When we walk round a property to quote a clearance, the thing people least expect to matter is the beds. A wardrobe is bigger. A sofa is heavier. A chest freezer is more awkward down a Cornish staircase. Yet on most full house clearances the mattresses are the single biggest line in our disposal costs, and they are usually the item that shifts a quote up or down. Here is why that happens, and what we at Lanora House have started doing about it.
It's the springs, not the size
A mattress cannot be tipped as general bulky waste. It goes into a shredder, and the steel springs wrap themselves around the shafts, so mattresses have to be handled separately from everything else on the load. That separate handling is charged per item, and the charge applies whether the mattress is falling apart or looks nearly new. It lands on your quote either way.
That is the part most people have never been told. A pine wardrobe, a bookcase and three kitchen chairs go over the weighbridge with the rest of the load. Each mattress is its own little invoice before anyone has carried it down a flight of stairs.
Mattresses are mostly air
The second problem is volume. A double mattress weighs somewhere around 25 to 40 kg and takes up roughly 0.64 cubic metres. That works out at about 50 kg per cubic metre. Mixed household waste from a clearance is around four times denser. So a van full of mattresses is a van full of air that still costs a full run to shift.
Our long wheelbase Transit holds about 11.5 cubic metres. Three mattresses out of a three bedroom house, one double and two singles, come to roughly 1.4 cubic metres. Add the divan bases and you are nearer 2.8. That is a quarter of the van gone on four items, and the entire rest of the house still has to fit somewhere. Put another way, it takes around 33 mattresses to make up a tonne. Thirty three of almost anything else would be a fraction of the space.
What that looks like on a real job
These photos are from a recent clearance. The first bedroom was still fully made up: divan base with a double mattress, bedside cabinet, two chests of drawers, pictures on every wall, corner shelves of ornaments and a jewellery stand on top of the drawers.
Upstairs in the pink room, the mattress was stripped and the flatpack pine had already been part dismantled by the family, with knitwear piled into a drawer unit and a shoe rack sitting on the bed. Even part dismantled, that base and mattress filled the same van space as a full bed.
The third bedroom was the classic probate room: teak dressing table and tallboy, a wardrobe, framed photographs, a clock, paperwork and a tray of documents left on a stripped mattress. Three bedrooms, three mattresses, three bases. Before we lifted a single ornament, six items had already taken up a large share of the load and carried per item charges with them.
Which mattresses we can actually save
Mattresses coming out of a clearance no longer go to the tip by default. The good ones get bagged and wrapped the way a removal firm wraps a mattress going into storage, and they go into our store to be rehomed through our own auctions and resale channels. It is not clever or new. It is simply what removal companies have always done, applied to clearance work where the habit has been to sling everything in the van and tip the lot.
We have to be straight about the limits, because plenty of firms make a green claim and quietly tip the same volume they always did. A mattress only gets saved if someone would genuinely be happy to sleep on it:
- No stains. Not just the obvious ones. Water marks, old spills and yellowing all rule it out.
- No rips or tears. Exposed foam or a spring poking through and it is finished.
- The fire label still attached and readable. Under the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988, second hand furniture supplied in the course of a business has to carry it. No label, no rehoming, and charities will not take one either. This is the most common reason a perfectly clean mattress cannot be saved.
- No damp, mould or any sign of bed bugs.
- No collapsed edge or heavy sag. If it has had it, it has had it.
Realistically that rules out most mattresses from a probate clearance, where the bed has been slept in for fifteen years. The ones that make it through tend to come from spare rooms, recent moves, or properties where the beds were barely used. The rest still go for proper disposal, and we would rather tell you that than pretend we rescue everything.
Where this leaves your quote
We work across Cornwall, from Hayle and Truro through Falmouth, Newquay and Bodmin and out towards the north coast. Clearance pricing comes down to two things: how many van loads it takes, and what the waste site charges us when we get there. We cannot do much about the first. A four bedroom house is a four bedroom house. The second we can chip away at, and fewer mattresses tipped means lower disposal costs across the year, which feeds straight into what we quote.
Divan bases get the same treatment, and they are worth mentioning because a base takes up as much van space as the mattress on top, sometimes more if it has drawers. You can of course take a mattress to a household waste site yourself, and there is a charge there too; for one mattress that is often the cheaper route, but for a whole house it rarely is once you count the trips and the hired van.
Every job is different, so the only honest way to price one is to come and look. If you have a property to clear in Cornwall and there are beds in it, ring us before you book anyone: the mattresses are usually the bit that moves the price, and we would rather tell you that at the quote stage than on the day. Call 07843 930927 or email info@lanorahouse.com for a free, no-obligation quote.