Getting rid of furniture
in Seattle

1. SPU bulky-item pickup — $30 an item, and only at the curb

Inside Seattle city limits, Seattle Public Utilities runs a "special items" collection for garbage customers. The published price is $30 per item, and the four limits are what matter: it's by appointment, it's curbside only, it's scheduled to your next regular garbage day, and the crew does not come inside. Booking lives at seattle.gov/specialitems.

So it's genuinely the cheapest way to lose a couch — provided you can get the couch to the street under your own power and you can wait until your collection day comes around. It doesn't help with a sofa in a Wallingford basement, a dresser on the third floor of a Capitol Hill walk-up, or a Thursday closing on a house you have to empty by Tuesday. And apartment buildings on private hauling contracts often aren't on the program at all.

Outside city limits there is no equivalent. Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Sammamish, Issaquah, Renton, Newcastle and Mercer Island fall under the King County Solid Waste Division, which is a self-haul transfer-station system rather than a doorstep pickup service. If you live on the Eastside, "the city will come get it" simply isn't one of your options — skip to section 4.

2. Donate it — if it's in good shape, and if you can wait

Seattle has four solid donation routes, and all four do free home pickup of resellable furniture: Evergreen Goodwill, the Salvation Army (1-800-SA-TRUCK), Habitat for Humanity ReStore and St. Vincent de Paul of Seattle/King County. Donation is the best outcome for a good piece — it stays out of a $243-a-ton waste stream, someone else gets a sofa, and you can ask for a receipt for the deduction.

The honest caveats: condition is judged at the door, and a stained, torn, wobbly or water-damaged piece gets declined after you've waited for the truck. Pickup slots typically book out a week or more, especially in spring. Crews generally take pieces from the ground floor or the driveway rather than carrying them up from a basement. And none of them take used mattresses — that's not a policy quirk, it's essentially universal in Washington.

3. Sell it — Buy Nothing and Marketplace are big here, but

Seattle runs on Buy Nothing groups — the movement literally started in the Puget Sound area — and Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp move a decent couch fast. Free listings especially disappear in hours.

The catch is unchanged by the platform: you still have to get it out of the house. Buyers and takers show up in a Subaru, look at a three-seater on the second floor, and discover neither of you can move it. You'll field no-shows, reschedules and the person who wants you to help carry it down. Fine if you have the time and the piece is genuinely nice; frustrating if your lease ends Saturday.

4. Haul it to the transfer station yourself

Doable, and worth pricing honestly. King County stations — Factoria (Bellevue), Houghton (Kirkland), Shoreline, Bow Lake (Tukwila), Renton, Enumclaw, Vashon — publish $40.25 minimum per load (up to 320 lb) and $243.38 per ton for 2026, plus $25 if your load isn't secured. Inside the city, SPU's North station (Wallingford, N 34th St) and South station (8105 5th Ave S) publish roughly $35 minimum per trip (up to 420 lb) and about $165 per ton — though SPU's rate page is dated 4/1/2023, so confirm before you load.

Then add what the fee doesn't cover: a truck you probably don't own, fuel, straps, a second person, and the fact that "free" ends the moment you rent something. Two trips and a Saturday routinely cost more than one flat pickup — and you're still the one carrying the sofa up the basement stairs at both ends.

5. The basement problem

Here's the Seattle-specific catch none of the above solves: getting the old furniture up from the basement or down the walk-up stairs. That's the actual hard part.

Unlike the Sun Belt, Seattle homes have real basements. Ballard, Wallingford, Ravenna and Wedgwood are wall-to-wall pre-war Craftsman and box houses with full basements, and after a few decades of damp PNW storage those basements hold a sofa bed nobody can lift, a dresser swollen shut, and boxes that have quietly gone soft. Getting a sleeper sofa up a narrow, turning basement stair is a two-person job with a strategy, not a chore.

