Denver Large Item Pickup: What It Won't Take

Denver is one of the few Front Range cities that actually collects large items, and the program is a real benefit. If you have a couch and you're not in a hurry, use it. We say that to people on the phone regularly — there's no reason to pay for something the city will do.

But it has four hard limits, and knowing them beforehand saves you a wasted morning putting something on the curb that isn't going anywhere.

Programs change. Confirm the current terms on Denver's Large Item Pickup page before you count on any of this.

How the program works

Large Item Pickup happens on your regular trash and recycling collection day, on a nine-week rotation by address. It isn't scheduled on request — your address has a date, and that date comes around every nine weeks.

The city collects a maximum of five large items plus up to ten bags per service address. Items have to be out at the curb by 6 a.m., visible, and at least two feet clear of your carts, cars, poles, and other obstructions.

Accepted items include furniture, rugs, mattresses and box springs — which have to be bagged and wrapped — exercise equipment, and bundled branches no more than four feet long and four inches in diameter.

Limit 1: the nine-week clock

Nine weeks is a long time.

It's fine if you're decluttering on no particular timeline. It's not a solution when you're closing on a house, turning a rental between tenants, or clearing a parent's place before listing photos. A pile that has to sit somewhere for a month and a half isn't really gone — and putting it on the curb early is a code complaint waiting to happen.

Limit 2: five items

Five items is a couch, a chair, a table, a mattress, and a box spring. That's one bedroom's worth.

It isn't a garage. It isn't a basement. It isn't what an apartment leaves behind at move-out. For anything in that range you'd be spreading the job across multiple nine-week cycles, which is most of a year.

Limit 3: the exclusion list

This is the one that catches people. Denver's Large Item Pickup does not collect:

• Electronics. Any e-waste. Colorado has banned electronics from landfills statewide since 2013 under SB12-133, so the TV, the monitor, and the dead desktop need an e-waste recycler.
• Appliances. The fridge, the washer, the dryer, the range. Refrigerators and freezers specifically contain refrigerant that has to be recovered by a certified technician under Clean Air Act §608 before disposal.
• Construction material. Drywall, flooring, cabinets, trim, and everything else a remodel makes.
• Hazardous material, including paint, batteries, and tires.
• Loose trash. Bags, yes, within the limit. A heap, no.

Walk through a normal Denver garage and count how much of the actual problem is on that list. Usually most of it.

Limit 4: the curb

Everything has to be at the curb, placed by you, by 6 a.m.

For a lot of Denver housing, getting it to the curb is the entire job. A garden-level basement in Park Hill. A third-floor walk-up on Capitol Hill. An alley-loaded lot in Berkeley where the "curb" and the garage are on opposite sides of the property. The city's trucks don't come get it out of the house — nobody's does. That's what a junk-removal crew is for.

What to do about the leftovers

For electronics: they go to an e-waste recycler. Colorado law requires it.

For paint: Colorado's PaintCare program, created by SB14-029, takes leftover architectural paint free at drop-off sites around the state — it's already funded at the point of sale. Don't pay anybody to move paint.

For a working refrigerator or freezer: check whether your utility runs an appliance-recycling pickup before you pay for hauling. Several do, and some pay a rebate.

For everything else — the appliances, the remodel debris, the volume beyond five items, and anything that's still inside the house — that's the gap, and it's the whole reason this business exists. We come to the item instead of waiting at the curb, we carry it out, we load our own trailer, and the disposal is in the price. See junk removal or how it works in Denver.

The short version

Use the city program when your item is on the accepted list, you have five or fewer, you can get it to the curb, and you can wait for the cycle. That's a real set of conditions and plenty of jobs meet it.

When any one of those four fails, get a quote and tell us what's there.