Donation is the first thing to try and the thing most often done wrong. A charity that turns a sofa away at the door has cost you a day.
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Published · last checked · written by the crew at Los Angeles Junk Removal & Hauling
In Los Angeles, Out of the Closet and St. Vincent de Paul still collect donated furniture free from the home. The Salvation Army no longer does; its Los Angeles centers take drop-offs only. Habitat for Humanity ReStore charges a service fee to collect. Goodwill Southern California does not collect at all.
Almost every page answering this is stale on the detail that matters: whether a truck comes to you. Two organizations here still send one for nothing. One charges. Two take furniture only if you drive it to them. Below is each as its own site describes it today, with the condition rules that decide whether the driver loads your couch.
A donated sofa has to clear three gates: it has to be something the organization sells, in a condition its driver will accept, somewhere the driver is allowed to lift it from. Miss one and it is still in your living room at 4:00pm.
Six organizations take household furniture across Los Angeles. Two collect free, and each limits where in the building the driver may go.
| Out of the Closet AIDS Healthcare Foundation | Free pickup, and the only drivers who come inside. Minimum two large furniture items, or ten bags. With no elevator they carry one flight, about 12 to 16 steps. LA County windows are 8:00am to 4:00pm, released a week out every Monday at 7:30am Pacific. Dispatch (323) 337-0715. No mattresses, bed frames, headboards, china cabinets or wall units. |
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| St. Vincent de Paul of Los Angeles | Free truck pickup on 1-800-974-3571 across Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Ground level only: no elevators, three or four steps at most. Takes sofas, recliners, dressers, hutches, patio sets, dining tables with four or more chairs and — unusually — spring, pillow top, memory foam and Tempur-Pedic mattresses and box springs. Quotes on estates. Stores at 210 N. Avenue 21, Los Angeles and 2750 E. PCH, Long Beach. |
| The Salvation Army Los Angeles area | Drop-off only. Home pickups have ended here. Both adult rehabilitation centers covering the region, Santa Monica and Pasadena, carry the same line: “While The Salvation Army no longer offers home pickups in this area…” and refer donors to a fee-based partner. Its zip lookup returns “not serviced” for LA. Stores still take unbroken furniture, sofas and mattresses. |
| Habitat for Humanity ReStore Greater Los Angeles | Pickup exists but is not free: a $50 service fee. Items must be on a ground floor, garage, driveway or curb; the page quotes 24 to 72 hours in one place and 3 to 5 days in another. Drop-off is free at all three stores, daily 9:30am to 6:30pm: 1071 S. La Brea Ave, Los Angeles; 18600 Crenshaw Blvd, Torrance; 8739 E. Artesia Blvd, Bellflower. No mattresses. |
| Goodwill Southern California | No pickup service at all. Its donate page says it plainly: “we do not offer pick-up service.” Drop off at more than 40 attended donation centers and more than 80 stores, where an attendant unloads and gives you a receipt. Sellable-as-is items only. Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino only. |
| A Sense of Home furniture bank, Hawthorne | You deliver, by appointment, on a Tuesday. The LA furniture bank that furnishes entire first homes for young people leaving foster care. Donations go to its Hawthorne warehouse on Tuesdays. JPEG photos of each item are required first; it replies in 24 to 48 hours. Nothing is collected. |
Sources, read September 11, 2026: Out of the Closet, St. Vincent de Paul of Los Angeles, Salvation Army Santa Monica and Pasadena ARCs, satruck.org, Habitat LA, Goodwill SoCal, A Sense of Home.
Both free pickups are route-based: the driver arrives with a schedule and a part-full truck and decides at your door.
Front, back, any damage. St. Vincent de Paul and Out of the Closet leave the final call to the driver; A Sense of Home will not book you without JPEGs.
Mattress or box spring: St. Vincent de Paul is the only free service listing them. Cabinets, doors, windows, a sink: ReStore, not a thrift store.
St. Vincent de Paul is phone-first and clears the item on the call. Out of the Closet releases appointments one week ahead, Mondays at 7:30am Pacific; dispatch (323) 337-0715.