Above ground it's the hills. Capitol Hill and First Hill are dense with 1900s no-elevator walk-ups; Queen Anne Ave N's Counterbalance runs roughly an 18–19% grade and the city has more than 100 public stairways. SPU won't come up those stairs. The donation truck won't. The Marketplace buyer definitely won't. A full-service haul is the only option on this page where somebody else does that carry — and with us it carries no stair fee and no hill fee.

6. Flat-price pickup — the easy button

Send a photo, get a set price (a sofa is $126, a sectional from $141), and a crew carries it out — from any floor or up from the basement, no stair fee, usable pieces donated for you. Often same-day. It's the option most Seattleites land on once they've priced out the rest, and it's the only one that solves section 5.

The quick comparison

Prices are flat and photo-quoted; $100 minimum, disposal included. Municipal figures are the published 2026 King County and Seattle Public Utilities rates. A small WA refuse tax may apply on disposal.

When Seattle furniture needs to go

• Lease end. The move-out inspection doesn't care that the couch won't fit down the stairwell.
• UW move-out. The dorm deadline is noon Saturday, June 13, 2026, with June 10–13 the crush; the bigger wave is late August, when off-campus U-District and Ravenna leases turn over. Book ahead for both.
• Amazon and Microsoft relocations. SLU and Redmond churn furnished apartments year-round, on nobody's seasonal calendar.
• Pre-sale staging. Agents want the basement, the garage and the spare room empty before the photographer arrives.
• Downsizing and estates. Clearing a longtime Mercer Island, Madison Park or Magnolia home, where donation receipts and discretion both matter.
• The new sofa is arriving Tuesday and the old one has to be out of the room first.

What Seattle customers say

Furniture removal across Seattle

Frequently asked questions

How much does furniture removal cost in Seattle?

Flat and photo-quoted: sofa $126, loveseat $119, sleeper sofa $149, recliner $98, futon $111, armchair $77, sectional 2-piece $141 / 3-piece $185 / 4-piece $228, dresser $126 or $148 large, dining table $103 to $163, bookshelf $72, coffee table $67, entertainment center $77, wardrobe $143. Whole-room and whole-house clears price by truck-fill from $241 to $732. The minimum on any job is $100, disposal and carry-out included. Homeyou and Yelp Costs put the average Seattle junk-removal job at roughly $253 to $325.

What does it cost to take furniture to the dump myself?

At a King County station — Factoria, Houghton, Shoreline, Bow Lake, Renton, Enumclaw or Vashon — the 2026 published rate is $40.25 minimum per load up to 320 lb, $243.38 per ton after that, plus $25 if your load isn't secured. Seattle Public Utilities' North station in Wallingford and South station at 8105 5th Ave S publish roughly $35 minimum per trip up to 420 lb and about $165 per ton, though that page is dated 4/1/2023. Add a truck rental, fuel and a second pair of hands before deciding it's free.

Who carries the sofa up from the basement?

That is the part no other option solves. SPU's pickup is curbside only, donation trucks generally take pieces from the ground floor or the driveway, and a Marketplace buyer expects you to help. Our crew comes to the room the furniture is in — basement, attic, third-floor Capitol Hill walk-up — and carries it out. No stair fee and no hill fee, whatever the grade.

Can I put a chair in my regular Seattle garbage?

Not as a workaround for bulky items, and not mixed with banned material. Under SMC 21.36 Seattle bans recyclables, food scraps, compostable paper and yard waste from the garbage, and a load more than about 10 percent contaminated gets a violation tag instead of a collection. Furniture goes through the special-items program, a transfer station, donation, or a hauler.

Is there sales tax on furniture removal in Washington?

Not the retail rate. Washington's roughly 10.35 percent retail sales tax does not apply to the junk-removal service. The state instead charges a 3.6 percent Refuse/Solid Waste Collection Tax (RCW 82.18) on the disposal portion, which may appear as a small line on your receipt.

What's the easiest way to get rid of furniture in Seattle?

Flat-price pickup. Send a photo, get a set price — a sofa is $126 — and a crew carries it out from any floor or up from the basement, with no stair fee and usable pieces donated for you. No transfer-station trip, no waiting for your next garbage day, and often same-day.