Too much stuff? Philly-area junk haulers find new homes for your former treasures

Joe Colangelo considers himself a “do-it-yourselfer.” But when he faced emptying both his elderly mother’s rental home in an assisted living community and his parents’ Moorestown house, he knew he needed help.

“My dad was kind of a hoarder. So there was a lot of good stuff, a lot of new stuff, because he was kind of like a chronic buyer,” Colangelo said. And also “there was a lot of total junk.”

So he hired We Love Junk, a hauling company that operates in South Jersey and the five-county Philadelphia area. Even after an estate sale, “it took like three full truckloads to empty out a small two-bedroom house,” he said.

» READ MORE: How 5 Philly-area retirees ditched their stuff and happily downsized

“They cleaned up and took care of everything,” Colangelo said. “It was a massive relief.”

Clearing out unwanted belongings can be stressful. And there’s a big difference between getting rid of an item or two and cleaning out whole rooms or an entire house, whether for deep spring cleaning, renovations, or downsizing.

Those who want a home cleaned out quickly and have money to spend — prices generally depend on how much space items take up in trucks — may choose to hire a junk hauler. Junk hauling is big business in Philadelphia and the surrounding region, where more companies have popped up in recent years promising to take away the things people no longer want.

Some customers care about what will happen to the couch they’ve had since college or their parents’ antique furniture, and some just want the stuff gone and don’t care where it goes.

Philadelphia has been trying to fight the persistent problem of illegal dumping with cameras, steeper fines, and lawsuits.

Legitimate junk haulers recycle what can be recycled and often partner with nonprofits and donation centers.

Here’s how local homeowners and adult children have used haulers to clear out household stuff.

A few weeks ago, Marc Munafo had We Love Junk come to his parents’ condo in a Center City high-rise. He had sold some belongings, but a lot more needed to be removed quickly to finalize the sale of the home.

“My parents had so much stuff. You can’t even imagine,” Munafo said. A lifetime’s worth of belongings, including large wall units, stacks of books and records, lots of clothes, dishes, and piles of receipts and other trash, needed to go.

“It was just overwhelming,” he said. “I mean really, really overwhelming.”

So Munafo relied on professionals to help.

“If I had more time and more space, I could have made a few dollars selling a lot of this stuff,” he said. “But I did what I had to do.”

Nicholas Tellie started We Love Junk in May 2021 after the pandemic ended the catering business he’d owned for 25 years.

He said he tells potential customers, “we’re not the cheapest, but you’re gonna get great service, and I can guarantee your stuff is not gonna get illegally dumped or sent to a landfill.”

“Some people don’t care about that, but the majority of our customers do,” he said. “I always think it’s a good question for people to ask: ‘What are you doing with my stuff?’”

As a real estate agent at Keller Williams Realty Atlantic Shore, Jessica DiFrancia often comes across “people who can’t get rid of the things they have to get rid of,” she said.

DiFrancia has a go-to hauler she regularly uses down the Shore for home sales after an owner dies, yard cleanups, and her own rental properties: Junkin Twin, owned and operated by Vanessa Thomas.

“She’s very reliable, which is huge,” DiFrancia said.

Thomas used to work in the medical field but started clearing junk after Superstorm Sandy. She officially started her business in 2018 and operates across Burlington, Atlantic, and Ocean Counties, picking up everything from single appliances to piles of belongings in hoarders’ houses.

“You’d be surprised what people can manage to fit in their homes, their garages, on their property,” she said.

Some of what Thomas picks up is brand new. “You’d be sick to see what people throw out.”

She often finds local residents in need through social media who want items that she’s hauled away.

Thomas herself bought a home a year ago, and “I literally furnished my house with stuff that came off of jobs,” she said.

Rachel Mountain lives in Atlanta but was tasked with emptying out the Society Hill rowhouse her parents bought a few decades ago. Her parents had retired to London and didn’t return to Philadelphia much.

Her mother died a few years ago, and her father, who is in his 80s, decided to sell the rowhouse. The home was filled with furniture they’d had for decades, collectibles, and childhood belongings from Mountain and her brother.

“It’s emotional, right? Because it was all this stuff my parents had,” Mountain said.

In looking for a company to clear out the house, she wanted convenience and to know where her parents’ stuff was going. “It was very important to me that it got repurposed,” she said.

She found Good Haul, a hauling program that the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Pathways to Housing PA started in 2022 to complement its Philadelphia Furniture Bank. The bank gives away household items to people leaving homelessness, so they can fill their new homes. Someone recently came through who had lost their home in the Northeast Philly plane crash early this year.

“They really made me feel very confident that [her parents’ stuff] was actually going to end up in a good home and bring somebody joy, which is what I wanted,” Mountain said.

A few months ago, workers for Good Haul took away “anything not nailed down,” including artwork, a dining room set, a couple couches, a desk, bedding, towels, and books. And they took belongings Mountain hadn’t expected they’d want, including a floor fan, knickknacks that Mountain’s mother had collected, and her parents’ bedroom furniture from the 1970s.

“I thought it was ugly,” Mountain said. “But someone is hopefully loving that furniture.”

Pathways to Housing PA decided to start a hauling program in 2020 when leaders saw that junk hauling was a fast-growing business and could be a way to diversify its income and support its furniture giveaway program.

“It’s meant to be a supplementary form of revenue to make sure the Furniture Bank continues to operate,” said Valerie Johnson, vice president of advancement and social enterprise at Pathways to Housing PA. “Knowing we have this other way to support ourselves and not be fully reliant on philanthropy is really important to us.”

Good Haul has brought in a lot more furniture for the bank. Electronics go to an electronics recycler that employs people coming out of prison, and other items are donated to other nonprofits.

Marci Tint Kotay has used Good Haul a few times. She loves that household items go to people who are newly housed. The thought of usable furnishings ending up in a landfill “just makes me sick,” she said.

A few months ago, Good Haul took kitchen cabinets and appliances, including a Wolf range, from her brownstone in the Rittenhouse Square area during her kitchen remodel. She first worked with Good Haul after her father died in 2022 and she had to clear out his Northeast Philadelphia condo.

“It’s a good model. Because you’re giving money as a donation, these people are coming and taking all your stuff, and the thinking is that everything that’s really usable — maybe things have to get spiffed up — but it goes into homes for people,” she said. “I know my dad would really be down with that. That’s how he raised me. It’s the right thing to do.”