New Sofas - How do you get rid of old ones ?

[Kayleigh]

We are possibly getting new sofas shortly but the place we are buying from, Courts, doesn't take the old one away. I know a few of you have had new suites recently. What did you do with your old one ?

I know that in most areas there are schemes where you can get any old furniture picked up and it is taken to a depot to be redistributed to low income families. I think you're local council would be able to tell you if you're intrested. Just a thought

If it is completely shot and/or you have no one to pass it onto you you can arrange for the council to come and collect it from outside your home to destroy. It costs about £10 I think and up to a week for them to collect.

Voice of doom and gloom (sorry!) If you ring the Council to take it away the cost varies from area to area. Where we used to live it was free, here they charge £40!! When I rang to get our old settee taken away the woman said it was £40 an hour and I said (naively) "but it's only a settee, it'll only take a minute to throw it in a truck!" The £40 is the MINIMUM they charge! We found someone with a trailer to take it to the dump for us.

Pie's suggestion is a good one, if the settee still has wear in it. Some charities will pick up furniture if you ring them.

I don't know about other councils, but both Lambeth and Croydon have a scheme in which each household can have a certain amount of bulk rubbish removed free each year - I suppose in order to stop people just dumping it! If you can't find a friend or charity to take it, give yours a ring, they might do something similar.

The Evergreen Trust, a charity who re-furbish and re-cycle furniture for homeless people being housed for the first time. Will be in phone book if you have one in your area. Otherwise a local 2nd hand furniture shop might fetch it for free.

Kayleigh - if donating your sofa to charity I belive that they do insist on the sofa being fire retardant - the sofas should have a label to indicate this.

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We sold our on Ebay not long ago. The buyer came and collected it which was handy!

We changed ours quite recently, the old one wasn't worth advertising so I chopped it up and took it to the local tip.

I gave mine away via an ad on the work intranet - free to anyone who could physically take it away. We had a taker on the first day. It was a large but grubby and saggy Habitat sofa which had belonged to my dh and was being replaced by my much more gorgeous sofa!

We put ours out and were going to ring the council, before we could a neighbour asked if she could have them for her son. She thought it was Christmas and so did we.

The council took ours for free. I rang a charity shop but they only wanted ones less than 10 years old. God knows how old ours was- we inherited it with the house.

When we got rid of our futon recently we put it outside in the front garden with a big typed notice on it saying "futon, free, please take" and it was gone within half an hour. Worth a try.

try giving it toi a furniture scheme if it has wear left in it and the labels as well styating that it is fire resistant and the usual safety stuff. sofa's are one of the hardest items of furniture to get on these schemes as well as fridges/freezers.

i gave my old one away to a friend of my mums who was moving into her own place. it was a cheap sofa but very comfty.

we rang the council too

Our new (leather!) sofas are now on order and as old ones are fire retardent and about 7 years old i will contact charities to see if i can donate them. They are worn but still have a bit of life in them.

Thanks so much for all your advice.