The Whole-House Cleanout Checklist

The whole-house cleanout is the most common job we run that is not attached to a storm or a contractor. Somebody is moving, or downsizing, or finally dealing with a garage that stopped being a garage in about 2014.

It is also the job people most consistently underestimate, in a specific and predictable way: they estimate the volume correctly and get the schedule badly wrong. A cleanout is not limited by how much fits in the box. It is limited by how many decisions a person can make in a day.

Here is how to plan one so the container is on the drive during the days you are actually working.

Start with the honest question

Is this a declutter, a move-out, or a clear-to-empty? They are three different jobs with three different answers.

• A declutter keeps most of the house. It is selective, it is slow, and it produces a surprisingly small volume of true waste once donation and resale are working.
• A move-out has a hard date and a lease or closing behind it. Volume is high, decisions are already made, and speed matters more than sorting.
• A clear-to-empty — a rental turnover, a property being prepared for sale, an inherited house — is the biggest of the three. If it is an inherited house, use the estate cleanout checklist instead, because the sequence is genuinely different.

Sizing it, without the guesswork

For a whole-house declutter, the 20-yard is the default answer and it is right most of the time. Household contents are bulky rather than dense — furniture, mattresses, clothing, boxes, toys, carpet — so volume is the binding constraint and a 20 gives you room to be decisive.

Around that:

• 10-yard — one or two rooms, a garage, a single-room remodel, or anything heavy. Small boxes exist for weight, not for small jobs.
• 15-yard — a large garage, a basement strip, a serious but not total declutter.
• 30-yard — a full house plus a basement, or a house plus outbuildings. Bulky light material only.

Three things move the answer, and all three are local:

1. Is there a basement? On this corridor there usually is. Both counties publish a 30-inch frost line — Weld County lists a 30-inch frost line depth in its design criteria and Larimer County states a 30-inch minimum frost depth countywide — and where a builder is already digging that deep, a full basement follows. A basement is not a bonus room for sizing purposes; it is another floor of contents. See the basement and crawlspace guide.
2. Is there a shop, a barn or a shed? In farm country these hold more, and heavier, than the house.
3. How much paper? Books, files, magazines and ledgers are the densest thing in a house by a distance. A room of them will reach lawful payload in a small container while the box still looks half empty.

Full arithmetic in our sizing guide. When in doubt, one container plus a scheduled second pull beats a bigger box that cannot be hauled full.

The order that actually works

Top down, back to front, and one room finished before the next one is started.

1. Attic and upper floors first. Gravity is free, and the stairs get harder as the day goes on, not easier.
2. Then the main floor, room by room, closing each one out.
3. Then the basement, which is the slowest space per cubic yard in any house.
4. Garage and outbuildings last, because they double as staging while everything else is moving.

Within a room, the four-stream rule: keep, sell, donate, dispose, decided before you pick the item up. The most expensive habit in a cleanout is picking something up, thinking about it, and putting it back down in the same place.

Call the charity before delivery day. What gets accepted changes constantly, and upholstered furniture and mattresses are frequently refused.

What cannot go in the container

This list is shorter in Colorado than in a lot of states, and it is different from what people bring with them from elsewhere.

• Electronics. Banned from Colorado landfills since 1 July 2013 under C.R.S. § 25-17-303, which prohibits disposing of an electronic device, or a component of one, in a landfill in this state. The landfills serving this corridor list electronic waste as prohibited. Televisions, monitors, computers, printers, stereos, cables.
• Tires. Refused outright by the landfills here, and Colorado’s waste tire rules require state registration to transport ten or more.
• Household hazardous waste. Paint, stain, thinner, solvents, motor oil, antifreeze, pesticides, herbicides, pool chemicals, lead-acid batteries, fluorescent and mercury-containing bulbs, propane cylinders.
• Appliances with refrigerant — refrigerators, freezers, window units, dehumidifiers. These need professional coolant removal before a scrapyard will take them.
• Medications and sharps. Pharmacy or law enforcement take-back, and a sharps program.

Where the hazardous material goes. Weld County residents have two free household hazardous waste facilities: 1311 North 17th Avenue, Greeley, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and 5500 Highway 52, Dacono, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (970) 400-2217. Limits: 200 pounds per household per visit, nothing in containers over five gallons, no leaking containers, nothing in plastic bags. Electronics and appliances are not accepted there.

And a Kelim address is a Larimer County address. That is not intuitive when the mail says Johnstown, but Kelim is an unincorporated community in Larimer County, and Johnstown itself straddles both counties — the historic Parish Avenue core on the Weld side, the whole I-25 corridor on the Larimer side. Larimer residents use the Central Diversion and Transfer Station, 2388 W. Trilby Road, Fort Collins, (970) 498-5772. Our county line guide explains why the address matters more than the town.

