Once the last of the turkey has been carved and the wrapping paper sits in heaps across the living room floor, most households around here find themselves with far more rubbish than the wheelie bin can cope with. We have provided skip hire in Ormskirk and the surrounding towns for over a century, and every December we watch the same pattern unfold. Bins overflow, collection days shift, and a well-timed skip turns a stressful fortnight into an easy one.
Why Christmas Is the Ideal Time for a Proper Clearout
The festive break is one of the few times of year when the whole household is home together with a few free days in hand. Before the new presents arrive and the cupboards fill up again, it makes sense to tackle the jobs that have been waiting all autumn. Sorting the garage, clearing the loft of decorations you no longer use, or getting the spare room ready for visiting family all generate a surprising amount of waste in a short space of time.
The catch is that kerbside collections across West Lancashire and Sefton are usually rearranged over the holiday period, and an overstuffed bin left out on the wrong day can sit there for a week or more. A skip on the drive removes that worry entirely. Everything goes in as you work, nothing piles up in the hallway or garden, and there are no repeat trips to the tip in between Boxing Day visits.
Picking the Right Size Skip for a Festive Clearout
For a typical household declutter, our 4 tonne midi skip is the size we deliver most often in December. It comfortably swallows broken decorations, old furniture from the spare room, flattened cardboard and the general accumulation of a busy year, while still fitting on a standard driveway in Ormskirk or Southport.
If you are pairing the Christmas clearout with a January project, perhaps ripping out a tired kitchen before the new one arrives in the sales, the 8 tonne builders skip gives you the extra headroom for heavier materials. If you are unsure which suits your plans, our guide to choosing the right skip size for your project walks through the options, or you can simply describe the job when you call and we will point you the right way.
Real Trees, Artificial Trees and Festive Recycling
Christmas produces its own particular mix of waste. Wrapping paper, cards, packaging and food boxes mount up quickly, and then there is the tree itself. A real tree is the easier of the two to deal with responsibly because it can be shredded and composted, returning its carbon to the soil rather than to the atmosphere. Artificial trees are built from mixed plastics and metals that are difficult to separate, so if you own one the greenest choice is to keep using it for as many years as you can before it ever goes in a skip.
Whatever ends up in your skip from us is sorted at our own facility rather than sent on elsewhere, and you can read more about how we handle that on our environmental and recycling page. We divert as much as possible away from landfill, which matters all the more in a season when so much extra material is moving through every household.
Skip Permits Over the Holiday Period
Plenty of homes in our two target towns have no off-road parking at all. The terraced streets around Ormskirk town centre and the Victorian roads off Lord Street in Southport are lovely places to live, but they leave nowhere private to stand a skip. In those cases the skip sits on the road and a council permit is required before delivery.
The important detail at this time of year is timing. Council offices run reduced hours over Christmas and New Year, so a permit application that would normally turn around quickly can take noticeably longer in late December. If you know you want a roadside skip for the festive break, get in touch early in the month and we will handle the application for you. Southport residents can find the full picture in our guide on whether you need a skip permit in Southport, which covers what Sefton Council expects and how long things typically take.
Covering Southport, Burscough, Formby and Beyond
Our base puts us within easy reach of both market town and coast, so December deliveries to Southport skip hire customers run on the same dependable schedule as those closer to home in Ormskirk. We also cover the villages and towns in between, including Burscough skip hire along the canal corridor and Formby skip hire for households nearer the pinewoods. Because we are local, we know which streets are tight for access and which days suit deliveries in each area, knowledge that only comes from a hundred years of driving these same roads.
If you would like a skip in place before the festivities begin, or simply want to start the new year with a clear garage and an empty loft, give us a ring on 01704 779345 or send your details through our contact page and we will sort the rest. From all of us at Martlands, have a wonderful Christmas.
