If your couch is still in decent shape, donating beats the landfill. The catch is that every charity has its own list of what it will and will not take, and “free pickup” usually means free pickup from your curb, not from your living room. Here is who takes what in Mesa, and what to do with the stuff nobody accepts.
Read this first: two rules that trip everyone up
- Nobody takes mattresses. Not Habitat, and not most thrift charities. Arizona has no mattress recycling program that makes this easy. Mattresses are the single most common thing people assume is donatable, and they are the thing you will end up hauling to the landfill.
- Free pickup is curbside pickup. Charities send a driver and a truck, not a moving crew. If the dresser is upstairs and you cannot get it down, a free pickup does not solve your problem. St. Vincent de Paul is the one that will come inside, and they charge for it (details below).
Habitat for Humanity ReStore
The Habitat for Humanity Central Arizona ReStore is the best option for furniture, and it is the one most people in the East Valley overlook. Sales fund Habitat homes locally.
- They take: furniture, working appliances (8 years old or newer), cabinets, countertops, doors, hardware, light fixtures, tools, lumber 6 feet and longer, and new tile in quantities of 200 square feet or more.
- They will not take: mattresses of any kind, carpet, used ceiling fans, electronics, paint, chemicals, or used sinks, toilets, and tubs.
- Upholstered furniture must be clean and undamaged. Tears, stains, or pet damage mean it gets declined, and the driver makes that call at your house.
- Free pickup is available for larger items through their scheduling system.
- The East Valley catch: there is no ReStore in Mesa. The closest one is in Tempe, at 3210 S. McClintock Dr., Suite 120. If you are dropping off rather than scheduling a pickup, that is your drive.
St. Vincent de Paul
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul runs the most flexible pickup in the Phoenix metro, and they are the only one on this list that will come inside your house for it.
- They take: most gently used furniture, appliances, and household or clothing items packed in bags or boxes.
- They will not take: tube televisions, wet merchandise, large desks, waterbeds, used carpet, or appliances that do not work.
- Free standard pickup covers standard donations, and it is curbside. Schedule at least 2 days ahead. Pickups run Monday through Friday, 8:00am to 4:00pm, so somebody has to be home on a weekday.
- Priority in-home service is the one where they actually remove items from inside the house. It starts at $110 and goes up with the size of the load.
- Scheduling line: (602) 266-4673.
Goodwill of Central Arizona
Goodwill of Central Arizona has the most drop-off locations around Mesa by a wide margin, which makes it the easy answer for anything you can fit in your own vehicle.
- They take almost everything from household items to cars, with hazardous materials being the hard exception. Donations are tax-deductible and they recycle what they cannot sell.
- Drop-off is the play here. Their home pickup runs through a third-party partner (ReSupply) rather than a Goodwill truck, and that service charges a fee.
- Use the Goodwill location finder to pick the closest Mesa donation center, since they open and move locations often enough that any list goes stale.
Salvation Army: read this before you call
For years the answer to “who picks up furniture for free in Phoenix?” was the Salvation Army truck. That local pickup service has ended. Half the donation guides online have not caught up, so people still call and get told no.
You can still donate by finding a staffed drop-off location through satruck.org. They now point people toward ReSupply, a fee-based third-party pickup service, for anything you cannot haul yourself.
Quick answer: who should I call?
- Good couch, you can get it to the curb: St. Vincent de Paul free pickup, or Habitat ReStore pickup.
- Building materials, cabinets, doors, working appliances: Habitat ReStore, every time. They are built for it.
- Small stuff that fits in your car: Goodwill drop-off.
- It is upstairs, or heavy, or you cannot lift it: St. Vincent de Paul in-home service at $110 and up, or a hauler.
- Mattress, torn couch, broken dresser, water damage: nobody takes it. It is a landfill trip. See our Mesa dump and landfill guide for hours and fees.
Where we come in (and where we do not)
Honest version: if everything you have is donatable and you can get it to the curb, use the charities above. It is free, and they do good work with it. You do not need us.
Where hiring someone actually makes sense is the mixed pile, which is most piles. A garage cleanout is usually a couch that a charity wants, a mattress nobody wants, three bags of trash, and a dead water heater. Splitting that across a charity pickup, a landfill run, and your own back is a whole weekend. We take the entire pile in one trip, drop the usable pieces at donation ourselves, and haul the rest. You get the flat price before we load anything.
Either way, the goal is the same: keep the good stuff out of the landfill. If this guide sent you to St. Vincent de Paul instead of to us, that is a win. Our junk removal service is here if the pile is bigger than the charities will handle.