How to get rid of a mattress in San Diego

The short answer

Mattress pickup is priced by size:

That includes carrying it out of the bedroom - upstairs, third-floor walk-up, down a canyon staircase - and handling the disposal. Adding the frame is $68 for a standard metal or platform frame, $126 for a solid or upholstered twin, full or queen frame, $152 for a king.

What you cannot do with it

You cannot put a mattress in the regular waste stream in California. It has its own statewide recycling program, funded by a fee you already paid when you bought the thing, and mattresses are supposed to be recovered rather than buried.

Practically, that means a mattress leaned against a bin on collection day is not going anywhere. It sits there. Your neighbors look at it. In an HOA community in Carmel Valley, 4S Ranch or Eastlake you will hear about it in writing within about forty-eight hours.

If you want the free route, the program has participating collection sites and periodic events around the county. Look up the current list and hours before you load anything - and note that most sites want the mattress dry and free of bedding, which brings us to the marine layer.

The San Diego moisture problem

A mattress that spends one night in a Pacific Beach or Ocean Beach alley in May or June comes back wet. The marine layer rolls in overnight, the mattress acts as a sponge, and by morning it is twice as heavy and no longer acceptable at a recycling drop-off. Wet mattresses get rejected, because they cannot be processed.

Same in reverse in October. A Santa Ana week will dry it out, but by then it has been on the street for days and someone has already photographed it.

If you are going to self-haul, keep it indoors or in the garage until the morning you drive it, and take it in a covered load or strapped flat, not surfing on the roof of a Corolla on the 8.

Donation almost never works

Set your expectations here. Thrift operations and furniture banks around the county are extremely restrictive on used mattresses, and a lot of them simply will not accept one at all. Health rules, liability, and the fact that nobody wants to buy a used mattress off a floor.

The exceptions tend to be nearly-new mattresses with original tags, still in a protector, from a documented single-owner household. If yours is a college mattress out of the College Area after four years of SDSU, that is not the one they want.

Box springs are even harder to place. Assume both are disposal, not donation, and treat a successful donation as a pleasant surprise.

Getting it out of the building is the actual job

A queen mattress is not heavy. It is awkward, and San Diego buildings are unusually good at punishing awkward.

• PB and OB walk-ups. Three flights of exterior stairs with a landing turn at each floor. A king will not make a tight turn without folding, and a pillow-top will not fold.
• Canyon lots. In Del Cerro, Mission Hills, Rolando or up the Bay Park slope, the bedroom is below the street and the stairs are outdoor and narrow.
• Downtown and Mission Valley high-rises. Elevator reservation, protective pads, a specific service door, and a loading dock with a height limit.
• Coronado. Bridge both ways, and base housing needs access arranged ahead of the visit.

None of that changes the price. A queen is $103 wherever it starts.

Common San Diego mattress jobs

SDSU student room, end of the school year. Twin mattress $82 + box spring $92 = $174. With the standard bed frame too: $82 + $92 + $68 = $242.

Pacific Beach one-bedroom, lease turning over. Queen mattress and box spring set $143 + standard bed frame $68 = $211.

Clairemont master bedroom upgrade. King mattress $114 + box spring $92 + king solid bed frame $152 + dresser $126 = $484.

Rancho Bernardo guest room, parents downsizing. Full mattress $94 + box spring $92 + nightstand $57 = $243.

Every total there is the literal sum of the published item prices.

When a truck-fill tier is cheaper

If the mattress is part of a bigger clear-out, stop counting and check the ladder. A quarter truck is $241, three-eighths is $338, half is $431. A whole bedroom - king set, frame, dresser, nightstand, a few boxes - usually lands around a quarter to three-eighths, and that can come out below the item-by-item sum.

Price it both ways before you book. The list and the ladder are both published, so the comparison takes about a minute.

If there are bed bugs

Say so when you book. It changes nothing about the price - a queen is still $103 - but it changes how the crew bags and loads it, and it stops the mattress being carried uncovered through a shared stairwell in a City Heights or Linda Vista building where it would seed the whole hallway.

Do not wrestle it outside yourself and leave it in the alley in the meantime. That is how a one-unit problem becomes a building problem.

Frequently asked questions