How to get rid of a mattress in Allegan, MI.

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 City of Allegan - a separate government from Allegan Township and from Allegan County, which share the name - puts dumpsters out for residents once a year, and the window is short. The 2026 Spring Spruce Up dumpsters were available Saturday, April 11 from 8:00am to 3:00pm, Monday through Friday April 13 to 17 from 7:00am to 2:30pm, and Saturday, April 18 from 8:00am to 3:00pm, and the city describes them as provided for "waste & recycling". Eligibility is checked: proof of city residency is required. The refusal list is the city's own: household garbage, asphalt, roofing shingles, hazardous household waste, leftover paint, flammables, cement, brick, or stone. Mattresses and bedding are named in neither direction. Separately, and year-round, residents may drop off yard waste bags and brush at 691 Airway Drive at any hour, with yard waste in paper bags containing only compostable material and branches for chipping not exceeding 4 inches in diameter; Christmas trees are accepted there and are also collected at the curb after the holidays, with residents asked to call 269.673.5511 for dates. The spring curbside program is vegetable only: leaves and brush could be placed at the street edge from April 6 through May 4, 2026, kept in separate piles or bagged, leaf piles within 3 feet of the road edge and clear of utility poles, guy-wires, hydrants, mailboxes and storm drains, and brush "must be from regular trimming and yard cleanup, not contracted tree removal" and must not contain trash, vines, building materials, stumps or roots. After May 4 the city asks residents to use the Public Works drop-off instead. Source Not confirmed: The page gives no street address for the Spring Spruce Up dumpsters and states no fee, so neither a location nor a price is established for them. Not confirmed: Mattresses are named neither as accepted nor as refused in the dumpster lists, while "household garbage" is refused, so whether a mattress would be taken is not established. Not confirmed: No per-household load limit is published, and no proof-of-residency document is specified. Not confirmed: The 2027 Spring Spruce Up dates had not been published when this was checked.
• Allegan's garbage ordinance, rewritten by Ord. 513 on October 23, 2023, defines a mattress into its own bulk-item class and sorts apartment buildings out of the residential one - two definitions that decide the whole answer here. Sec. 12-1: "BULK ITEM. An item of garbage (e.g., a worn-out appliance of furniture item) that is over 60 pounds in weight or over four feet in length, width or height." Every mattress size clears that threshold on length alone - a twin is 75 inches and a queen or king 80 inches, all well over four feet - so a mattress is a bulk item in the City of Allegan whatever it weighs. "GARBAGE" is defined broadly as "The items that people use or generate and then dispose of or recycle. Examples include product packaging, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances and the like", excluding only yard waste and downed trees or limbs. The parcel classes then split households by building size: "NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTIAL PARCEL. A parcel containing a single-family dwelling, a two-family dwelling or a multiple-family dwelling with no more than four dwelling units", while "NON-RESIDENTIAL PARCEL. Any parcel other than a neighborhood residential parcel, including, but not limited to, a parcel containing a commercial use, industrial use or multiple-family dwelling with more than four dwelling units." A tenant in an apartment building of five units or more is therefore on a non-residential parcel under Allegan's code and falls under the commercial container rules, not the household ones. Sec. 12-2 puts the whole subject in one officer's hands - the City Manager "is hereby given control of the collection of garbage and other solid waste within the city" and may make regulations - and sets the consequence: "Any person who violates any such regulation or any provision of this chapter shall be responsible for a municipal civil infraction. In addition, any violation of this chapter is hereby determined to be a nuisance per se", which lets the city obtain an abatement order and, where the danger is imminent, "enter upon the premises without a court order, for the limited purpose of abating the nuisance." Source Not confirmed: The regulations the City Manager is authorized to make are not published in the code, so any further rule about bulk items in Allegan is not established. Not confirmed: The chapter sets no civil fine amount for a municipal civil infraction under it.
