We did a lot of work learning where to find a new mattress in New York, but until now we didn’t really know how to get rid of one.
Turns out that it’s pretty simple…if you’re buying a new mattress. Popular stores like Sleepy’s or 1-800-mattress, will remove and safely dispose of your old mattress when they deliver the one you bought.
But what if you don’t want a new mattress? As mentioned in an earlier post on furniture recycling, the NYC Sanitation Departments will retrieve them free of charge:
Items must be placed on curbside between 5pm (4pm on Fridays from October to April) and midnight the night before your regular garbage collection day.
But there’s a catch. Joe Cullen from Curbside Booty explains the environmental costs of mattress landfill disposal.
Much of the material of a mattress is man made, non bio degradable fabric most often made in china and will languish in our landfills for decades. It’s the steel springs which are the landfill manager’s curse. The springy metal won’t crush. It bounces back, gets stuck in the bulldozers and takes up a lot of precious space.
So what’s the absolute best way to lose your old mattress in an environmentally friendly fashion? Donate it. Local communities, such as The Freecycle Network (there’s one in every city) specialize in finding homes for unwanted items, facilitiating conservation. And there’s always Craiglist. Here are folks currently looking to take a mattress off your hands:
It can be extremely painful to acquire a comfortable mattress in New York. Manhattan has over 100 showrooms, and managing their salespeople, brands and specials can be a lot to handle. For our new york furniture search service, Yipit, we decided to do all this work, so you don’t have to.
From every single mattress showroom in the city, we acquired the following data:
Selection. The number and types of mattresses each store has in stock.
Price. Price ranges of the items. Among the stores we looked at pure pricing on mattresses (exclusive of delivery and other specials), so the comparison was apples to apples.
Now you can search every showroom for mattresses in new york, refine by price, brands and materials, and find the showrooms nearest you with the widest selections.
Overall we analyzed data from the 227 stores selling bedroom furniture, and found 101 mattress showrooms. Here are the winners in each category:
Luxury. If you are looking for luxury mattresses (prices well north of $1,000), try Bloomingdale’s, which has an enormous selection of high end options. The most expensive mattresses we found were at Hastens, in the neighborhood of $20,000.
Foam. Need hypoalergenic? Two popular options are form fitting latex and viscoelastic memory foam. For form fitting Latex, Long’s Bedding & Interiors on the Upper West Side has tons. You can stick with Sleepy’s for memory foam, which stocks the major lines.
Searching locally for a specific product is frustrating, our motivation for developing a product search engine for new york furniture stores. Same is certainly true for home services: you can find a list of local contractors in the yellow pages, but how do you find a drywall expert, much less a good drywall expert?
Fortunately we live in New York, and that job has been done for you: cityhammer is a detailed directory of home service contractors, including specialties and ratings for each. A few reasons to check cityhammer before anything else:
It lists the contractors whoservice Manhattan (or any other borough), not just those firms physically located there.
You can find the specialties of contractors before you contact them. Believe me, this works better than the other way around
There are real reviews from satisfied (and occasionally disatsified) customers. Lots of them.
Cityhammer is extremely detailed, well researched and thorough. Their expertise is also evidenced in their blog, which addresses myriad common home improvement and interior design issues.
The New York Design Center is a 16-story, half million square foot interior design mecca for furniture in new york. Ordinarily, access to its 100 showrooms is strictly trade-only. But Thursday through Sunday the NYDC will open its doors to the public for a sample sale. Save up to 80% off retail at participating showrooms, including:
Jonesing for a platform bed to round out your quintessential contemporary apartment? It’s easy to chase this sleek, minimalist design into four figures, but you can be well served with lower-priced versions as well. During our journey to every New York City showroom, we noted pricing and availabilities for this popular item.
Of the 2,050 locations we visited, 368 offered furniture, 110 offered contemporary furniture, and 88 carried platform beds. Here are 8 platform beds under $600.
Sit Down New York 873 Broadway
(btwn 18th & 19th St.)
(212) 777-7795
Chocolate Retro Platform Bed: Queen - $369 Note: Mention Yipit and get 5% off
Door Store 123 W. 17 St.
(btwn 6th & 7th Ave.)
(212) 627-1515
Plus 3 other Manhattan locations.
Cypress: Queen - $499
West Elm 112 W 18th St.
(btwn 6th & 7th Ave.)
(212) 929-4464
Chocolate Platform Bed: Queen - $459.99
Z-Gallerie 443 Broadway
(btwn Howard & Grand St.)
(212) 343-1045
Alto Bed: Queen $599
CB2 451 Broadway
(btwn Howard & Grand St.)
(212) 219-1454
If you wanted to find the cheapest futon in Manhattan, what is the most exhaustive, most over-the-top way you could possibly do so?A good start would be visiting every single furniture showroom in Manhattan, and documenting their entire inventories. Painful.
As crazy as it sounds, we actually did this. In the process of developing a website to search for furniture in new york, we visited 2,050 locations, cataloged the 368 that offer furniture, 28 of which carry futons.
Here are some things we learned:
Don’t pay more than $200 for a bargain futon, and expect a 6″ cotton mattress and metal frame
You can usually get free delivery if you meet the driver at the curb
Try Union Square and Chelsea, home to 46% of Manhattan stores
As for the data, the top futon showrooms and their lowest-priced offerings are:
Baker Furniture - Through 10/31 129-133 Hudson St.
btwn N. Moore & Beach St.
Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams - Save 20% on special order sofas, chairs, sectionals, sleepers and more through 11/2 210 Lafayette St.
btwn Kenmare & Spring St.
Safavieh - Sale through 10/31 902 Broadway
btwn 20th & 21st St.
Sheherazade - Save on Oriental Home Furnishings through 10/27 121 Orchard St.
btwn Delancey & Rivington St.
If you need to dispose of a mattress or a damaged item, we highly recommend exploring donation options, but here is the official policy for non-metal furniture disposal from the NYC Department of Sanitation:
Sanitation will collect up to six items from one address. Items must be placed on curbside between 5pm (4pm on Fridays from October to April) and midnight the night before your regular garbage collection day.
Metal furniture disposal works the same way excpet that it can only be left out on your recycling collection day.
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