Office Clearance Guide

3. Can any of the furniture be reused?

If your office furniture is in good condition and you have a bit of spare time, before paying someone to take it away, consider whether it can be reused – either through sale or donation.  

Donation

You can donate to a charity or directly to a person or commercial organisation. There’s no magic on why or who – it’s obviously entirely up to you. Within London, there are charities that specialise in office furniture reuse, such as TCL Reuse Centre and Barnet Furniture Centre. You can also try online platforms like Freegle, Freecycle or LoveJunk. 

Sale

Unlike domestic furniture, the second-hand market for office furniture tends to be far stronger if you have larger numbers of items, rather than just one or two. In other words, 20+ desks of the same type and size as opposed to 3 that are each very different.  This is because buyers are normally looking to fit out a whole office rather than just get one desk.  

As with donation, you can sell office furniture through marketplaces (main one being eBay) or to specific people or dealers.  In London, well-known office furniture dealers are Evans Office Furniture, Allard Office Furniture and London Business Removals.

4. Using and choosing a specialist contractor/ office clearance company  

Assuming you cannot or do not wish to sell or donate the furniture – or you still have stuff left over after your efforts – then you’ll need a licensed waste contractor to remove and dispose of it for you. These are people variously described as man & van clearance company, office clearance firm, and rubbish clearance business.  They all do the same thing – take your office junk away. The only real difference is an office clearance firm tends to specialise in this area of bulky waste and is as much focused on the disposal as they are the value of what is being collected.  In other words, if you have quite a lot of stuff, much of which can be reused, then it’s normally worth using an office clearance specialist.  But if you don’t have much stuff or the vast majority is end of life, then you’re more likely to get a better price and level of engagement from a more generalist rubbish clearance company.

Btw, size matters. So if you have a lot of stuff – try to get rid of it in one go in order to get the economies of scale that it offers. The only caveat to this rule is if you have anything particularly out of the ordinary – either from a value (eg. super expensive boardroom table and chairs) or disposal (eg. commercial fridge) perspective. 

When deciding on which firm …ensure your clearance company is a licensed waste collector – you can check if the company has a waste carrier’s license here.  It’s also important to follow the four ‘R’s – references, resources, rapport and rates.

References – please check the waste companies’ reviews.  Not only is it important to check if they’re highly recommended, but also if the reviews are recent and if they’ve done an office clearance before.

Resources – find out before booking if they have the resources needed for the job.  Will they have enough staff and when you speak to them, do they sound like they know what they’re on about?  You’ll want to find a company who really knows their stuff so you can be confident the job is being done professionally.

Rapport – an office clearance can be stressful, so it’s important that you get on well with the clearance firm.  Should you encounter any problems along the way, you need to be sure they’ll be resolved without issue.

Rates – how much will they charge for your office clearance?  There are a few questions you can ask which will give you a good idea of how experienced the company is, such as not only asking for the total cost but the rate per van load.  You could also ask how them to estimate how many loads they think it will take to do the clearance.  Getting a properly priced quote is important because the last thing you’ll want is a cheap quote that mounts up on the day.