One flight is the most any free service here will do. Soft goods bagged, hard goods boxed, separate. Both leave a receipt with no value on it: that part is your job.
Rather not deal with any of it? Tell us what is there and we will price it.
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Our own crews on Los Angeles County jobs. Side yards, narrow walkways and the back of the property is where most of the work actually happens.
Charity resale is retail with a sales floor and a margin. Every refusal below exists because the item cannot be sold, cannot be sold legally, or costs more to move than it makes.
| Stains, tears, pet damage | The commonest refusal. Habitat LA takes upholstery only with “no stains, wear, tear, discolorations, pet hair, or patterns.” St. Vincent de Paul refuses “stained, soiled, or ripped items,” anything “visibly worn, discolored, or faded” and “items with excessive pet hair.” |
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| Bed bugs, mold, infestation | No organization here knowingly takes an infested item and none publishes an exception. It narrows the recycling route too: the Mattress Recycling Council handles heavily soiled, moldy or bed-bug infested units site by site, and fees may apply. |
| Missing pieces, flat-pack, sheer size | Habitat LA refuses “anything broken, damaged or missing parts.” St. Vincent de Paul wants a bed frame complete in four pieces, a dining set with four or more chairs and bookcases with all their shelves. No charity here names particle board, so judge it by that test: chipboard assembled once and carried downstairs rarely arrives whole. Size is its own gate — St. Vincent de Paul refuses armoires, desks over 4 ft and anything needing more than two people. |
| No flammability label | California requires new upholstered furniture sold in the state to carry a law label and a flammability label, and anything made after January 1, 2015 the TB 117-2013 version. Only the end consumer may legally remove either, and the Bureau of Household Goods and Services puts compliance on “any person having in his or her possession with the intent to sell.” |
| Cribs, car seats, high chairs | Refused almost everywhere, and the reason is federal. The crib standard, 16 CFR part 1219, applies to “new and used” cribs and covers any “sale, contract for sale or resale, lease, sublet, offer… or other placement in the stream of commerce.” Out of the Closet excludes car seats, cribs and high chairs; St. Vincent de Paul adds strollers and bouncers as recall risks. |
| Mattresses | Refused by Habitat LA and Out of the Closet, accepted by St. Vincent de Paul. California treats a resold used mattress as regulated secondhand bedding: it needs a red secondhand law label and a yellow sanitization label under 4 CCR section 1256, and the seller needs the matching license. |
Sources: Habitat LA ReStore, St. Vincent de Paul, Out of the Closet, California BHGS TB 117-2013 FAQs and Labeling FAQs, 16 CFR 1219.
The bed is the item people assume is hopeless, and it is the one thing in the house with a guaranteed free route whether or not a charity wants it. California runs a statewide program through the Mattress Recycling Council, branded Bye Bye Mattress, paid for by a mattress recycling fee charged on every mattress and box spring sold in the state.
Any California resident can drop a mattress or box spring at a participating site at no cost, whether or not the fee was paid on that unit. If a retailer is delivering a new one, state law requires it to offer to take the old one at no additional cost within 30 days, unless it is a health or safety risk. Offer it to St. Vincent de Paul first if it is genuinely clean; otherwise the free drop-off. Our mattress disposal guide lists the sites.
Sources: Mattress Recycling Council, California and its program FAQs, read September 11, 2026.
Every organization here hands you a receipt and none will write a value on it. That is the rule, not caution: the donor sets fair market value, which the IRS defines as “the price that property would sell for on the open market” — for furniture, what a thrift shop charges for something comparable.
| The condition floor | No deduction for clothing or household items unless they are in good used condition or better. Household items means furniture, furnishings, electronics, appliances and linens. One exception: an item below that bar counts if you claim more than $500 with a qualified appraisal and Form 8283, Section B. |
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| Under $250 | Keep a receipt showing the organization’s name and address, the date and location, and a description detailed enough that someone unfamiliar with the property would recognize it. |
| $250 or more | A contemporaneous written acknowledgment describing the property and stating whether you got anything in return, in your hands no later than the date you file the return or its due date with extensions. |
| Over $500, up to $5,000 | Form 8283, Section A, plus that acknowledgment. It carries how and when you acquired the property, your basis, the value, the method and the condition. To test the threshold, combine all similar items given that year. |
| Over $5,000 | A qualified written appraisal and Form 8283, Section B, signed by the receiving organization. Measured per item or group of similar items. |
Sources: IRS Publication 526 (2025) and Publication 561 (12/2025). A summary of published federal rules, not tax advice.
