I keep getting asked about pillows, especially sleeping pillows so here’s your pillow post!
Sleeping Pillows
According to the City of Austin’s Austin Resource Recovery (ARR) “What Do I Do With?” app/page for “pillow” (ARR does not differentiate type of pillow or its condition):
Clothing and housewares collection
Austin Resource Recovery and Goodwill Central Texas have partnered to offer a free on-call curbside collection service for unwanted clothing, shoes, accessories, toys, linens and housewares for reuse or recycling.
Schedule a collection and we will mail you bags. Fill them with your unwanted things and set your bags out on your scheduled collection day by 5:30 a.m. Learn more and schedule collection.
https://www.austintexas.gov/whatdo
The Austin Common shared the following option available at Lowe’s. I don’t have a Lowe’s near me to check so you may want to call yours first.
AMERICAN TEXTILE RECYCLING SERVICE (ATRS) @ LOWES
American Textile Recycling Service (ATRS) is the nation’s fastest growing textile recycler. ATRS was founded with a profitable, global conscious mission to help communities reuse, renew, and recycle clothing, shoes, toys, and household goods. They provide easy and convenient Clothing & Shoe Donation bins in neighborhoods nationwide.
They are committed to keeping textiles out of landfills, creating jobs here at home, and abroad. ATRS’ unique business model leaves an extremely small carbon footprint and a better planet for the next generation.
ATRS provides easy convenient solutions for donating unwanted clothes, shoes, toys and household textiles. Simply drop off at your nearest ATRS Clothing & Shoe Donation Bin and they’ll do the rest! Every donation goes where it’s needed the most and everything gets a second life. Plus, ATRS’s charitable partners receive much-needed funds from their donation programs to support local programs and services. (In Austin, ATRS’s charitable parter is Children’s Miracle Network(CMN) Dell Hospital). The process of reusing, redistributing, and recycling these items creates a circle of jobs locally, nationally, and abroad while diverting millions of pounds of textiles from municipal landfill.
Pro Tip – You can drop off your used clothing, shoes, toys, and other household textiles 24 hours a day, seven days a week at one of ATRS’s drop-off bins. It’s that easy!
You can also “call ATRS’ attended 24-Hour Hotline with your zip code, city or neighborhood location. A Community Recycling Coordinator from your city will call you directly with a list of locations near you. ATRS is expanding its service rapidly and adding new locations week. This is the quickest, most efficient way to identify Clothing & Shoe Donation Bins closest to you.” At one point the nearest Austin Community College campus near me had a drop-off bin so it’s worth giving them a call. They called me back very quickly and were very helpful and knowledgeable.
Decorative Pillows
If you don’t like how your decorative pillow looks but still want to have pillows, consider finding or making a pillow cover. I never did like the pillows that came with my first couch, even when I bought it from the store, but I waited years to cover them which I regretted since I loved them so much once I did recover them. I don’t sew at this level of skill otherwise I would have tried to sew my own covers.
Pro tip: I had dogs and later a toddler. Make sure to read the care/wash instructions on your pillow cases if you have stain-causing beings living with you. The bird pillow shown below lightened significantly in a delicates wash with air dry and I was very sad. There was a chocolate ice cream incident…
If you have decorative pillows that are in good condition you can sell them or give them away on your local Buy Nothing Facebook page, neighborhood group, or at your favorite thrift store.
If you don’t have these options or it is too much work for you, your local Goodwill may take them. Pillows, especially sleeping pillows like mattresses may not be accepted in most places out of concern for bed bugs and other pests. You will always want to check websites or call your local branch to find out what they are currently accepting. I say currently because these places do try out pilot programs or new processes so what they do and don’t accept may change.
I had several pillows that my dogs laid on or had accidents on. I personally throw those away in the trash since I have never been able to clean those to my personal satisfaction of dog or pee smell, let alone subjecting anyone else to that. That is a personal choice. An enterprising person may want to try their luck on deep cleaning if you want to put in effort to offer that option.
