimes still a garage, always on an alley too narrow for a box truck. The crew carries out to the street.

What is in a DC-area garage

The contents track how long the household has been here, and this is a region where household tenure is bimodal -- people either leave in two to four years or they stay thirty.

The long-tenure garage in Montgomery or Fairfax County holds: a riding mower that stopped working in a specific year nobody remembers, a workbench, shelving with paint on it, sports equipment from children who are now adults, patio furniture that got replaced, a chest freezer running in the corner, and cardboard.

The short-tenure garage or alley bay holds furniture from a previous lease, boxes never unpacked from a previous posting, and bicycles. A lot of bicycles.

Both come out the same way, but the second is faster and usually a quarter to half truck rather than a full one.

Paint, fuel and the things to set aside

Garages are where household hazardous material accumulates, and this is the part to plan around rather than surprise anyone with.

Latex and oil paint, gasoline, solvents, pool chemicals, pesticides and old car batteries are handled through jurisdictional hazardous-waste channels, and DC, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax all run these differently. Check your own jurisdiction's current household hazardous waste page for what it takes and when.

What does price normally: paint in a one-gallon can is $30, a five-gallon bucket is $52, and a propane tank at 20 lb is $33. Set anything questionable aside in a visible spot and flag it when you book rather than burying it in the pile.

The exercise equipment layer

A surprising share of DC-area garage jobs are really home-gym removals. Basements in this region are damp in summer, so the equipment ends up in the garage instead, and then it ends up unused.

A typical Arlington garage gym -- treadmill, weight set, bench -- is $115 + $93 + $69 = $277.

Access and the alley

For suburban garages the driveway solves it and there is nothing to plan. For anything on a District alley there is.

• Can a truck turn in? Many rowhouse service alleys in Petworth, Brookland and Hill East take a box truck comfortably. Georgetown and Sheridan-Kalorama alleys frequently do not. If not, the crew carries to the street -- no charge, more time.
• Is it blocked? The most common cause of a wasted window in this city is a neighbor's construction dumpster or contractor van parked mid-alley. Look the morning of.
• Does the door open? Alley-bay doors that have not been lifted in two years sometimes do not. Try it before the crew is booked.
• Is it permit-parked out front? If the alley is out, the street is the fallback, and residential blocks are permit-parked. Mid-day windows work best.

Timing it

Two sensible windows in this region. Late autumn, before the first ice storm, when nobody wants to be moving a mower in January and the garage still has to hold a car. And early spring, after the freeze and before the humidity sets in, which is also when the mulch and yard-project debris shows up -- yard waste is $88, a bundle of lumber scrap is $41.

Avoid the deep summer if you can. Not for price -- there is no seasonal pricing -- but because a garage in an August heat index in this metro is a genuinely unpleasant place to spend a morning sorting.

Three garages, priced

• Capitol Hill alley bay, mostly bikes and boxes. Quarter truck, $241.
• Silver Spring one-car, twenty years of shelving and yard tools. Half truck, $431.
• Vienna two-car, riding mower included. Three-quarter truck at $587 plus the riding mower at $152, so $587 + $152 = $739.

The minimum visit is $75, and there is no charge for stairs, alley carries or disposal.

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