Yes. Most Habitat ReStores pick up furniture, working appliances and building materials for free. Two things get decided without you. The store's sales floor decides whether it wants your piece, and the store's truck route decides the day. If the answer is no, or the date lands after you need the room back, curbside removal is $99 for a sofa, same day where same-day is running and you book by 2 PM.
Call your ReStore first, and ask for a date
If you have a kitchen coming out, a working appliance, or solid furniture, the ReStore is the best call in the country. It is the only charity network that wants cabinets, doors, windows and light fixtures, and it runs its own trucks. Find the nearest store on Habitat's ReStore locator and ask for whoever books pickups.
Four things to say, in this order.
- 1.What it is and what it is made of. Solid wood, veneer or particle board. That is the first screen.
- 2.If it is an appliance, how old it is and the last time you ran it.
- 3.Where it will be waiting. Garage, driveway, porch, or inside the house.
- 4.Do you have room for this right now, and what date can the truck come?
Question four is the one that ends this. Room and a date, together. A yes with no date on it has not been scheduled. Every ReStore is run by a local Habitat affiliate, so an answer at one store tells you nothing about the next one.
Why a spotless sofa still gets a no
A ReStore is a store. Everything that comes off the truck has to fit on a sales floor and sell to a walk-in customer. That produces refusals people do not see coming, and because every store is independently run, which ones apply varies by location.
The floor is already full of it. Large brown furniture is the most donated and slowest selling thing in the building. A clean sofa gets turned down because three are already out front. Condition never came up.
The appliance does not run. Working appliances are a ReStore's strongest category. A dead one is worth nothing to them.
The cabinets came out in pieces. A run has to arrive whole, doors and hardware attached.
Mattresses and box springs. A store cannot put a used mattress on its floor. That is a resale problem, not a condition problem.
It is upstairs. Most crews collect from a garage, driveway or porch. They do not carry pieces down a staircase and they do not take doors off hinges. Some stores will. Ask by name.
You are past the route. Trucks run set loops, and the edge of the loop is where it stops.
The day belongs to the route
The truck is full on Tuesday. It is on the other side of the county Thursday. Your street comes up when it comes up. Ask three stores and you will get three answers, because there is no national schedule and no national wait time. Any number you read online is one person's local experience.
That is fine when nothing has a date on it. It stops being fine when a contractor starts Monday, the new couch arrives Thursday, or you close on the house in nine days. You cannot move the route, and neither can the store.
So ask for the date on the call and write it down. Then look at your own calendar and see whether the two match.
Two of the reasons above are settled before you finish your sentence, and you can see neither one. You do not know what came off the last truck. You do not know where the route ends this week. That is why the internet gave you six answers and why the sofa is still in the living room. Call anyway. If it is a no, or the date lands too late, nothing has moved.
When the floor is full, or the truck cannot come this week, you pick the day. Book by 2 PM and a local hauler comes today where same-day is running, seven days a week, in all 50 states. A standard sofa is $99. That is the price for the sofa, it is set when you book, and it does not change at the curb. This is a removal, not a donation. If the piece is clean and a ReStore has room for it, the call above is still the better answer. Haulers head out between 8 and 10 in the morning, and almost half of pickups are done by noon. You get a text with the ETA before they arrive, and photos once it is gone. Nobody comes inside. Book first, then put it out the morning of the pickup. You do not leave it sitting in front of the building waiting on somebody else's route.
See my price for a sofaWhat people say
5.0 on Google, 150+ reviews · 4.9 on Trustpilot, 125+ reviews
"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. Even tho I had to change the pickup date several times, I was able to easily text them to let them know I needed to change dates."
Melissa Mader, on Google
Handing a sofa to a company you have never heard of, right after nearly handing it to Habitat, is a real gap. That is the review to read first. The last line is the part this page is about. She moved the date more than once by text. Over a thousand items go out every month.
If the ReStore says yes
Stage it exactly where you said it would be. If you told them garage, have it in the garage before the window opens, not while the truck idles. Crews run a route, and ten lost minutes at your house costs somebody the last stop of the day.
Do not take anything apart without asking. Stores generally want furniture whole. A bed frame in a pile, or a cabinet with the doors off, is harder to sell and easier to leave behind.
Get the receipt before the truck pulls away. It will not have a value written on it. You fill in the items and what they are worth, and the store is not allowed to do that part for you.
Photograph everything on the driveway first. One minute, and it is the only record you get.