Guide
Why we cannot take your mattress.
This is the one that causes the most disappointment at the back door, usually from someone who has just wrestled a clean, barely used mattress into a pickup. It is not squeamishness and it is not a preference. Arkansas regulates used bedding as a category of its own, and a volunteer shop cannot meet the requirements.
What the law says
Bedding is not treated like other second-hand goods.
Under Arkansas Code § 20-27-2703, the State Board of Health sets minimum standards for the labelling of bedding and for the germicidal treatment of used bedding. Anyone who repairs or renovates bedding that is then sold has to attach a secondhand-material label before it changes hands.
That label is prescribed, not improvised. It has to state that the bedding contains previously used materials which have been cleaned and sanitised in an approved manner to kill germs and insects and to prevent infection — and it has to carry the name, address and permit number of whoever performed the sanitising, together with which materials were treated.
What that means we would need
- A state permit held by this organisation
- An approved germicidal sanitising process
- Equipment to carry it out consistently
- Prescribed labelling on every item sold
- Records tying each label to a treatment
What we actually are
- A shop floor and a back room
- A rotating crew of volunteers
- No payroll and no equipment budget
- No permit, and no realistic route to one
The wider category
It is not only mattresses.
The same reasoning covers box springs, mattress toppers, bed pillows, water beds, and sleeper sofas and hide-a-beds — because the mattress folded inside a sleeper sofa is still a mattress. We turn all of those away, however good the condition.
Ordinary bed linen is different. Clean sheets, blankets, duvet covers and pillowcases are textiles rather than bedding in the regulated sense, and we take them gladly. Worn ones we take too — those go to the shelter kennels rather than the sales floor.
So what do you do with it?
Try these instead.
Some mattress retailers take the old one away when they deliver a new one. Some municipalities run bulky-waste collections. And a few regional recyclers strip mattresses for steel, foam and fibre. Your city sanitation department is the right first call — not us, because we genuinely cannot help with this one.
Source: Arkansas Code § 20-27-2703 and the associated State Board of Health rules on bedding. This page explains why we decline an item; it is not legal advice.