Case Study: How We Cleared 120 Cubic Yards From a Northern Arizona Home in Two Days
Some estate cleanouts are straightforward: remove the unwanted items, load the trailer, sweep up, and move on.
This hoarder cleanup wasn't one of them.
Copper State Junk Removal & Hauling was contacted by the sister of a deceased homeowner who needed an extensive hoarder property cleanout completed in Northern Arizona. The home contained years of accumulated belongings and mounds of trash, and the family needed more than someone who could simply haul everything to the landfill.
There were important personal items that needed to be found. There were usable belongings worth saving. There was recyclable material mixed throughout the property. And there was a significant amount of actual trash that needed to be removed.
The challenge was substantial:
We needed to sort and remove approximately 120 cubic yards of material—and our goal was to complete the cleanout in just two days.
The Challenge: We Didn't Know Exactly What We Were Walking Into
One of the biggest challenges with this project was that we weren't able to fully access and evaluate the property before the cleanout began.
That meant we had to prepare our crew based on the information we had and then adapt once we arrived.
We assembled a crew that included four local college students, my son, and me. Once we gained access to the home, it became clear that this wasn't going to be a simple "load everything and haul it away" job.
The family had asked us to locate several specific personal items.
Everything else needed to be evaluated as we worked through the property.
That created four basic categories:
Items the family wanted us to locate
Usable items that could potentially be donated or resold
Recyclable materials, particularly metal
Material that truly needed to be disposed of
That distinction mattered.
Why We Didn't Just Throw Everything Away
When you're looking at a property containing more than 100 cubic yards of material, the fastest approach would be to treat everything as trash.
That's not how we wanted to handle this cleanout.
At Copper State, one of our goals is to keep usable and recyclable material out of Northern Arizona landfills whenever it's practical to do so.
On a cleanout like this, that requires considerably more work.
Instead of simply carrying items from the house directly to a trailer, we had to make decisions throughout the process. Is this trash? Can someone still use this? Can it be donated? Does it have resale value? Is it recyclable? Could this be one of the items the family asked us to find?
Those decisions slow the loading process, but they can dramatically change what ultimately ends up in the landfill.
Searching for Important Items While Cleaning
This was particularly important because the family had asked us to locate specific belongings.
During an estate or hoarder cleanout, an important item isn't necessarily sitting safely on a shelf waiting to be found. It can be buried inside boxes, bags, drawers, piles of paperwork, or mixed among things that otherwise appear to be trash.
So we couldn't assume that every bag or pile could simply be discarded.
Our crew had to work carefully through the property while still maintaining enough efficiency to complete a very large cleanout within our planned timeframe.
That's one reason estate and hoarder cleanouts can be very different from ordinary junk removal.
Sometimes the most important part of the job isn't what you remove.
It's what you make sure doesn't get removed.
120 Cubic Yards Later
By the time the cleanout was completed, we had removed approximately 120 cubic yards of material from the property.
But the final breakdown tells the more important story.
Approximately 95 cubic yards — Trash and disposal
Roughly 95 cubic yards consisted of material that was no longer usable and ultimately needed to be disposed of.
Approximately 15 cubic yards — Recycled metal
We separated approximately 15 cubic yards of recyclable metal rather than sending it to the landfill.
Approximately 10 cubic yards — Usable items
Another approximately 10 cubic yards consisted of items that still had useful life remaining.
About half of those usable items were donated, while other items were retained for potential resale or reuse.
Put another way:
More than 20% of everything we removed from this property was diverted from the waste stream for recycling, donation, resale, or reuse.
On a 120-cubic-yard cleanout, that represents a substantial amount of material that didn't need to become trash.
What This Cleanout Taught Us
Large property cleanouts are rarely just about hauling. The physical labor is certainly part of it. Moving 120 cubic yards of material requires manpower, equipment, transportation, disposal planning, and a lot of loading and unloading.
But the harder part is often making good decisions while you're doing it.
A family dealing with an estate shouldn't necessarily have to choose between spending weeks sorting through everything themselves and hiring someone who is simply going to throw everything away.
There can be a middle ground. That's the approach we've built at Copper State Junk Removal & Hauling.
We can help identify and separate items for disposal, recycling, donation, and potential reuse while working through the property systematically. When a family tells us there are specific belongings they want us to look for, we can incorporate that into the cleanout process as well.
When Does a Professional Cleanout Make Sense?
Not every property requires a crew. If you're dealing with a room or two of unwanted items and have the time, vehicles, and ability to sort everything yourself, a DIY cleanout may make perfect sense.
Professional help becomes more valuable when the scale of the project changes.
That can include situations where:
An entire house needs to be cleared
A family is working under a deadline
The homeowner has passed away
Family members live outside Northern Arizona
Years of possessions have accumulated
Heavy furniture or appliances need to be removed
There are potentially valuable or sentimental items mixed throughout the property
Multiple disposal, recycling, and donation destinations would otherwise be required
The emotional burden of sorting the property has become overwhelming
In those situations, you're not simply paying someone to haul trash.
You're paying for the labor, equipment, logistics, sorting, transportation, disposal, and experience required to turn a complicated property into a manageable project.
Estate & Hoarder Cleanouts in the Prescott Area
Copper State Junk Removal & Hauling provides estate cleanouts, hoarder cleanouts, property cleanouts, and junk removal throughout Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, Dewey-Humboldt, and surrounding Northern Arizona communities.
Our goal isn't simply to remove as much as possible.
It's to handle the property carefully, identify opportunities for reuse and recycling, respect the circumstances surrounding the cleanout, and leave the customer with a property they can move forward with.
If you're facing an estate, hoarding situation, or large property cleanout and aren't sure where to begin, you don't need to know exactly how many loads it will take before contacting us.
Start by showing us what you're dealing with.
Call or text 928-224-9381 or visit CopperStateJunkRemoval.com to request an estimate.
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