Clearabee Review | Out with the old and in with the new

Do you have somewhere in your house which has become a black hole where you avoid like the plague? Ours was our spare room – it started off as somewhere to keep the furniture we didn’t want to throw out but didn’t have anywhere to put, it then became somewhere to store our camping equipment, a weights bench and weights, a punching bag and other exercise equipment. We then added golf clubs and fishing gear into the storage room, boxes for toys, spare duvets and then anything I needed to hide away when having a tidy up. Read on for my Clearabee Review.

After a while it stopped being someone to store things tidily, it was too full for that and I would stand at the door and launch yet another box towards the back of the room and the spare bed was barely visible. A stairgate was added across the entrance so the kids couldn’t go inside as I became worried something would topple on them – you’ve seen those houses on the hoarding TV shows – well this room gave them a good run for their money.

For a while we had promised Harry he could move into the bigger spare room and out of his box room, and we did mean it however it was a mammoth task ahead of us. A few weeks ago Clearabee got in touch and asked if we would be interested in trying out their man with a van service and I jumped at the chance.

Clearabee offer two services, one is a man with a van so you clear out your rubbish and they will come and remove it for you or they have a Beebag option – this is a huge skip sized sack – available in 4 sizes (small, medium, large and extra large) which you fill with your rubbish and then once filled you arrange for it to be collected by a man in a van.

We have no driveway so a skip for us would mean applying for a licence from the council to have it on the road by our house, this, of course, adds on the costs and then we would have the problems which always happen with skips around here – other people fill them up overnight and I didn’t want to pay to get someone else’s rubbish removed.

The good thing about these sacks are that you don’t have to have them near to the road for collection by a grab lorry, meaning we could keep it on our front garden and fill up throughout the week. Depending on the size of the sack you order you could even fill in your back garden or keep stored in a shed or garage so that others can’t add to your bags when you aren’t home.

How the service works is the bags are delivered folded up in a box for easy storage until you are ready to fill them. You then unfold them – it’s recommended you fill the corners first to help keep the shape of the bag then everything else can go inside. We went for the extra large skip bag which can hold up to 10 washing machines inside. I knew we had a lot of junk to go in but was unsure just how much.

Once filled you phone the company to arrange collection of your bag – this is collected the same day or you can arrange a day of your choice. (the bags are delivered on a next day basis)

Having the bag in my garden made it easy to keep adding to it as we went along and over the Christmas break we removed everything from our spare room which we weren’t going to use again. It really is amazing just how much junk you can hide away behind a closed door – broken computers, monitors, hoovers which stopped working and I meant to get looked at. Before long the bag was filled and yesterday I messaged to arrange collection for today.

While on the school run I received an email with the time the driver would arrive to collect the bag, I wasn’t going to be home as had an appointment but by the time I arrived home an hour later the bag had been emptied into the van and all traces removed.

What happens on collection is a Clearabee driver will arrive in a branded van and unlike skips which are craned onto the lorry, they empty everything out into the back of the van and take the bag away.

The advantages I found of using this service was that I could place it anywhere I wanted and you can add mixed waste into the bags.

Clearabee complete over 100,000 collections per year and employ over 150 staff and are also a national living wage employer and offer their employees only full contracts – meaning no zero hour contracts and no cash in hand work. They pride themselves on their model which is why they are used by so many blue-chip companies who have strict ethical standards. The company is the UK’s first and largest nationwide on-demand rubbish removal service only employing 100% in-house staff.

Using a smaller van also means they can access small streets where it could be difficult to get a skip lorry through.

I have been really impressed with this company, it is really easy to order and then to arrange collection after with clear communication throughout each step.

There are a few things to mention – one would be to build the sides of the bag up properly – I did try but in the storm, ours collapsed and someone actually stole one of the suitcases I threw away and was holding up one of the corners, secondly, is don’t overfill the bags. They really do hold a lot but if you fill them over the top you could be in line for an additional charge (as is the same with skips too) but the company do give you the chance of removing the extra or paying extra to take that additional waste away; and lastly that the staff are 100% fully trained in-house and arrive at your house in a branded van (you will also be given the registration number of the van and time of arrival prior to them knocking your door) and they then dispose of all your rubbish legally so there is no risk of illegal fly-tipping.

I emailed a picture of my bag over just to be sure and was told that it wasn’t overfilled, as long as the waste fits inside (not overflowing) one of these bags there is just the set bag price and recycles or upcycles 90% of the waste it collects.

Once all the junk from the spare room was removed, I was able to move all of Harry’s clothes, toys and belongings out of his bedroom and into mine and Emmy’s while I cleaned and hooved the whole room, then moved all that was left from the spare room into Harry’s so I could then clean, bleach and scrub that room and move Harry finally into his new big boys room.

I did this yesterday with the help of the kids – it took 7 and a half hours to move everything around, clean down the walls, place temporary wall stickers on to make it homely for him and move all of his belongings into his new bedroom.

He is absolutely thrilled as am I – although now very sore from lots of lifting and moving around but it was well worth it.

Thanks Clearabee for giving me the kick start I needed to complete a job I had been putting off for far too long.

If you would like to have a new years clearout too then please do look at their website for more information or you can find them on Facebook and Twitter.

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Please note – the prices below on the Amazon widget are for the bags only and collection is charged separately – you can also purchase via the website and the prices include collection as well.

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