Emptying a rental unit between tenants: the cleanout with a deadline

A cleanout that knows its end date

Every plex owner knows the scene: the lease ends, the keys come back — and the unit is not empty. A couch too heavy for the moving truck, boxes “they'll come back for”, sometimes the whole apartment, left as is. Meanwhile, the next lease is already signed, and one tenant's move-in follows the other's move-out by a matter of days.

That is what sets this cleanout apart from every other: its end date is not negotiable — the unit has to be empty and clean before the next tenant. The good news: it is a short job, exactly the kind a dumpster serves best — everything goes into the same box, in a day or two, no sorting.

The size counts itself in pickup loads

Walk through the unit and count the pickup truck loads it would take to carry everything out. That number picks the size for you — the room-by-room method is laid out in clearing the garage and basement.

The 10 cubic yard swallows 3 to 4 pickup loads: a few pieces of furniture left behind, the contents of a balcony and a storage space. The 20 cubic yard takes 6 to 8 — the unit left full — and its size is easy to picture: about a Dodge Caravan.

The price follows the size and the material type — the pricing page details what moves it.

What goes in the dumpster — and what stays out

The dumpster for a unit left full is the mixed dry-material one: almost everything a tenant can leave behind travels in it together. Almost.

When it is a whole house — or an estate

A plex unit is a few days' job. A whole inherited house is another project entirely: the 40 cubic yard swallows 12 to 16 pickup loads there, and the order of operations matters as much as the size. We wrote a full guide for it: clearing out a house after an estate settlement — papers first, keepsakes second, the dumpster last.

Between the two, only the pace differs — a rental unit empties against the clock, a family home at the family's pace.

The between-two-leases questions