The pile usually isn’t the hard part. The errands are.
Say you finally clear out the garage in Tigard or the spare room in Beaverton. The good dresser should be donated. The broken shelving is trash. The old TV can’t legally go in the garbage. There are half a dozen paint cans hiding under the workbench, a mattress nobody wants, and a rusted grill that’s mostly metal. Every one of those belongs somewhere different, and every one of those places has its own hours and rules.
That’s the part nobody puts on the to-do list. Here’s what a do-it-yourself cleanout really looks like in the Portland metro, and what one call to a junk removal crew replaces.
The six-stop DIY cleanout
If you want to do it right, a typical mixed garage or basement cleanout can mean all of these:
- Stop 1: A donation center. Goodwill or a Habitat for Humanity ReStore, for the furniture and household goods that still have life in them. Expect some things to be turned away. Donation centers often refuse stained upholstery, broken furniture, and anything missing parts.
- Stop 2: A transfer station. The true trash goes to Metro South in Oregon City or Metro Central in Northwest Portland. There’s a $51 minimum for garbage, and you unload it yourself. Our Portland dump guide has the full rates and hours.
- Stop 3: An e-waste drop-off. TVs, computers, and monitors are banned from Oregon garbage. Free drop-off sites take them, but it’s a separate trip. The details are in our guide to Oregon’s e-waste rules.
- Stop 4: A paint drop-off. Leftover paint goes to a PaintCare site (many paint stores, like Sherwin-Williams and Miller Paint, take it back) or to one of Metro’s hazardous waste facilities, which also accept household chemicals from residents for free.
- Stop 5: A mattress drop-off. Oregon’s Bye Bye Mattress program runs free collection sites, as long as the mattress is dry and reasonably intact. Our mattress guide walks through your options.
- Stop 6: A scrap yard. Old grills, metal bed frames, bike frames, and shelving brackets are worth recycling as scrap metal.
And before any of that, you need a truck or trailer big enough to hold it all, a second set of hands for the heavy pieces, and a Saturday you were probably planning to use for something else.
The part that never shows up on a receipt
The dump fee is easy to count. The rest is harder:
- Loading. Carrying a couch down a staircase or a freezer out of a basement is the slowest and most injury-prone part of the whole job.
- Driving. Those six stops are spread across the metro. Metro South is a long haul from Hillsboro, and a paint drop-off and a scrap yard are rarely next door to each other.
- Scheduling. Every stop keeps its own hours, so the order you visit them in matters.
- The second trip. A mixed load rarely fits in one pickup bed, and whatever gets rejected at the donation center rides home with you.
None of that means you can’t do it yourself. It’s just the real size of the job.
What one call covers
Here’s how the same cleanout goes when you hand it to a crew:
- You text photos of the pile to (503) 455-7920 and get a quote back, usually the same day.
- We show up in the scheduled window and load everything from wherever it sits: garage, attic, basement, or backyard. You don’t carry a thing.
- We sort it on our end. Usable items go to local charities first. Metal gets recycled. Electronics go to proper e-waste recycling. Paint and household chemicals are handled separately. Only the true junk goes to the transfer station.
- We sweep up before we leave.
Six stops become one visit. And because donating costs less than dumping, every donated item takes $5–$10 off your bill. That’s what donation-first hauling means, and it’s the order we actually unload the truck.
One call also covers the things most haulers refuse. We take e-waste, styrofoam, paint, and household chemicals in the same trip as everything else (call for pricing on those items). Asbestos is the one thing we can’t take.
What it costs
Straight numbers from our published pricing:
- Minimum pick-up: $150
- Single items: $150–$240
- Small load (5×10 dump trailer, up to 2,000 lbs): $240–$600
- Medium load (6×12 trailer, up to 5,000 lbs): $600–$960
- Large load (7×14 trailer, up to 7,000 lbs): $960–$1,200
Heavy materials like concrete, dirt, and roofing are quoted by weight. Every job is quoted from photos first, and the price we quote is the price you pay. The full breakdown is in what junk removal costs in Portland.
When doing it yourself still makes sense
We’d rather be honest than oversell. DIY is often the better call when:
- It’s one or two items you can lift, and they’re all headed to the same place.
- You already own a truck and have a free afternoon.
- Your project creates debris a little at a time over several weeks, like a DIY remodel. A rented dumpster may fit better there, and we compare both honestly in dumpster rental vs. junk hauler.
But if the pile is mixed, heavy, or sitting behind a flight of stairs, one call is usually the faster way to get your weekend back.
What we haul in one trip
Most cleanouts we do across Tigard, Beaverton, Tualatin, Lake Oswego, Sherwood, Hillsboro, and West Linn are a mix of furniture, appliances, electronics, boxes and bags of household junk, and yard debris. For a whole home, see our full house cleanout service.
Text photos of your pile to (503) 455-7920 for a free quote. One call, one visit, and every stop on that list handled.
FAQ
Do I have to sort anything before you arrive?
No. Just set aside anything you want to keep. We sort donations, recycling, and disposal on our end after everything is loaded.
Can you take paint and old electronics in the same trip as furniture?
Yes. E-waste, styrofoam, paint, and household chemicals can ride along with everything else. Call for pricing on those items. Asbestos is the one exception.
Do I need to be home when you come?
Often, no. Text us photos, let us know how we’ll get access, and we’ll send photos when the job is done. You can pay remotely by credit or debit card (card payments add a 3% processing fee), ACH, Zelle, or Venmo.
All Oregon Junk Removal — family-owned since 2021, serving the Portland metro and Salem. 4.9★ from 240+ Google reviews.