I work with many, many hoarders. I'm at the age where my friends' parents and grandparents are dying or moving into senior living and the family possessions must be sold. Often, these particular elders have lived through hard financial times, such as the Great Depression in the 1930s, which triggered an adult life of hoarding. Before I sell a hoarder home, I have to have it cleaned out of the thousands of National Geographic magazines, cases of used lipstick tubes and big green storage bins of 50-year-old wheat full of weevils (food storage for survivalists of the 1960s). Thank goodness for my professional haulers, Phil and Carrie Damon, who save the day every time I need trash and detritus hauled to the dump.

Old mattresses and box springs are common trash. Heirs rarely want the beds they grew up in. Most charities won't accept used bedding as donations and thus the junk must go to the public dump. The Salt Lake County Landfill charges $15 per piece to recycle these things, but up until recently, they weren't doing much about the thousands of big white, stained squares that piled up there. That was until KSL Channel 5 did an investigative report on the problem by hiding a GPS tracker in one old mattress this past February. The Damons had exposed the fact that a good amount of money was being collected by the county as "recycling fees" but the piles of bedding just kept getting higher and higher. (FYI, mattresses and the like take up needed room in our landfill and can destroy equipment.) KSL found that the cost of repairs to machinery at the city landfill from September to February was $77,247.98.

Move the clock forward to today and Phil and Carrie report to me that the old sign at the entrance at 6030 W. California Ave. stating "recycling fee" now reads "disposal fee," and the local contractor who takes apart mattresses and box springs is seen out there constantly hauling them away from the dump. KSL reporters also couldn't say what happened to the mattress with the tracker because the battery died. Phil thinks it didn't die but was buried like so many other beds there. A local company called Spring Back Mattress Recycling at 1989 S. 4130 West will gladly pick up your springs and mattresses in Salt Lake County for $60, or $80 if you live in Park City. Or you can bring it to them for $10. Items must be dry and free of bed bugs.

Want to haul an old box spring and mattress to the dump and not get charged? Try driving to the Trans-Jordan Landfill (10473 S. Bacchus Hwy.) where you can drop up to three pieces for free. After that, it's $15 each, but they don't recycle. Pleasant Grove's dump charges only $5 each if you live in Utah County.