We are a junk removal company that just told you to call a charity first. For a clean sofa with a week of notice, that beats hiring anyone. Here is where it stops working.
The calendar. Out of the Closet releases appointments one week ahead, Monday mornings only, and St. Vincent de Paul books against truck routes. Neither survives an escrow date or a lease ending Saturday.
The staircase. One flight, where there is no elevator, is the furthest any free service goes. In a Koreatown walk-up the donation is not the problem; the forty feet before it is.
The mixed load. Charities take the good third. A cleared garage is one good sofa, a broken desk, a dead television and four cans of paint, and nobody here takes that as one job. If the item is just finished, most cities here still collect bulky items from the curb free — our city-by-city bulky pickup guide has the caps and numbers. Use it before you pay anyone.
What “we donate what we can” means. When a hauler says that, including us, it means sorting on the truck: what comes out clean, complete and sellable goes to an organization above instead of a transfer station. It is a real effort and not a guarantee, because the receiving charity still applies every rule on this page. Anyone promising a fixed donation percentage is guessing. If one piece matters, book the charity yourself and let us take the rest — which is what most of our furniture removal and estate cleanout work looks like. How we price it is on the pricing page.
Every rule, fee, limit and deadline on this page is from the body that sets it. Checked on the date above; if a city changes its program we change the page.
Same crew, one visit, one number agreed before anything is lifted.
Couches, sectionals, mattresses in the same trip, beds, desks and wardrobes carried down rather than dragged.
Recycled through a state-funded program, not dumped. Box springs and futons too.
A full property cleared with care, on probate or move-out timelines.
The whole garage in one visit. We sort, donate what is usable and sweep the slab.
The rest of the LA disposal manual.
Free curbside pickup, free drop-off sites, the state recycling fee you already paid, and the fine for leaving it in an alley.
Thirteen Los Angeles-area programs in one table: how many free pickups a year, how many items, who to call and what each one refuses.
Buildings of five units and up sit under recycLA, not the free city pickup, and that one line changes the whole plan.
The follow-up questions people ask after this one.
Two. Out of the Closet collects free across Los Angeles County if you have two large furniture items or ten bags, and its drivers come inside and carry one flight of stairs. St. Vincent de Paul of Los Angeles collects free on 1-800-974-3571, but only from ground level, with no elevators and no more than three or four steps.
No. Both adult rehabilitation centers covering the region, Santa Monica and Pasadena, state on their own pages that The Salvation Army no longer offers home pickups in this area, and refer donors to a fee-based partner instead. Its zip lookup returns not serviced for LA. Stores still take drop-offs.
Not in Southern California. Goodwill Southern California states on its donate page that it does not offer a pick-up service. Donations go to one of its 40-plus attended donation centers or 80-plus stores, where an attendant unloads the car and hands you a receipt.
Because they are retailers and it will not sell. Habitat LA accepts upholstery only with no stains, wear, tear, discolorations or pet hair. St. Vincent de Paul refuses stained, soiled or ripped items and anything visibly worn or faded. The IRS agrees: no deduction unless it is in good used condition or better.
Sometimes. St. Vincent de Paul of Los Angeles lists spring, pillow top, memory foam and Tempur-Pedic mattresses and box springs as accepted. Habitat ReStore and Out of the Closet refuse them. If nobody takes it, California’s mattress recycling program accepts them free at participating drop-off sites.
Its fair market value on the day you give it, which the IRS defines as the price a willing buyer would pay a willing seller. For used furniture that is what a thrift store charges for something comparable, not what you paid. You set that figure, not the charity.
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