How to get rid of a mattress in Woodstock, IL.

Companies that come to your home and carry the mattress out, so you need no vehicle. The prices below are starting prices unless stated — stairs, box springs and extra items add to them.

Most charities will not take a used mattress. These are the ones we checked, including the ones that say no.

• The Salvation Army (satruck.org): accepted-items list includes 'Mattresses' and beds; also says local ordinances and need vary by location and to call 1-800-SA-TRUCK to confirm what a local center accepts. Source
• Doesn’t take mattresses. Habitat for Humanity national ReStore guide: 'Mattresses and box springs are not accepted.' Source

Policies vary by branch. Call before you carry one over — we asked each of the big three directly: Goodwill, the Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity.

What we established about this city in particular — including where it runs nothing of its own and residents have to look elsewhere.

• The contracted hauler's own Woodstock page contradicts the City's published terms on both the sticker price and the number of stickers, which matters because a resident who reads the hauler first will under-pay and be left with the mattress. MDC Environmental Services states: "Overage or extras can be placed in stickered bags or personal cans not exceeding 35 gallons or 50 pounds. Stickers are $5 and can be purchased at City Hall or at the Library", while separately pricing yard waste stickers at "$3.38" - neither figure matching the City's current $3.56 refuse sticker. On bulk items MDC says there are "two options": "Residents who rent the garbage tote are allowed to set out one per week free of charge" and "Residents using the sticker program may dispose of these by attaching one sticker to each individual bulk item", adding that "Residents may purchase a sticker for one addtional bulk item per week" - that is, one sticker per extra bulk item and a cap of one extra a week, where the City's page and City Code § 3.8.2(F)(4) both require five stickers per additional bulk item and set no weekly cap. MDC does agree with the City that a bulk item is "an item that is too large to fit within a normal garbage container (e.g., couch, love seat, table, chair, etc.)" and that a purchased set counts as multiple items. Its own page defers to the City on everything else: "Please see the City of Woodstock website for information and regulations regarding curbside trash pickup in the City of Woodstock." Because the City bills the service, sells the stickers and sets the rate by ordinance, the City's figures govern; MDC's page appears to carry pre-contract numbers. Source Not confirmed: MDC's $5 sticker price, its one-sticker-per-bulk-item rule and its one-extra-item-a-week cap cannot be reconciled with the City's published $3.56 sticker and five-sticker rule, and neither page acknowledges the other; the hauler's page carries no effective date. Not confirmed: MDC publishes no mattress-specific term of its own - no wrapping, folding or weather rule - despite those rules appearing on the City page as protections for its own crews.
• The only transfer station in McHenry County is about seven miles south of Woodstock and, after a deliberate attempt to close this question for the whole county, the published record still does not say whether a household may use it. WM's facility listing for the Virginia Road Transfer Station gives the address as "1400 S Virginia Road, Crystal Lake, IL 60014" with hours of 5:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and closed on weekends; accepted material is listed as "Construction & Demolition Debris" and "Municipal Solid Waste", and "This facility does not accept hazardous waste". Payment is by "Credit or Debit Cards" or a credit account. The entry condition is written for contractors, not householders: "Site requires all customers to have a High Visibility Vest and Hard Hat to utilize site. Both High Visibility Vests and Hard Hats are available at the site for purchase." WM's own disclaimer on the listing is "Please contact the receiving facility for acceptable material types and receiving hours." No gate rate, no minimum charge, no per-mattress price and no statement that residential self-haul customers are accepted appears anywhere on it. On the published record, therefore, a Woodstock resident cannot establish either the right to bring a mattress here or its cost, and the routed answer stays the City's own curbside collection - one free bulk item a week, $17.80 for a second. Source Not confirmed: Whether households may self-haul to the Virginia Road Transfer Station, and at what rate, remains unestablished. Three sources were checked for it: WM's facility listing, WM's national drop-off location finder, and McHenry County's Solid Waste Program page. None publishes residential eligibility, a gate rate or a minimum charge, and no source names a mattress as accepted material. Not confirmed: The City of Woodstock publishes no drop-off of its own: the only City drop-off points listed are plastic grocery bags in the City Hall lobby and holiday-light collection bins at City Hall, the Police Department, the Public Library and the Rec Center.
• McHenry County's own Solid Waste Program page is the place a Woodstock resident would look for a county drop-off, and it offers none for a bulky household item. The county's Division of Environmental Health page lists permanent drop-off sites only for household hazardous waste, and not one of them is in McHenry County: the Chicago Department of Public Health Goose Island facility at 1150 N. North Branch St., Chicago; Naperville Public Works, 156 Fort Hill Dr.; the City of Rockford and Four Rivers Sanitation Authority, 3315 Kishwaukee St.; and SWALCO at 1311 N. Estes St., Gurnee, by Saturday appointment. Beyond that it lists a Styrofoam collection at the Algonquin Township Road District, 3702 US-14, Crystal Lake, Tuesdays and Thursdays 9am-2pm; electronics at Elgin Recycling, 5114 Terra Cotta Ave., Crystal Lake (Monday-Friday 8am-5pm, Saturday 8am-1pm) and at Best Buy, 5880 Northwest Hwy, Crystal Lake; and Christmas-light recycling through municipalities and Elgin Recycling. No transfer station, landfill, convenience center or residents' drop-off day appears anywhere on the page, and nothing on it names a mattress. The county's routed tools are a "Recycle Coach" lookup and the 2026 McHenry County Recycling Directory Green Guide. Woodstock's own page points residents to the same Green Guide and to the Environmental Defenders of McHenry County at 815-338-0393. Source Not confirmed: The page publishes no county self-haul option at all, so it neither confirms nor rules out household access to the one transfer station in the county.
• Not an option: There is a Habitat ReStore inside Woodstock's city limits, which makes it the obvious first thought for a usable mattress and the most useful place in the county to be told no. Habitat for Humanity of Lake-McHenry's published Donation Guidelines list, among items not accepted, "Mattresses/Box springs/Sofa beds", alongside baby items and cribs, books and toys, granite slabs, clothing, shoes and linens, curtains, blinds and window treatments, dishwashers, electronics, glass shower doors, hot tubs, pianos and organs, treadmills, swing sets, wooden ladders, weapons and "Items with rips, stains, smoke or pet hair". What the stores do take is furniture - "tables, dressers, desks, chairs, hutches, bookcases" - with the condition that "upholstered items must be from smoke free, pet free homes", so a Woodstock bed frame or headboard is donatable and the mattress and box spring are not, at either door or on a Habitat pickup. The guidelines' own referral line under "Mattresses" gives "Verlo Mattress", "1-800-GOT-JUNK", "College Hunks: 815-374-7512" and "Call your recycling pick up" - and in Woodstock that last one is the City's free weekly bulk item. Source
• Not an option: The refused store is a five-minute drive from Woodstock's square, so its details are worth having: Lake-McHenry Habitat for Humanity runs the "Woodstock ReStore, 133 S Eastwood Dr Woodstock, IL 60098, Phone: 815-334-0500", with "DONATION HOURS: 9am-4pm" and the shop open Tuesday through Saturday 9am-5pm, closed Monday and Sunday; its sister store is the "McHenry ReStore, 903 Front St McHenry, IL 60050, Phone: 815-331-8153, donations@habitatlmc.org" on the same hours. The charity's general position is "We happily accept furniture, appliances, home improvement materials, and building supplies that are in great condition", and donations can be dropped off or collected - but the affiliate's published Donation Guidelines exclude "Mattresses/Box springs/Sofa beds" at item level, so neither route is open to a mattress. A Woodstock resident clearing a bedroom can walk the frame, the dresser and the nightstand up Eastwood Drive and still has to put the mattress on the curb. Source
• Not an option: Nothing mattress-specific exists in Woodstock or in McHenry County's own published inventory. The County Health Department's Solid Waste Program page - the county's single page for where to take what - names permanent drop-offs for household hazardous waste, a Styrofoam collection at Algonquin Township, electronics at Elgin Recycling and Best Buy in Crystal Lake, and Christmas-light recycling, and names no mattress recycler, no mattress collection event and no mattress program anywhere in the county. Illinois is not a mattress-stewardship state: there is no statewide mattress program, no Bye Bye Mattress or MRC collection site in the state, and across seventy-five Illinois cities researched no Illinois mattress recycler with a street address and published household terms has been found. Woodstock runs no city mattress program of its own; the one free bulk item a week under the MDC contract, and $17.80 in yellow stickers for a second, is the whole of the answer. Source

