If it’s time for you to add a new sofa to your life, then it’s best to get rid of your old one before you start.
We’ve got some excellent ways to do that and to keep your environmental impact to a minimum as you do.
How To Dispose Of Old Furniture (Including Couches)
Sell It
Before you throw out or recycle anything you own, we recommend seeing if you can sell it.
There are plenty of online services to advertise old furniture on or you could hold a garage sale.
This is doubly true if what you have is just a few items of gently used furniture. And the cash you get back will help you save money on the new furniture that you’re buying to replace the old.
This is often the cheapest (and fastest) way to get rid of old furniture (and, in fact, other junk).
You can find dumpster rental services online or in the Yellow Pages and you’ll find a range of dumpster rental options from 10-40 yards of dumpster.
Then you can load up your old furniture including your old couch into it and then you get the rental service to schedule pickup services and poof! They get rid of furniture for you. Furniture removal has never been easier, right?
Curbside Collection Furniture Removal
If you don’t have so much to get rid of that you can justify a dumpster, then consider furniture disposal via curbside collection.
This is an ideal way to get rid of furniture that you don’t want but you must talk to your local curbside collection provider before you assume that they offer a junk removal service if this kind as not all municipalities allow furniture disposal of this nature.
In our experience, unwanted furniture that can be removed in this fashion will need to be left at a certain time of day and there will almost certainly be a hard limit as to just how much stuff you can leave out.
Use Junk Removal Services
We often use a junk removal company to get rid of furniture that we can’t get rid of via a garage or yard sale.
Most junk removal services will provide you with a quotation upfront and they will base that quote on the volume of furniture to be discarded.
That means junk removal companies are usually only cost-effective when disposing of large furniture items or a lot of furniture (such as when dumping office furniture) .
Consider A Scrap Dealer (Even For Upholstered Furniture)
A local scrap metal dealer may be interested in most furniture made of metal. Wooden furniture might be useful (at least the wood frame) to woodworkers, etc.
Some dealers may charge to perform this service and others may offer it for free.
We recycle metal using the iScrap App’s scrap yard finder. Our old office furniture brought in some much-needed cash for new furniture and they gave great customer service too.
Donate It
Finding a local donation center or local furniture banks can be one of the best ways to recycle furniture rather than see it destroyed.
Local donation centers will collect furniture at little or no cost as long as there’s nothing wrong with the items (such as bed bugs) they will carry out couch removal, etc.
They will then take your worn-out sofa and refurbish it so that it can be used by someone else. This service is often offered by the Salvation Army (the Salvation Army website is here), so it can be worth contacting them first to see if they offer furniture pickup in your area.
Dismantle And Landfill
We feel like this is an absolute option of last resort and that it should only be employed if your used furniture has been rejected by a recycling center and your local scrap yard.
In essence, it’s equivalent to dumping furniture in the regular trash and doing all the heavy lifting yourself.
You want to start by removing all the cushions. removing any change or waste stuck in the couch, vacuuming it all over, ripping off the fabric, cutting it up with a handsaw, and then either transporting what you have to a local landfill or to a disposal location offered by your local municipality services.
Final Thoughts On Disposing Of A Couch
Getting rid of your old couch (or other furniture) doesn’t need to be a grind though we hope that it doesn’t end up in the nearest landfill unless it’s completely necessary. Just use one of the methods above to get it gone.
And then, when you’re looking to buy some new furniture check out our pieces on the best places to buy a sofa online, the best mid-century furniture brands, and the best sofa brands to transform a living room!
