What Washington DC residents actually pay for junk removal

The short answer

The middle of the market in this metro is one or two big items plus a few small ones. That is $126 to $431 for most households. Below it, a single item with a $75 floor. Above it, the whole-house numbers: $587 for three-quarters of a truck, $732 for a full one.

What pushes a DC job up is rarely square footage. It is the number of turnovers a property has absorbed. A Capitol Hill rowhouse that has rented to four sets of Hill staffers in eight years accumulates in a different way than a house someone has lived in since 1998 -- less heirloom furniture, more abandoned IKEA, more mattresses.

The single-item end

This is where the $75 minimum does the work. A Dupont studio getting rid of one floor lamp at $36 and one small area rug at $33 does not pay $69; the visit is $75.

Common single items and their published prices:

• Sofa -- $126
• Queen mattress -- $103
• Standard refrigerator -- $164
• Washer -- $133
• TV, 42" to 65" -- $68
• Treadmill -- $115
• Standard dresser -- $126

Anything on that list on its own clears the minimum, which means the published price is what you pay.

The bedroom and living-room end

The most-booked job shape in the District is one room, emptied. A guest room in a Petworth rowhouse -- queen mattress and box spring as a set at $143, plus the metal frame at $68 -- is $143 + $68 = $211. Add the nightstand at $57 and it is $268.

A living room in a Columbia Heights one-bedroom -- sofa at $126, coffee table at $67, large area rug at $68 -- is $126 + $67 + $68 = $261.

These are the numbers that surprise people in the right direction. The assumption is that carrying a sofa down a rowhouse stair with a turn at the landing costs more than carrying it out of a ground-floor unit. It does not.

The turnover end

This metro runs on cycles. Congressional staff turn over heavily after an election and again in January. Contractors move when a recompete lands. Embassy and international-organization families rotate on two- and three-year postings. Georgetown, GW, Howard, American, Catholic and UMD College Park all empty out in the same few weeks of May.

The job that comes out of all that is the same job: a furnished unit that has to be unfurnished before the walkthrough. In a one-bedroom that is usually half a truck at $431. In a two-bedroom group house in Eckington or Trinidad it is three-quarters at $587, because the third bedroom was a den and the den has a mattress in it.

A furnished basement unit that has to go entirely -- sofa, queen set, dresser, desk, TV -- prices at $126 + $143 + $126 + $83 + $68 = $546, which is why the three-quarter truck at $587 is often the cleaner buy.

The whole-house end

Full-truck jobs at $732 in DC are typically one of three things. An estate in Chevy Chase, Cleveland Park or Wesley Heights where the house has been lived in for four decades. A rowhouse being cleared before a gut renovation in Shaw or Bloomingdale. Or a long-tenured suburban house in Silver Spring, Falls Church or Annandale where the basement has never been fully emptied.

Large houses in this region tend to have more attic than people expect and more below-grade storage than they admit. The cape cods and split-levels across Montgomery County, the brick colonials in Arlington, the DC rowhouse cellars -- all of them hold decades. Photos in advance are worth doing properly for these.

What DC residents do not pay

The line items that are not on the bill matter as much as the ones that are:

• No stair charge. Eleven steps up to a Capitol Hill front door, then two flights inside, is the same price as a ground-floor handoff.
• No below-grade charge. English basements under the stoop, with the tight exterior stair, are not a surcharge.
• No building charge. High-rise work in Navy Yard, NoMa, Rosslyn, Ballston, Tysons or Bethesda involves a certificate of insurance and a freight-elevator reservation. We produce the certificate. It is not billed.
• No disposal fee. Disposal is inside the item price.
• No same-day premium. Availability varies; the price does not.

How people here actually decide

Most DC residents comparing options are weighing three things: their own Saturday, a rented van, and a booked pickup. The van math is real but incomplete -- it assumes you can park it, and on a permit-parked block in Mount Pleasant or a one-way in Old Town Alexandria, you often cannot, not legally and not for the length of time a loading job takes.

The second unpriced cost is the second trip. Almost nobody clears a DC rowhouse in one van load, because rowhouses are deep and narrow and hold more than their footprint suggests.

The third is the walkthrough deadline. If a property manager in Ballston or a landlord in Bethesda has a date, the item that is still in the unit on that date is the expensive one, not the pickup.

Six real job shapes and their totals

• One mirror, Kalorama apartment -- $75 minimum.
• Sofa only, Logan Circle walk-up -- $126.
• Guest bedroom, Petworth rowhouse -- $143 + $68 = $211.
• Kitchen swap, Silver Spring -- refrigerator and electric range, $164 + $134 = $298.
• One-bedroom turnover, Navy Yard high-rise -- half truck, $431.
• Estate in Cleveland Park -- full truck, $732.

Photograph what is going, book it, see the number before a truck leaves. That is the whole process.

Frequently asked questions