Does Salvation Army pick up furniture? They pick the date

That is who you came here about, so make that call first. Scheduling runs by zip code, because the truck belongs to the nearest Salvation Army location, not to one national schedule. Ask for the donation pickup coordinator and tell them four things.

• •What it is, and what is wrong with it. Say the stain out loud. The crew sees it on the driveway anyway.
• •Roughly what it weighs, and whether it folds out. A sleeper sofa is a different job than a sofa.
• •What floor it is on, and whether you can get it to the porch, garage, or driveway yourself.
• •"What date can you come?"

The fourth one is the whole call. A yes with no date is not a plan, and it is the answer most people hang up with. Get the date by text or email before you move anything.

If they pass, ask a local Habitat ReStore the same four questions. Every ReStore is run by an independent local Habitat affiliate, so a no from one says nothing about the next.

Weight is what everyone worries about. It is almost never the thing. Donation crews load furniture for a living.

Condition is the strict gate. Family Stores resell what they collect, so the piece has to be able to go on a sales floor. A tear, a pet-chewed arm, a water ring, a swollen particle-board leg, and it cannot. That call gets made twice, once on the phone and once at the truck, and the crew on your driveway has the final one.

Access is the second gate. Collection is generally from a porch, garage, driveway, or a ground-floor room near the door. Whether a crew will go up a flight is set by the local store, and these policies change, so ask when you call rather than planning around them.

Then the route, which is the one nobody warns you about. Some zips come back with a date. Some come back drop-off only. Some come back with no pickup service at all, and nothing you say about the sofa changes that.

None of that is yours to decide. A store decides what its floor can hold this week. A route decides what day the truck is near you. You cannot see the floor and you cannot move the route. So make the call and get a date. If they pass, or the date they offer lands after the day you need the room back, the sofa is still against the wall.

Here you pick the day. Book by 2 PM and a local hauler comes today where same-day pickup is running, seven days a week, in all 50 states. Or pick a day next week if that is the one you need.

• •Standard sofa — $99, plus $28 for each additional item
• •Sleeper sofa — $131, plus $60 for each additional item
• •Sectional, 3 pieces — $131, plus $60 for each additional item

That is the whole price. It is set when you book and it does not change at the curb.

Book first, then move it out. Haulers head out between 8 and 10 in the morning, about half of pickups are done by noon and three quarters by 2 PM. You get a text with the ETA before they arrive and photos once it is gone. Nobody comes inside. Put it out the morning of the pickup, not the night before.

This is a removal, not a donation. If a store will take the piece and the date they offer works, that call is the better answer.

Handing a sofa to a name you have not heard of is a bigger ask than handing it to a charity. It is the objection we hear most, so here it is in a customer's words. Melissa left this on Google after a pickup near St. Louis.

"I was concerned this wasn't a legit company, but they absolutely are and I'm so glad I found them as I was quoted $1500 by another company in the St. Louis area. I was provided with photos from the pickup to validate that the items had been removed." — Melissa Mader, Google

5.0 on Google, 150+ reviews. 4.9 on Trustpilot, 125+ reviews.

Ask what the window is, and whether they need the piece outside. Most stores want it staged where the crew can reach it without walking through your house. Porch, garage, or just inside the door.

Do not put a sofa at the curb the night before for a charity truck. It rains, and a wet sofa is a refused sofa. In an apartment building it is also the fastest way to get a notice from your building manager.

Pull the cushions and vacuum it. Condition gets judged at the truck, and a clean piece reads differently than one with crumbs in the seams. Ten minutes.

Ask for the receipt at the truck and take a photo of the sofa before it goes up the ramp. The receipt will be blank, because you assign the value, not them.

And keep the morning open. Their date is their route's date, which means it can move when the route does. If it moves past the day you needed, you are back to picking a day yourself.