A moving experience

It’s been a great year. Despite the GFC (or was it the KFC?), your business has gone from strength to strength. In fact things are going so well you had to hire more staff.
Unfortunately, while your business is growing, your building isn’t. You tried everything, including “hot desking” (i.e. stealing some from the offices next door). But no matter what you did, your staff still wound up sitting so close together they could actually communicating face-to-face instead of by email.
So now it’s time to find new accommodation for you and your team. But that shouldn’t be too hard, right? Find a place big enough to fit everyone, get everything moved over and set up, and your staff will be rearing to start work the next day, right?
Of course not.
Your first problem will be choosing the right location. You see, what’s right for one person won’t be right for another because it’s half a block further away from the train station. (Ironically, the same person will demand it be close to a gymnasium.) Or they’ll have to walk halfway across town for their favourite coffee. Or the building faces the wrong way and the whole Feng Shui of the place is wrong.
(This is why so many companies let their employees telecommute. It’s a lot easier to set up an IT network than to hire a hitman.)
When you eventually find a place everyone is okay with (allow three months and half a dozen lawsuits), you face the next challenge: seating arrangements. Some people will think it’s the ideal opportunity to shuffle people around a bit, while others will say something like “over my dead body” (another job for the hitman, I guess).
And of course everyone wants a window seat, which makes you think you should forget all about office buildings and start looking at greenhouses.
Then there’s the drama of getting everything moved to your new offices. Oh, don’t worry. Getting it all over there is easy. It’s the squabbling over whose mouse is whose (despite them all being exactly the same) that will make you wonder if hitmen offer any sort of discount. It would have been easier to sell everything on eBay and start again.
So as you can imagine, the last thing you’ll want to do is go back to your old office and start cleaning up/throwing things out.
That’s where we come in. We can get rid of your old equipment, furniture, and anything else you left behind (such as the fridge that’s developed its own ecosystem and is in rapidly becoming a biohazard).
Let us take care of the rubbish so you can focus on more important things. Like telling your staff about the latest person you’ve hired.
And why he’s wearing dark glasses and carrying a sniper rifle.

Advice you can’t afford to skip

So you’ve finally bitten the bullet (or maybe your partner has threatened you with one) and decided to get rid of all the rubbish around the house. You’re looking forward to more space, less clutter, and not having to sleep with one eye open.

Just one question: How are you going to get rid of it all?

You may think the best solution is hire a skip, throw everything in there, and then have it hauled away a week later. But before you make that phone call or hit that website, here are a few things you should know.

Size matters
The first thing you’ll be asked is what size skip you need. Unfortunately there’s no “big enough to get all my crap out of the garage” size to choose from. No, in skip-land, everything is in cubic metres.

Now you may vaguely remember what a cubic metre is from your high school days, but do you have any idea how big that actually is? And can you look at your piles of rubbish and say “Oh, there’s exactly three cubic metres of junk there”? Of course not. So you’ll either hire a skip that’s too small for your stuff, or waste money paying for one that’s much bigger than you need.

Height restrictions
How heavy is the stuff you’re getting rid of? That’s important to know, because if you hire a skip you’ll have to lift everything at least a metre off the ground to get it over the sides. And if you hire a big one, you may have to lift it even higher.

So unless you’re a Jedi knight or have a burly neighbour, you may not be able to get rid of the heavier stuff no matter how much you want to.

The grass isn’t always greener
Chances are your skip is going to be sitting on the front lawn for a week. (It just seems longer, that’s all.) And while the skips on the website may look in pristine condition, chances are the one they give you will look pretty ugly. So if you’re trying to impress the neighbours (or maybe potential buyers) with how nice your house looks, this isn’t the way to go about it.

Even when they’re taken it away again, you’ll probably have a patch of ugly yellowed grass from where it was sitting. Unfortunately most skips are rectangular rather than circular, so no-one will believe your story about the spacecraft landing there.

There’s a new skip on town
One other thing you should be aware of: you’re not the only person in your neighbourhood with stuff to get rid of. And you’ll find out soon enough when you have a mobile skip sitting in your front yard. When word gets around there’s an empty skip on your lawn, people from miles around will start making daring midnight runs to dump their stuff. (They obviously have burly neighbours.)

So what’s the alternative? 
Well, you can give us a call. We won’t dump a skip on your front lawn for a week and leave you to it. We’ll bring our own truck, do all the lifting and carrying, and then take it all away. And we only charge you for the amount of rubbish you have, not the amount of rubbish you think you have.  No one wants a skip bin sitting out the front for every man and his dog to dump rubbish in! Professional rubbish removers are the better option.

