Work backward from the date in your lease’s surrender clause. Before any furniture moves, IT pulls or wipes the drives, an electrician disconnects any powered panels, and you book the dock and service elevator with the building. Then the cubicles come apart, everything goes out, the empty suite gets cleaned, and you hand it back with photos.
That’s the standard a building should be held to. If you’d rather have it in writing, tell us about the space — we walk it and come back with a scope of work and a price, usually within one business day.
Start with the surrender clause, not the furniture
A lease-end clear-out runs on one date, and the lease sets it. Find the clause that governs the end of the term — it may be headed surrender, end of term or yield up — and read it for three things:
- What has to leave. What the clause says about your furniture, equipment and trade fixtures, and about alterations you made, including any data cabling you installed.
- The condition. Sometimes just two words, broom clean, which we take apart in what broom clean means in a lease.
- The date. Every booking below is scheduled backward from it.
Two more lines matter. If there is a holdover clause, it sets the cost of staying in possession past that date, so the date is not one to guess at. And if the landlord or the next tenant wants furniture left in place, get it in writing before a panel comes down. This is general information, not legal advice: your lease, and whoever reviews it for you, decide what the clause requires.
Data, records and tags come first
Anything with a drive in it — desktops, laptops, servers, copiers that store scans — goes to your IT team before it is tagged to leave. The U.S. government’s guidance for that step is NIST’s Guidelines for Media Sanitization (Special Publication 800-88, Revision 2, September 2025), which describes sanitization as a process that “renders access to target data on the media infeasible for a given level of effort.” That step is yours; it isn’t a service we sell.
Paper follows your retention policy, and every filing cabinet leaves empty. Then give each remaining piece a decision — moving with you, sold or donated by you, staying for the landlord, or going out — and tag it before the walkthrough. Our junk-removal page puts the hand-off in one line: “You point at what goes; we carry it out, including from upstairs, a back room, or a building elevator.”
Cubicles come apart before anything goes out
A workstation doesn’t leave in one piece: panels, work surfaces, overhead storage and pedestals come apart before any of it fits through a door or into a service elevator, so in commercial cubicle removal, teardown and haul are one job. The commercial card on our junk-removal page says it plainly: “Cubicle walls taken apart, desks, chairs, filing cabinets and conference tables out, the storage room emptied. Scheduled around your building’s dock and elevator rules rather than around ours.”
When you book, have four facts ready: how many workstations, which floor, how far the suite sits from the service elevator, and whether any panels carry power. The last one sets the order of work. If panels are wired into the building, have an electrician shut off and disconnect the circuit before anyone takes one apart; OSHA’s electrical work-practice standard generally requires live parts to be de-energized before an employee works on or near them (29 CFR 1910.333). Book the electrician first. Electrical work isn’t part of our service.
The building sets the schedule
In a multi-tenant building, a truck doesn’t reach the dock on your say-so. Management may ask for proof of insurance and a booked window at the dock and service elevator, and may limit moving to set hours. Our junk-removal page builds the work around exactly that: we “send a COI on request, which is usually the first thing a building asks for before it lets a truck in. Tell us the access rules — dock, service elevator, permitted hours — and the work is scheduled inside them.”
Ask the property manager for the vendor requirements in writing first. Our terms give the mechanics: “A certificate of insurance is available on request — email bookings@jascleaning.com with ‘COI’ in the subject line and the entity name.” Include the building’s exact certificate wording, then reserve the window the building offers and give it to us when you book.
Why a suite gets a walkthrough, not a photo quote
For a sofa or a full garage, photos usually do the job. Our junk-removal page draws the line where an office begins: “Photos of the pile on WhatsApp, by text, or by email are usually enough. If it is spread across several rooms, or it is a commercial space, book a 15-minute walkthrough instead.” A photo shows a cubicle, not the corridor to the service elevator, the locked storage room, or which desks are staying.
Those are the things that set the number. The same page says “Volume is the biggest factor,” then lists what makes a load harder to move, ending with “an item that has to come apart before it fits through a door” — a fair description of every cubicle on the floor.
The price comes back in writing, as step two on that page puts it: “A price in writing before anyone lifts anything, based on what is going out and what it takes to get it out. Nothing starts until you approve it, and the price you approve is the price you pay.” If an extra room of furniture turns up on the day, our terms set the rule: “If the scope on arrival is materially different (for example, additional rooms or heavy build-up), we will re-quote with you before doing extra work — never silently.”
Warehouses and storefronts run on the same clock
The lease logic doesn’t change for a warehouse cleanout or a storefront clear-out: read the clause, clear data and records, settle access, then haul. Our junk-removal page lists “a warehouse emptied ahead of a lease end” among its commercial jobs and gives storefronts their own card: “Gondolas, racks, display cases, signage and back-room shelving, cleared before a remodel or a handover. We can stage it over closing hours so the floor is never half-dismantled with customers in it.” At a warehouse walkthrough, point out anything bolted to the slab, and mention any renovation under way.
Empty, clean, hand back
An office cleanout at the end of a lease has a natural order: haul, clean, then the landlord walks it. Each of our market junk-removal pages carries the same office card; Phoenix’s reads: “Cubicles down, desks and chairs out, the storage room emptied before the landlord walks it.” The same page explains the order: “A cleanout followed by a clean is one conversation and one schedule — the haul comes first, then the deep clean or move-out clean goes onto a space that is finally empty enough to do properly.”
An empty floor shows what the furniture hid: the dust line behind filing cabinets, the carpet edges under desks, the debris along the back walls. What a deep clean adds over a routine visit is in what an office deep cleaning includes; how a one-time visit is priced is in what a one-time office deep clean costs.
Then document the hand-back. Our junk-removal page includes “Before and after photos of the load and the space it came out of,” useful, in its words, when the property is “a unit someone else has to sign off on.” A suite your landlord signs off on is exactly that. Walk it with the property manager, surrender clause in hand.
What we do, and what we won’t claim
What we do is the physical part our junk-removal page publishes, quoted above: workstations taken apart, furniture out and the storage room emptied, inside the building’s dock, elevator and permitted-hours rules, on a price you approved in writing, with before-and-after photos at the end.
What we won’t claim, because no JAS page publishes it: wiping, shredding or certified destruction of drives and files; electrical disconnects; buying, reselling, liquidating or donating furniture; where each load ends up; truck sizes, crew counts, or how fast any of it happens. Nor do we claim floor repair: carpet that sat under the panels, or a hard floor marked by pedestals, is flooring work if your lease names it. And no one can promise how a landlord will judge the space; the clause and the landlord decide that.
FAQ
Do you take the cubicles apart, or only haul them away?
Both: teardown is part of the job. Our junk-removal page lists it as “Cubicle walls taken apart, desks, chairs, filing cabinets and conference tables out, the storage room emptied.” If any panels carry power, have an electrician disconnect them before we arrive; electrical work isn’t part of our service.
Can the work happen outside business hours?
It runs on your building’s clock, not ours. Our junk-removal page puts it this way: “Tell us the access rules — dock, service elevator, permitted hours — and the work is scheduled inside them.” For a storefront, it adds: “We can stage it over closing hours so the floor is never half-dismantled with customers in it.”
Do you send a certificate of insurance to our building?
Yes, on request. Our junk-removal page notes that a COI “is usually the first thing a building asks for before it lets a truck in,” and our terms give the route: “email bookings@jascleaning.com with ‘COI’ in the subject line and the entity name.” Send the building’s exact certificate requirements along with it.