Neither county collects residential waste, incidentally. In the Town of Johnstown, refuse collection is provided by contract under § 7-61(a) and billed monthly with the water bill under § 7-65(a), so the service is tied to the water tap rather than to the property line. That is worth knowing when a cleanout produces more than the regular cart will ever take.

Everything in one place: our Colorado disposal rules guide.

Yard waste is a different rule here than most people expect

If the cleanout runs outside — overgrown beds, an old fence line, brush — do not carry another state’s rule across. Colorado has no statewide landfill ban on yard waste, and the landfills serving this area advertise accepting yard waste and tree branches. Composting is widely available too, and some haulers and towns route green waste separately. Details, including why sod and soil will overweight a box faster than anything, are in the yard waste and brush guide.

If the cleanout turns into a remodel

It often does. Somebody pulls the carpet, and then the vinyl under it, and then the cabinets.

Two rules apply the moment it becomes demolition rather than clearing, and both are Colorado rules that differ from what people bring from other states.

Asbestos, in anything built before 1989. Colorado treats it as an air quality matter, under CDPHE’s Air Pollution Control Division, Regulation No. 8, Part B. Single-family triggers are 32 square feet or 50 linear feet on pipes — much tighter than the commercial figures most people remember. A ten working-day notification is required for removal above triggers or for any demolition activity, an inspection by a certified asbestos building inspector comes first, and buildings built after 12 October 1988 with documentation confirming no asbestos-containing materials are exempt. Residential fees run $60 to $180. CDPHE asbestos: 720-507-5136, cdphe.colorado.gov. It never goes in a rented container.

Lead paint, in anything built before 1978, for compensated work disturbing painted surfaces. Colorado is not an EPA-authorized RRP state — firms certify with EPA directly. epa.gov.

Most of this market is well clear of both. Johnstown’s median year built is 2007, 71.8 percent of the housing dates from 2000 or later, and only about one home in ten predates 1980. The pre-1978 stock is a small, concentrated pocket in the old core rather than something spread across the subdivisions. If your house is in that pocket, the two questions above are the first two questions. If it was built in 2004, they are not questions at all.

Where the box goes

On a driveway, a yard or a private parking area, no right-of-way permit is in play at all. That covers nearly every residential cleanout.

If any part of the container has to sit on public property inside the Town of Johnstown, § 7-35 is explicit: no person shall place, store or maintain a dumpster on any public property unless expressly authorized in writing by the Town, and placement in violation is considered a nuisance. § 11-23 requires a Town right-of-way permit for work of any kind in the public right-of-way. Town Hall: 970-587-4664, johnstownco.gov. Outside town limits it depends on which county owns the road — Weld Public Works (970) 400-4000, Larimer Engineering (970) 498-5709. Our permits guide has all of it.

Wherever it goes, it goes five feet clear of combustible walls, openings and combustible roof eave lines. That is the 2024 International Fire Code as adopted by the Town of Johnstown — § 304.3.5 at 1.5 cubic yards or more, and § 304.3.4 at 1.0 cubic yard with an exception for noncombustible containers. Every roll-off is far above both. Front Range Fire Rescue will answer a placement question at 970-587-4464. In unincorporated Weld County the county enforces no fire code at all — the fire district is the authority.

We bring plywood for under the wheels and the rails. The driveway protection guide covers what to clear and what to flag before we arrive.

Loading it properly

• Heavy and low first, spread along the floor of the box rather than piled at the back door.
• Break things down. Furniture, shelving, boxes. Air is the expensive part of a cleanout.
• Stay below the top rail. A load above the rails cannot be legally hauled and cannot be covered.
• Cover it. Chinook downslope windstorms are a real Front Range hazard here — NOAA has recorded Front Range gusts as high as 137 mph — and packaging, foam and insulation leave an open box quickly. Front Range Landfill also publishes that uncovered or unsecured loads will be charged double.

A word about timing the season

Spring here starts later than newcomers plan for. The average last frost near Greeley is 12 May, and the first fall frost around 8 October — roughly a 149-day growing season. If your cleanout includes anything outdoors, March is optimistic. May is realistic.

Winter is workable indoors, and often quieter for scheduling, as long as the driveway is cleared and sanded on delivery day. The busiest fortnights of our year are the ones after a big hail event, when every roofing crew in the county wants a box the same morning — if your cleanout can dodge that window, it will get an easier delivery slot.

The short version

1. Decide which of the three jobs this is.
2. Count the floors, the basement and the outbuildings, then size on volume, with paper and dirt as the exceptions.
3. Pull the four prohibited streams out first: electronics, tires, hazardous waste, refrigerant appliances.
4. Book the container for the days you will actually be working.
5. Top down, back to front, one room closed before the next opens.
6. Load heavy low, break things down, stay under the rails, cover it.

Tell us the address, the square footage, whether there is a basement and whether there are outbuildings, and we will tell you the box. We have been doing this out of our yard on the Kelim frontage road since 2013. Call HJP Dumpster Rental at (970) 427-0341. Residential service · junk removal · sizes · FAQ.