Furniture and secondhand in Cottonwood

Three shops, three completely different propositions.

Home Furnishings Direct, 971 South Main Street, is the furniture store: sofas, tables, beds, the usual range, bought new.

America’s Mattress sells mattresses, foundations, pillows and bedding, and nothing else. If what you need is a bed, a specialist will have more to lie on than a general furniture shop will.

Society of St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store, 825 West Mingus Avenue, is the charity shop. Stock is whatever has been donated, so it changes weekly and there is no point looking online first. Furnishing a room this way takes patience and repeat visits, and it is by a wide margin the cheapest option in this valley.

Why this matters more here than in a city

Cottonwood is the valley’s shopping town, and this is close to the whole of it for furniture. The realistic alternatives are a drive: Prescott is about an hour, Flagstaff about an hour, and Phoenix is a two-hour run each way that people here make for exactly this kind of purchase.

That changes the sums. A cheaper sofa in Phoenix stops being cheaper once you have paid for delivery to Cottonwood or hired a van and given up a day. Ask the local shops what they charge to deliver and whether they will take the old one away, because that number decides the comparison more often than the sticker price does.

For a house move

The thrift store is also where the other half of a move goes. Charity shops here do take furniture donations, but not everything and not always, and a van turning up unannounced with a sofa is a good way to be turned away. Ring first, ask what they are accepting this month, and ask whether they collect.

If you are clearing a property rather than furnishing one, there are junk removal and hauling businesses in the valley that do that end of it.