Every office move or refresh leaves you with a pile of furniture nobody wants anymore. Desks that don't fit the new floor plan. Chairs with the padding gone flat. A boardroom table too big for the new suite. Someone always asks the same question in the last week before handover: what do we actually do with all this?
The honest answer is that most of it doesn't need to go to landfill. It just needs someone to sort what's worth keeping, what's worth repairing, and what genuinely has to go.
Why this comes up on almost every job
We rarely get called in purely to dispose of furniture. It shows up as a side problem on a bigger project: a fit-out, a relocation, a downsize after a lease renewal. The client has budgeted for new furniture and new joinery, and somewhere around week three someone realises the old chairs, desks and filing cabinets aren't included in the removalist's quote.
Skip bins solve the logistics problem but not the cost or the waste problem. A 6-cubic-metre skip in Melbourne runs somewhere around $400-$600 depending on your postcode and what's in it. Office furniture is bulky, so you'll often need two or three. That's real money spent to bury furniture that, in a lot of cases, still works.
What's actually worth keeping
Not everything survives a move in good shape, but more does than people expect.
Task chairs are the biggest opportunity. A chair with a broken gas lift, torn upholstery, or a cracked armrest looks like a write-off but is usually a $60-$180 repair. We've assessed batches of 40+ chairs from a single office and found 60-70% were repairable rather than replaceable — same brand, same footprint, back in service within a week.
Height-adjustable desks almost always survive a move intact. The motors and frames are built for years of daily use. If the laminate top is scratched or the wrong colour for the new fitout, it's often cheaper to reface or swap the top than replace the whole unit.
Storage and filing units hold up well structurally. Locks stick and drawer runners wear out, but both are minor fixes compared to buying new.
What genuinely doesn't survive: fabric task chairs past ten years old where the foam has fully collapsed, laminate desks with water damage or delamination, and anything that's been stored outside or in a damp warehouse.
The three real options
Repair and keep. Makes sense when the furniture still suits the new layout and the fix cost is well under replacement cost. We see this most with chairs — gas lifts, castors, and tilt mechanisms are the usual failure points, and none of them require a new chair.
Donate or resell. Good-condition furniture that doesn't fit your new space but still has years of life left can go to a charity, a smaller business, or a furniture reuse network. Melbourne has a handful of commercial furniture recyclers who'll collect on-site if the volume justifies it — worth checking before you book a skip.
Recycle or dispose properly. For furniture that's genuinely at end of life, proper recycling separates steel frames, aluminium, and fabric/foam rather than sending it all to landfill as mixed waste. Ask whoever collects it what they actually do with it — a lot of "recycling" pickups still end at the tip.
A practical decision framework
When you're staring down a pile of old furniture, this is roughly how we sort it on-site:
- Does it fit the new floor plan or layout? If not, skip to option 2 or 3 regardless of condition.
- If it fits, is the fault mechanical (gas lift, castor, hinge) or structural (frame crack, water damage)? Mechanical faults are almost always cheaper to fix than replace.
- If it's beyond repair, is it still functional enough to donate? Chairs and desks with cosmetic wear but working mechanisms are usually fine for a smaller office or community organisation.
- What's left goes to proper recycling, sorted by material where the collector allows it.
Running this sort before the move, not during it, saves a full skip's worth of furniture most of the time.
The local angle
Melbourne businesses moving or refreshing an office are usually working to a fixed handover date, which means the old furniture question gets rushed. We schedule chair assessments and pickups around the same timeline as the fit-out itself, so it's one less thing competing for attention in the final week. We've kept more than 5,000 chairs out of landfill this way — most needed nothing more than a new gas lift or a re-upholster.
If you're planning a move or refresh and don't know yet what's worth keeping, get an assessment done before you book the skip. It usually costs less than the skip would.
Get an assessment
If you've got chairs, desks, or storage left over from a move or refresh, we'll assess what's repairable before you write it off. Book a chair assessment through our chair repairs service, or if you're planning the whole move, talk to us about office fit-outs in Melbourne so old and new furniture get planned together from the start.
FAQ
Is it cheaper to repair old office chairs or buy new ones? Usually repair, if the fault is mechanical. A gas lift or castor replacement is typically $60-$180 per chair, well under the cost of a comparable new task chair.
What happens to office furniture that can't be repaired or donated? It should go to a recycler who separates steel, aluminium, fabric and foam rather than sending it to landfill as general waste. Ask your collector what happens to the materials after pickup.
Can you assess furniture before we've decided on a moving date? Yes. An early assessment gives you time to plan repairs, donations, or disposal properly instead of rushing it in the last week before handover.
Do you collect old furniture as part of a fit-out project? We can coordinate old furniture assessment and removal alongside a new fit-out or furniture supply project, so it's handled on the same timeline rather than as an afterthought.
Is there a minimum number of chairs or desks for an assessment? No. We've assessed single chairs and full-floor fit-outs. If you've got more than a handful of items, it's worth doing before you book any disposal.