And when we’re done, you’ll have plenty of space (not to mention energy) to do what you really want to be doing.

Like practising those Jedi moves.

All Fired Up

It looks like Brisbane has skipped spring completely and gone straight into summer. (Don’t panic. I’m talking only about the weather. The footy finals are still on, okay?) That means the bushfire season has started early. And believe me, this is one game you don’t want anything to do with.
So it’s time to prepare for the months ahead by making sure your home is as safe from bushfires as you can make it. And before you say “But my house is in a safe area”, remember that some of the bushfires Victoria experienced in 2009 travelled at up to 100km/h. Still think you’re safe? Some people can’t even drive that fast—especially on the highway.
It’s time to get to work.
If you’ve got trees in your backyard you’ve been meaning to trim, now’s the time. Grab your chainsaw/bushman’s saw/Ginsu steak knife and go to work. But please, no re-enacting scenes from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, okay? The only limbs we want removed are those from the trees.
Next, grab a ladder and clear out the roof gutters. Yes, you may have to buy one if you can’t beg, borrow or steal one from the neighbours. But chances are you’ll recoup most of your money selling the tennis balls, toy planes and Frisbees you find up there back to the kids next door.
What about those “storage areas” such as the garage and under the house? Chances are they’ve become a dumping zone for cardboard boxes, old paint tins and anything else you don’t use but can’t throw away “just in case”. Sorry, but it’s time to use ‘em or lose ‘em. Get rid of the paint tins (it’s a lot easier than painting), and unpack the boxes you’ve had in there for the past five years. (You could even gather the family for a bit of reminiscing as you open each one. “And this was my very first… Gaaaaa! A spider!”)
Okay, you’ve trimmed the trees, cleaned out the gutters, unpacked the boxes and even become a volunteer for the Spider Relocation Program. Now what? You don’t own a trailer. And there’s no way you can borrow one from the neighbour since you stole his ladder.
That’s where we come in.
Brizzy Rubbish Removals can get rid of all those dead branches, piles of leaves, cardboard boxes and old paint tins. (We’ll leave the spiders for you to sort out.) You won’t have to lift a finger—except maybe to change channels with your remote.
Your yard will look great, the rain might actually go down the drainpipes for once, and you’ll have all that memorabilia to get embarrassed about. (Honestly, what were you thinking when you bought that suit?)
And now that your place is ready, how about helping some of your neighbours get their houses ready as well? After all, you’ve already got a saw and a ladder.
And I’m sure there are plenty more toys on their roof you can sell.

Time for a little Garden Spring Cleaning?

Just when you’ve shed those winter pounds and you’ve got your summer swimsuit body ready to put on a show (freak show in my case) it’s time to strip back the garden and get it looking its best for spring.
Prune back the winter flowerers
It’s the time of year to cut back the winter flowerers and deciduous trees. Prune away hibiscus, camellias and lasiandra and cut back frangipani’s. Check deciduous trees for dead wood and then give them a moderate pruning to give them strength and room to sprout in the coming weeks.
Gently trim back winter flowerers in the garden beds. Fuchsias, lavender, geraniums and even star jasmine can benefit from a trim now. Remove any dead annuals and test woody stemmed plants for signs of life.
Get rid of dead wood
It’s been a dry old winter, there may be a few casualties in the garden. Use a pen knife to score bark on sick trees, if there’s no sign of life, completely remove dead branches, prune the tree back and give it a good watering and some fertiliser. Ask your local nursery if it’s really struggling, they’ll have some advice, and no doubt products, to help it recover.
Mow, aerate, fertilise…..
It’s time to do that first mow after the winter respite and your lawn will love you for giving it a bit of aeration too. Hire an aerator from your local garden or hire shop or buy a mower attachment to do it automatically. It’s also time to fertilise and mulch and show the garden a bit of love. Replace your annuals with new colour and add a little spring to your garden!
Love is….a tidy garden shed.
After a few months cold weather, your shed might be bulging at its seams too. It’s time to get tidy and organised for the spring and summer ahead with a full shed clean out. Check expiry dates, chuck out the broken items and do a good sweep and muck out – you’ll feel like a new man (or woman). Don’t forget under the house too.
A family that cleans together….has to listen to the kids moan all day….
While you’re spring cleaning the garden and shed, why not get the whole family involved and get the house ready for a new season. Make two piles, charity and chuck out and call us in to take the lot away.