Moving out cleanout cost in Minneapolis

The short answer

What you leave behind on move-out day is usually small and awkward: the sofa that will not fit the new place, the mattress you were replacing anyway, a desk, and eight bags of things that turned out not to be worth boxing.

Priced by volume that is a quarter truck at $241 or a half at $431. Priced by item: sofa $126, mattress and box spring set $143, dresser $126, desk $83, office chair $61, bookshelf $72, 10 bags of debris $132.

The minimum for a visit is $75. You get quoted both the item total and the volume total and you pay whichever is lower.

Minneapolis moves on two dates

Almost everything in this market happens around two turnover points, and both of them are worth planning around.

June 1. The big citywide residential turnover. Leases in Uptown, Whittier, Lowry Hill East, Northeast and the southwest neighborhoods roll over, moving trucks are scarce, and every alley in the city has furniture in it for a week.

Late August into the first week of September. The student belt around the University — Dinkytown, Marcy-Holmes, Como, Prospect Park, Cedar-Riverside — empties and refills inside about ten days, right up against the start of term.

Both windows book out. If your lease ends on either date, get on the calendar a week ahead. The price does not change; the availability does.

Why leaving it costs more than removing it

The two expensive versions of this are the same in every building type here.

Rentals. Anything left in the unit gets removed by the property manager and billed against your deposit at their rate, which is not a published flat rate. A sofa and a mattress left behind routinely costs several hundred dollars more that way than the $126 + $143 = $269 it would have cost to have them taken.

Sales. If you are closing on a house, the purchase agreement generally requires the property empty and broom-clean. Furniture in the basement of a Nokomis bungalow on walkthrough morning is a closing problem, not a junk problem, and it gets solved expensively and at speed.

Either way, the leftovers are cheaper to price in advance than to discover on the day.

The carry is the part the movers will not do

Worth knowing before move-out day: your moving company is contracted to take your things to the new address. They are generally not taking your discards to a disposal site, and if they will, it is priced by the hour at moving-crew rates.

That matters in this housing stock because the discards are almost always the below-grade and above-grade items — the treadmill in the basement, the box spring in the half-story bedroom, the second desk in the attic room. Those are exactly the pieces you were hoping somebody else would handle.

Flat pricing covers the carry from any floor. $143 for the mattress set out of a Standish half-story with a hard turn at the top of the stairs is the same $143 as from a ground-floor room. No stair charge, no walk-up fee, no per-floor fee.

Worked examples with the addition shown

• One-bedroom in Whittier, standard leftovers. Sofa $126 + queen mattress and box spring set $143 + desk $83 = $352. A half truck at $431 is more, so you pay the $352.
• Student apartment in Dinkytown. Twin mattress $82 + desk $83 + office chair $61 + bag of clothes $35 = $261. A quarter truck at $241 comes in lower.
• Two-bedroom in a Richfield block. Sofa $126 + two twin mattresses at $82 each ($164) + dresser $126 + dining table 2-4 seat $103 = $519. A half truck at $431 is cheaper if it fits.
• Bungalow sale in Longfellow, basement included. Half truck $431 + treadmill $115 = $546.
• Almost nothing left. One end table at $52 still bills at the $75 minimum, so add the microwave at $30 and the bag of clothes at $35 while the visit is happening.

Sequencing the day so it does not fall apart

The order that works, learned the hard way in a city where the moving window is measured in hours:

• Decide the discards first, a week out. Walk every room and tag what is not coming. This is the step people skip, and it is why furniture ends up in the alley.
• Book the removal for the day before the movers, not the day after. After is worse: you have handed back the keys, or you are paying for a second trip across town.
• Put the discards in one room if you can. Not required and there is no charge either way, but it makes a 40-minute job a 25-minute job.
• Check the parking. On the tighter Uptown and Northeast blocks the truck needs somewhere to sit. In winter, check whether a snow emergency has been declared that morning.

What is included

Two people, the carry-out from any floor, wrapping so the stairwell and the doorframes survive, loading, the drive, and disposal or donation routing.

What is not added: a stair charge, a walk-up fee, a long-carry fee, a fuel surcharge, a same-day surcharge, or a separate dump fee. The number you are quoted before anyone is dispatched is the number on the receipt.

Usable furniture gets routed to donation where there is a taker, at no change to your price. A lot of what comes out of a June 1 move in this city is perfectly good and just does not fit the next apartment.

Frequently asked questions