Decluttering is on the rise, as soaring house prices and rising construction costs lock people out of upsizing across metropolitan Adelaide, forcing homeowners to look for ways to make their properties more liveable into the future.
New data from Mobile Skips Australia show it recorded 5076 booking for skip bins between 2021 and 2025, with the top five Adelaide suburbs being Adelaide CBD, Morphett Vale, Prospect, Seaford Meadows and Mawson Lakes.
The data showed 58 per cent of bookings were for the removal of household waste, while 42 per cent was for renovation waste, which required a heavier-duty skip.
Interestingly, when looking at heavy renovation waste dominant suburbs, Prospect and Norwood topped the list at 57 per cent of bookings – with Prospect recording more bookings than Norwood. These were followed by Mile End at 55 per cent, Adelaide CBD with 41 per cent, and Seaford at 48 per cent.
Skip bin hire for decluttering is on the rise across Adelaide.
SA’s biggest declutterers can be found in Seaford Meadows, with 70 per cent of booking for the removal of household waste, just ahead of Windsor Gardens on 69 per cent and Happy Valley on 67 per cent.
Mobile Skips Australia chief executive Jacob Spencer said Adelaide customers were opting for decluttering over heavier renovation-style projects.
“Our read on that is that households there may be less inclined to take on the larger renovation projects that customers in Sydney and Melbourne are more able or willing to do,” he said.
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He said the popularity of skip bin hire suggested council hard rubbish collections were not meeting demand.
“Our standard decluttering product sits in a similar space to traditional hard rubbish collections, and over time councils have made hard rubbish harder to access or less flexible,” he said.
Surprisingly, Mobile Skips Australia says the majority of its hires aren’t for building or renovation activity.
“So we have seen our product being used more often for that kind of household clean-up, which does suggest there’s growing unmet demand where council services are less convenient than they used to be.”
Adelaide Skip Bins business owner Kevin Peach said a huge number of clients were downsizers, and that his and other businesses were struggling to meet the demand for bins.
“We’re turning people away because there’s just so much work, and then they call us back an hour later saying ‘nobody else can get me a bin tomorrow, so can I please book one in for next week?’,” he said.
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“We’re seeing a lot of deceased estates at the moment, where the children inherit the home and immediately sell it, but the bulk of our work is just people getting rid of rubbish.”
He said where possible, and in an effort to maximise their profits, scrap metal is recycled and dumped items are upcycled to keep them from landfill.
“We’re just a little drop in the pond compared to what happens on the larger scale – there’s a lot of room for a lot more recycling if the infrastructure supports it.”
Andrew Taylor by a skip bin outside of his property in Torrensville. Picture: Eleni Tzanos
Sales manager Andrew Taylor, 51, who has hired several skip bins in recent years to declutter properties for sale, said the two annual hard rubbish collections he was entitled to through the Prospect Council weren’t enough to remove the amount of household hard waste accumulated through the year.
“It was nowhere near enough, and you had to plan it, whereas with a skip you can call up, it arrives the next day, I can fill it and it’s gone that day if I wanted to – it’s a lot more convenient,” he said.
“People underestimate how much rubbish they have around their houses, and in our instance where we were clearing for sale and to move, we just needed it gone.”
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