Basement cleanout in Norwood Park, Chicago: four appliances, one morning, $950 flat

The sign on the freezer door was printed in five colors, one word per line: Secure hook after closing freezer. Someone had cared about that freezer for a long time. By the time we got the call, it was on its way out. It shared a Norwood Park basement with a laundromat-grade washer, a dryer, and years of “we'll deal with it later,” with an old tube TV waiting upstairs.

What was actually in this basement?

The house is a century-old Chicago home in Norwood Park, on the city's Far Northwest Side. That means a classic block-wall basement where everything has to come up the stairs, the same way it went down. Here's the list the homeowner sent with their photos, plus why each piece mattered for the quote:

Why did the homeowner finally call?

The request in the booking was simple: take everything in the photos and collect payment on site. The fine print came from the house itself. A basement like this is the room where stuff goes when nobody has the time, the truck, or three strong friends to carry a freezer up the stairs.

From the homeowner's side, three things were in the way:

• Nobody could lift it. A commercial washer isn't a two-person job with a borrowed dolly. It needs a crew that moves appliances every day.
• The city route doesn't fit a basement. Chicago's bulk pickup needs large items out at the curb or alley first, so the hardest part, the stairs, is still on you.
• The freezer was costing money. Old basement freezers keep running long after they stop being useful. ENERGY STAR says a new certified upright freezer costs about $60 a year to run, and decades-old units use far more.

That's the gap our basement junk removal service fills. We go down, carry it up, protect the floors and doorways on the way out, and you don't touch any of it.

What did the morning look like from the truck?

From our side, the job was set up before anyone drove anywhere. Here's the day, straight from the job record:

1. Before the day: photos in, price out. Six photos covered the basement and the TV upstairs. Dispatch read them as a bit more than one full truck and quoted $950. A note went on the work order: collect payment on site.
2. Wednesday, Aug 5, 7:56 AM: on the way. George, the crew lead, marked the job en route ahead of the 8–10 AM arrival window.
3. On arrival: walk-through. One lap of the basement to check the photos matched the room, then the price was confirmed before anything moved.
4. Heaviest first. The commercial washer and the freezer go up the stairs while the crew is fresh and the path is clear. The dryer, TV, and sofa follow. The boxes and small pieces fill the gaps in the truck last.
5. 12:18 PM: finished. Basement empty, floor swept, payment collected on site, job closed out.

That's about four hours, drive time included, for a basement with a single staircase and some genuinely heavy steel. None of it changed the number. That's the point of flat, truck-space pricing: stairs, weight, and the clock are our problem, not a line on your invoice.

So why did it cost $950?

Because it was a little more than one truck. Our junk removal prices are five truck-load tiers, from $150 for a 1/8 load up to $650 for a full 400-cubic-foot truck. This basement filled one truck and ran past it. Four appliances, a sofa, a table, an entertainment center, and boxed clutter take up more room than people expect once you see them stacked in a truck bed.

So the photo quote was $950, all-in. That covered the labor, the stairs, loading, hauling, the appliance and electronics recycling, and the sweep-up. The homeowner paid exactly that, on site, after the work was done.

What would a smaller basement job cost?

Most basements aren't this full. Here's roughly where smaller versions of this same job land, using our published single-item prices and load tiers. A photo always sets the real number.

What about the city? Chicago's Department of Streets and Sanitation asks residents to arrange a bulk pickup with their ward superintendent before putting out large items, and to take the doors off old refrigerators and freezers first. If you can get everything to the alley yourself, that's a good option. The city won't carry a freezer out of your basement, though, and that's usually the whole problem.

Want your own number before you call? You can price your own basement item by item in about a minute, no email needed.

Where does each item go after a basement cleanout?

Hauling it up the stairs is half the job. The other half is routing each piece to the right place, because appliances and electronics can't just be thrown out.

The Speed Queen commercial washer and the Whirlpool dryer

Washers and dryers are mostly steel, so they go to scrap-metal recycling. The Speed Queen is a coin-operated commercial machine with a stainless cabinet, built to run all day in a laundromat. It's heavy and awkward, and nearly all of it is recyclable metal. Cleaning supplies like the ones stacked on top are a different story: we don't haul solvents or open chemicals, so we ask homeowners to set those aside.

The upright freezer

Anything with a compressor holds refrigerant. Under federal rules, the final disposer is responsible for recovering the refrigerant before the unit is scrapped, so freezers and fridges go to appliance recyclers set up to do exactly that.

The Sony Trinitron CRT TV

Tube TVs are the item people most often get stuck with. They're heavy, the glass contains lead, and Illinois law makes it illegal to put TVs in the trash. Every TV we haul goes to an electronics recycler, no exceptions. The black entertainment center that held it is particleboard, which doesn't donate well.

The sofa, the table, and the boxes

We check everything for donation first. Honestly, though, a reclining sofa that has lived in a basement and a dining table with a worn, water-marked top are rarely what a charity resale floor can use. Metal parts get pulled for recycling, and the rest goes to disposal. We won't promise a 100%-recycled basement when the stuff doesn't support it. The full picture is in what happens to your junk after pickup.

Is your basement next? 5 things to do before you book

1. Pull out the keepers first. Photos, documents, tools you still use. Our guide on how to sort what you're keeping first has a 90-minute method that works well in basements.
2. Unplug and empty the freezer a day early. It needs time to defrost and drain, so it doesn't leak on the stairs.
3. Photograph every corner. Including under the stairs and behind the furnace. Hidden piles are the most common reason a quote changes on site.
4. Set aside chemicals and paint. Like the cleaning supplies stacked on that washer. Solvents, fuels, and wet paint go to household hazardous waste, not in our truck.
5. Tell us about the stairs. Narrow, steep, a tight turn at the bottom? A one-line heads-up means we bring the right gear.

If the basement is just one part of a bigger job, like an estate, a sale, or a move-out, it's usually cheaper to plan a whole-house cleanout than to book room by room.

Basement cleanout questions we hear most