• Residential body says Saturday 8–2; same-page footer says 9–1. Both show weekdays 8–4. No Saturday schedule selected. Source
• Locator retains Landfill 33 Saturday 7 a.m.–11 p.m. exactly as printed; implausible closing time requires confirmation. Two Columbus District Office cards are distinct OH and IN addresses, not duplicates. Source
• Illinois EPA recycling page offers a 'Beyond The Bin' ArcGIS map of recycling locations, an Earth911 ZIP locator and the Recycle Coach app (statewide partnership since 2025). No mattress stewardship program mentioned. No statewide mattress stewardship program or landfill ban found on Illinois EPA pages as of 2026-09-22; mattress disposal is handled by local governments. Source
• There is no state mattress recycling program in Illinois, and the absence is worth stating plainly because the four states that have one give residents free drop-off. The Mattress Recycling Council, which runs the Bye Bye Mattress collection network, lists its programs on its own Programs page as operating in California, Connecticut, Oregon and Rhode Island. Illinois is not among them. Three things follow for an Illinois resident: no recycling fee is charged on an Illinois mattress sale, there is no MRC-funded free drop-off anywhere in the state, and nothing obliges a retailer, hauler or municipality to recycle a mattress rather than landfill it. Recycling in Illinois is therefore a private arrangement wherever it exists at all — the drop-offs and recyclers listed on this page are businesses and charities choosing to do it, not a program a resident is entitled to. Source