The tenant dropped the keys in the lockbox Friday night. You walk in Monday morning and there's a sagging sectional in the living room, a queen mattress propped against the bedroom wall, and a dresser missing two drawers. Furniture removal wasn't on your list for the week, but here we are.

Nothing's flooded. No holes in the drywall. The place is just full of somebody else's stuff, and you've got a showing Thursday.

We get these calls constantly. Spring is busy, then it picks right back up at the end of August when leases turn over. Rental cleanouts are their own particular headache, mostly because you usually can't haul anything off the same hour you find it.

Here's how we'd walk through it.

Before you toss it, make sure it's actually yours to toss

This is the part landlords skip and then regret. Abandoned furniture doesn't automatically become your furniture just because the lease ended.

Idaho's landlord-tenant rules generally expect you to give the tenant written notice and a reasonable window to come get their belongings before you dispose of anything. Doesn't matter whether they left on their own or you went through a formal eviction. The safe move is a written notice with a clear deadline, sent to the last address you've got, with a copy in your file.

How long is reasonable? Ask your attorney or your property manager about your specific situation. Most of the landlords we work with land somewhere between two and four weeks and keep the whole thing in writing.

Heads up: Before anything moves, walk the unit with your phone and shoot a video. Get every room, every piece, and the condition it's in. If a tenant later claims you tossed a $3,000 dining set, that two-minute video and a photo of the notice you mailed are the only things that settle it.

One thing that surprises people: the stuff doesn't have to sit in the unit. Once your clock is running, you can move it to a garage, a shed, or a storage unit and keep painting. You just can't get rid of it early.

What furniture removal costs on a Boise rental turnover

Pricing comes down to two things. How much room it takes up in the truck, and how hard it is to get out of the building.

Here's roughly what we see around the Treasure Valley:

What got left behind	Typical Boise-area cost
One couch or sectional	$125 - $250
Mattress and box spring	$95 - $175
A bedroom's worth (bed, dresser, nightstands)	$250 - $400
Full one-bedroom apartment	$450 - $750
Full three-bedroom house	$850 - $1,600

Real ranges, not teaser numbers. A ground-floor unit in Meridian where we can back the truck up to the door lands at the bottom end. A third-floor walk-up in the North End with a tight stair turn lands higher, because it's the same furniture and twice the labor.

If it's just the one piece, honestly, read through your options for getting rid of an old couch in Boise before you call anybody. We'd happily take the job, but a decent couch on a free listing sometimes moves in a day and you keep your money.

Why furniture removal in apartments eats more time

Single-family rentals are easy. Apartments and older fourplexes are where the hours go.

Stuff that slows a job down and pushes the price up:

Narrow stairwells with a landing turn, which is exactly where big sectionals get stuck
Property management rules about which door we can use and what hours we're allowed on site
Shared dumpsters we're not permitted to touch, so all of it leaves in the truck
Parking that turns into a hundred-foot carry
Bed frames and wall units that got assembled inside the room and won't come out whole

That last one comes up more than you'd guess. If a piece went in flat-packed and got built in place, it has to come apart to come back out. We handle that, but it's real time on the clock.

There's a whole rundown on whether to take furniture apart yourself first if you're trying to trim the bill.

Where it all actually goes

We don't run everything straight to the landfill, and we'd rather not. Tipping fees at Hidden Hollow, the Ada County landfill out past the airport, add up quick, and a lot of what tenants leave behind is perfectly usable.

Solid furniture in decent shape goes to donation, usually Idaho Youth Ranch. Metal bed frames, filing cabinets, and appliance stands go to Western Recycling as scrap.

Cardboard and clean wood get pulled out separately. What actually gets trashed is the broken particleboard, the stained upholstery, and mattresses nobody's going to want.

One caveat worth knowing: if the unit had any bug issues, nothing gets donated. It gets wrapped and disposed of, and we'll tell you that upfront instead of pretending otherwise.

How fast can you clear the unit?

Once your notice window closes, the removal part is quick. Most turnovers we do run 45 minutes to three hours depending on size.

Same-day or next-day scheduling is usually open across Boise, Meridian, Nampa, and Caldwell. You don't need to be there either, as long as we've got access and somewhere to park.

We've had property managers text us a lockbox code at 8 a.m. and get photos of an empty unit before lunch. Normal day.

The bottom line

Don't rush the disposal, and don't let the unit sit dead either. Send the written notice, video everything, shove the furniture into the garage if you need the rooms back, then get it hauled the day your window closes.

If you've got a turnover sitting on you right now, our furniture removal crew does rental cleanouts around the Treasure Valley pretty much every week. Send a few photos or call (208) 593-2877 and describe the rooms, and we'll give you a real number before we show up. No pressure either way.