If your garage has quietly become the place everything goes to be forgotten, you’re not alone — it’s one of the most common cleanouts we help with. Here’s a simple plan to reclaim the space, plus what a cleanout typically costs in Raleigh.
The step-by-step checklist
- Set a staging area — clear the driveway so you can pull everything out and see what you actually have.
- Sort into four piles: keep, donate/sell, recycle, and haul away.
- Group the keepers by zone — tools, lawn & garden, sports, seasonal — so they’re easy to store back.
- Pull the junk: broken furniture, old appliances, dead electronics, cardboard, and the mystery boxes you haven’t opened in years.
- Handle the tricky stuff separately (see below).
- Haul it out — DIY trips to a convenience center, or a single junk removal pickup.
Watch out for these items
A few common garage items can’t go in a normal load and need special handling — most haulers (us included) will flag these for a quick check:
- Paint, solvents, pesticides, and other chemicals
- Motor oil, gasoline, and propane tanks
- Car tires
- Old car batteries
Wake County runs household hazardous waste drop-off for many of these — check the county’s waste & recycling pages for current locations and hours.
How much does a garage cleanout cost?
Junk removal is priced by how much space your items fill in the truck, not by the hour, so a garage cleanout depends on how much is going:
| Load size | Roughly | Typical garage job |
|---|---|---|
| Quarter load | ~$249 | A few bulky items and some boxes |
| Half load | ~$399 | A moderate declutter |
| Full load | ~$699 | A packed two-car garage |
See the full breakdown on our junk removal pricing page. When you’re ready, upload a few photos of the garage and we’ll send back an itemized estimate — usually in minutes.