• Allegan does not collect household garbage; it requires the household to arrange collection, and it makes bulk-item pickup conditional on whether the household's own hauler happens to offer it. Sec. 12-3(B): "The owner, occupant and/or any other person who manages or is otherwise in control of any premises within the city shall provide for the collection and disposal of garbage and other solid waste as necessary to avoid a violation of subsection (A) above" - and subsection (A) makes it "unlawful to allow garbage, yard waste, downed trees or tree limbs or any other solid waste to accumulate on a premises within the city for more than seven days." The bulk-item rule is the one a mattress owner needs, and it is written as a conditional rather than a service: Sec. 12-3(E)(1), "To the extent a premise is served by a provider that offers bulk-item collection, such items may be set out for collection in the right-of-way for no more than 24 hours", and (E)(2), "No person shall deposit bulk items in the public rights-of-way, or upon the traveled portion of any public street, alley or sidewalk or within any public place, except as permitted by this subsection (E)." For a neighborhood residential parcel, Sec. 12-3(C) requires garbage in "a portable water-tight and vermin-proof receptacle of substantial construction with handles and a tight-fitting cover" of "at least ten gallons, but not more than 96 gallons", bars dumpsters and receptacles over 96 gallons except for permitted construction work, and requires receptacles stored "in an appropriate location in the side or rear yard of the property" and never "in the front yard"; they may go out "in the right-of-way after 8:00 a.m. on the day preceding collection" and must come back "no later than 8:00 p.m." on the day collections are made. For a non-residential parcel, which under Sec. 12-1 includes any apartment building of more than four units, Sec. 12-3(D) requires on-site receptacles "stored on the premises they serve" and "at least 25 feet from the road, behind a primary or accessory structure or reasonably enclosed within a opaque fence or barrier." Sec. 12-3(F) also bars placing in a receptacle "any material which might endanger the collection personnel". Source Not confirmed: The code makes bulk-item set-out conditional on the household's provider offering bulk-item collection, and the city names no provider and publishes no list of haulers, so whether any Allegan address has bulk collection available is not established. Not confirmed: No fee, allowance, item cap, wrapping rule or notice period for a bulk item is set anywhere in the chapter, so no mattress price is established for the City of Allegan.
• Not an option: Downtown Allegan is the one part of the city where the city does provide the container, participation is compulsory, and the ordinance makes putting a mattress in it unlawful. Sec. 12-12(A) commits the city to "provide for the routine collection and disposal of garbage originating from downtown generation sites" through a designated downtown collector under contract, and Sec. 12-12(B)(1) makes it mandatory: "The owners of all parcels within the downtown program area shall participate in the downtown garbage collection program ... No owner may opt out of the program." Participation replaces the household's own duty - Sec. 12-12(C), "a property owner's participation in the downtown garbage collection program shall satisfy any obligation the owner would otherwise have to provide for on-premises garbage storage and collection." Then Sec. 12-12(E) closes it to the one item: "It shall be unlawful to do any of the following: (1) Deposit a bulk item in a designated downtown receptacle; (2) Deposit garbage, bulk items or any other solid waste that was generated outside the downtown program area (or outside of an otherwise participating parcel) into a designated downtown receptacle". Because Sec. 12-1 defines a bulk item as anything "over 60 pounds in weight or over four feet in length, width or height", and every mattress size exceeds four feet in length, a downtown Allegan resident whose only container is the city's dumpster is barred by ordinance from using it for a mattress. The program area is "the area between Cutler Street on the north, Chestnut Street on the west, Kalamazoo River and Second and State Streets on the south and Kalamazoo River on the east", and owners on Hubbard or Trowbridge Street within one block of it may opt in by written application to the City Clerk. Private collection alongside the program is allowed under Sec. 12-12(D), but "the procurement of any such additional services shall not excuse the property owner from participation in the program or from the payment of any applicable fees". Those fees are periodic rather than per item: Sec. 12-13(A) sets a "Ready-to-serve fee" for fixed program costs and a "Usage fee" proportionate to each parcel's average garbage needs, both established by resolution of the City Council, billed through the city's utility billing department, payable within 30 days with a penalty of 1.5% per month, and recoverable as a single-lot special assessment if delinquent more than 30 days. Source Not confirmed: The ordinance bars bulk items from the downtown receptacles and names no alternative for a downtown resident or tenant who has a mattress. Not confirmed: The ready-to-serve and usage fees are set by council resolution and the resolution was not published with the code, so no figures are established; neither fee is a per-item charge in any case.

• WDS 450267, MIG000025706 regulatory page gives 6999 County Road 487, Atlanta MI 49709, versus operator 6751 Landfill Rd in inv5-005. Specific/legal names also have apparent spelling variants. Same named authority is an identity candidate; parcel/entrance/address equivalence unproven. Preserve both addresses. Source
• EGLE (July 27, 2026) says many Michigan communities host annual collection events for hard-to-dispose items including mattresses, lists summer–fall 2026 events, and points to EGLE's collection directory at Michigan.gov/egleHHW. No statewide mattress stewardship program or landfill ban found on EGLE pages as of 2026-09-22. Source