We often get asked if we take furniture directly from people who no longer want or need it.

The short answer is yes. Yes we do.

However, there are a few things we take in to consideration when it comes to sourcing furniture to ensure we can make the most of its potential. So if you’re contacting us to discuss offering us furniture, you might well find this blog useful to read.

Firstly, we need to know where you are located. We are based in Coxhoe, County Durham, so unfortunately, if you’re looking to offer us furniture, but live more than an hour away, we’d politely decline and hope you can find someone nearer to you that could take your furniture.

We do this for two reasons – one, that it takes a huge chunk of our working day collecting furniture if it’s far away, and the other, been that we try to keep our prices as reasonable as possible, reflective of the piece of furniture of course. So keeping collection costs and fuel costs to a minimum is a big part of this.

We also need photos of the furniture. We will never commit to collecting a piece of furniture without seeing at least one photo of the furniture in question.

We will also ask whether the furniture has been in a smoking home. This is because the smell of cigarette smoke can be incredibly difficult to remove from furniture, particularly if people have smoked inside. We won’t always turn down furniture because of this, however, it’s a factor we’ve found must be considered in our decision making. 

We’ll also ask whether you are looking for a payment for the furniture, and how much you’re looking to get. Sometimes people just want to clear the space, and don’t want anything for it, other times people do. Both are fine, we just like to establish the expectations clearly from the beginning of the discussion.

So what kind of furniture are we particularly interested in?

We’re keen to save as much furniture as possible from heading to landfill, however, we can’t take everything offered to us, partly because of storage space, and partly because some things just don’t sell well.

Smaller pieces of furniture for example, side tables and TV units can be slow to sell, so we set a limit on how many we can accept.

And then dining tables and chairs take up a large footprint of storage, so we do reluctantly have to turn down a number of these, purely because we can’t store them.

We’re always on the look out for good quality, solid wood chests of drawers – these are always popular. As are bureaus and sideboards. These are our most popular pieces of furniture, so we’re always keeping one eye open for things like this.

So there you have it, a run down of what we’ll ask, and what we’re looking for when it comes to your unwanted furniture. I hope this helps, and please understand that if we could collect every piece of furniture and rehome it, we would.

Thank you for helping us to reduce furniture waste one piece at a time.