It’s moving time. You’ve bought a place or are selling one. If you have too much stuff, the storage lockers or containers you use when listing your home are only a temporary solution. Any kind of long-term use of them after you sell just means you’re hoarding junk somewhere else. Here’s how to declutter your house instead.
Here are 7 steps to help you declutter your house
So what can you do to get rid of things? You could just jump in with both feet but that can be stressful and messy. A plan makes it much easier.
1. Set Realistic Goals
Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Set aside time to declutter, and concentrate on a particular room or area. Be consistent and steady in your approach to cleaning up.
2. Throw Out Your Garbage
A lot of stuff people keep is actually broken. If you’re like me you keep things because you think you will ‘fix’ them later. And that never happens. In addition we keep packaging from new items in case we need to send them back for warranty. Years later the product breaks or we get rid of it but the cardboard and styrofoam stays…
3. Make Four Sorting Piles.
You should have one for donating or selling and one for keeping. The third is recycling and the fourth, trash.
4. When Sorting Ask Yourself This.
- Is it useful?
- Can you use it?
- Can someone else use it?
- Do you love it?
- Does it make you feel bad?
5. Stay Organized By Setting Rules.
For example only keeping newer magazines. Or getting rid of books that aren’t particularly important to you once you’ve read them. Ditching older clothes and shoes on a regular basis stops clutter and keeps you in style too.
6. Use A Best Before Date.
What about items that might be useful? This needs to be case by case, but if you haven’t used it in 5 or 10 years get rid of it.
7. Lastly, sell, donate and recycle your excess stuff, and you have several options to do so.
A great solution for excess furniture are consignment shops that take a percentage of the sale price as their cut. You could also sell privately on Kijiji but you must have a lot of patience to do so.
Another choice is charity. Thrift on Kent, in Kitchener, is a Mennonite Central Committee operation that accepts donated furniture and household items. Similarly, Worth a Second Look on Weber and Victoria is another excellent charity that will take stuff. These guys are instrumental in helping the poorest of the poor by running St. John’s Kitchen.
Papa Lou’s 84 King N Waterloo 519-886-6338
St. Jacobs Antique Market 805 King N Waterloo (519) 880-1944
You can take old electronics to dozens of locations throughout Waterloo Region and here’s a link for that.
