Marc Cline led a stellar Steri-Clean Pittsburgh crew of three across three days here, executing a carefully orchestrated plan to shape up this large home plagued by my hoarding tendencies. When we moved here, I brought the sum total of everything I had hoarded from multiple previous moves. "You never know when you're gonna need that!" has been my decades-long battle cry. The basement and garage areas here comprised a chaotic warehouse, jammed with a ton (probably literally) of old junk that should have been trashed decades ago. Empty cardboard boxes were a specialty and dominated the almost landfill-like landscape. Marc and his associate, Jesse, first made a cost-free visit to our mess to evaluate the task and give us a time and fee estimate. They spent a lot of effort going over all the spaces that needed tending and their manner and professionalism could not have been more enjoyable. We had some chuckles as I embarrassingly revealed the dark secrets of my hoard. Now, I'm not in the same class as the "Hoarding: Buried Alive" folks on TV, but the tipping point for me came one day when I was out in the house garage looking for a small item that I knew I had ... somewhere. As I inched along a small path amid the "rubble," I thought I spied the object of my search and reached into a small opening to investigate. That's when a large, empty cardboard box tumbled down from above me (yes, I was standing) and clunked me on the head, messing up my carefully combed hair! That was it! I weaved my way out of the garage and back into the house and announced to my wife, "We're cleaning out this place!" So, I went to my favorite search engine and entered "hire a crew to clean out your house." Steri-Clean was about three or four links down on the first page of results. The reason I clicked on it first was because I saw the word "hoarding" (or "hoarders") in the meta description. So, I clicked, called, talked to Rachel, Marc's wife who (wo)mans the phones at Steri-Clean Pittsburgh, and that brought Marc and Jesse to to our home for that preliminary visit. What's the best part of Marc's team's work? At least for us, beside the wonderful attitudes of the crew and their willingness to do ANYTHING we asked of them, it was how they took care of the stuff that most people detest: hauling waste to the landfill, dropping off donated goods to various charity locations, carefully cleaning everything we asked (vacuuming basement ceiling cobwebs, sliding patio door tracks, hard-to-get-to corners, etc.), purchasing bringing, and assembling industrial strength storage racks and containers, leaving our spaces clean as a whistle (something I thought was impossible here), and while doing all this, maintaining an eager willingness to meet our needs, all with a good sense of humor and genuine smiles. Now, as to my "Good" (rather than "Excellent") rating of "Price" above, I must add, as the old adage says, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR! Steri-Clean is not cheap. BUT, you must consider VALUE. We paid their standard flat daily rate, plus the costs of materials (storage racks and containers - noting that we could return any unused units to Home Depot for credit) and fees for landfill deposits. There may have been some additional small fees that we incurred, but I can't recall them, so they must have been insignificant. For anyone not willing to make a serious investment in a large project like mine, you may care to consider a local handyman-type service. However, I'm willing to bet my now-organized, spotless basement that you won't come anywhere close to the quality of Marc's crew's work. No contest. Finally, to conclude my tome here, let me just say that having the Steri-Clean Pittsburgh experience was some of the best money we ever spent. When I walk down our basement steps and emerge into the now wide-open, clean spaces there, I am happy! That goes for all the other spaces Marc & Co. organized and cleaned. My best analogy would be that their work has left me the way I feel after a cool shower, following a day of hot, sweaty yard work -- sticky, itchy, and uncomfortable. I have this overall feeling of satisfaction and comfort (a kind of wellness and calmness) within environment in which I live. My wife feels the same way, and we are loathe to violate the condition in which Marc's crew left this place. When I'm tempted to "save" a box, I now ceremoniously cut it into neat, flat pieces for deposit at our local recycling center. When I ask my wife what to do with a container or old piece of stuff, she simply says, "What would Marc do?" The answer is simple: GET RID OF IT! Lessons learned. Bottom line: You will never regret having Steri-Clean Pittsburgh work for you. Even if you have a much smaller job than ours was, you'll be VERY well satisfied. It's hard to get your money's worth these days. Trust me, though; Marc & Co. will give you that ... and more read less
Dave B.
