My Landlord Threw Our Stuff Away And Considers Our Lease Done (central Illinois)

Hello. This is literally my first time posting on Reddit so bear with me.

My bf and I were in the process of moving apartments so we informed our previous leasing company at the start of this month that February would be the last month we’re living there (since we’re paying month to month). Since then we have taken our time moving things over to the new apartment and had gotten most of it moved over when this happened.

During the process of moving utilities and Internet, we unintentionally set utilities at the old apartment to end on February 17th. The landlord got a notification from the utility company the day of shut off and since they didn’t want their pipes to freeze, they picked it back up in their name. They claim to have called us that day but we have no record of any incoming calls from them and they never followed up with further calls, emails, or voicemails.

4 days later, I come to the apartment to discover our remaining items are gone, maintenance supplies are present, and a fresh coat of paint is on the walls (it’s worth noting that I did visit the apartment for a few things on the 18th and didn’t notice anything wrong). They are claiming that surrendering utilities constitutes abandonment and they had thrown all of our remaining items in the dumpster which made me have to dumpster dive for the stuff that was salvageable.

We got in contact with them as soon as we learned that they had charged us $1900 for damages, cleanup, and trash out fees. They have since waived those fees and are offering prorated rent for the part of the month that we “defaulted on” as well as our security deposit but I feel like we deserve genuine compensation for the disposal of our belongings. They have held firm that they don’t owe us any more and that they don’t even have to do this. To add icing to the cake, my bf has severe OCD and has been beside himself with the disposal of what was mostly his stuff.

I need help in determining if I should pursue this as a legal case, since there are basically no tenant resources in central Illinois (Sangamon county). This feels like a serious violation of our rights and I hope that they haven’t done this to other member of this complex.

Tl;dr - landlord threw out our stuff without notice after we ended our utility early