Moortown Furniture Store was created in 1986 by a group of dedicated volunteers from Moortown Baptist Church, Leeds, who in the course of their work came into contact with people who had little basic furniture. Aware that good second-hand furniture was often going to waste, they began to collect and re-distribute those items, often in their car boots before progressing on to using a horsebox! Initially the work was undertaken from a variety of buildings, a church hall, the basement of an empty house and the organisers’ cellar, all of which were temporary and most of which were too small.

The Leeds Furniture Store, managed by representatives of the West Yorkshire Probation Service and other organisations, including the Leeds Shaftesbury Project (re-housing homeless people) and D.I.A.L (Disablement Information and Advice Line) provided a similar sort of service. In March 1989 they ceased operating independently and the two stores started working together with a joint management committee. Their formal amalgamation and registration as a charity took place on October 1989; subsequently
the new Leeds and Moortown Furniture Store became a company limited by guarantee in July 1997.

In April 2001, The Store moved to its current premises, a 12,000 square foot warehouse situated in an inner-city area of Leeds, the cost of the purchase being funded by the National Lottery Charities Board.