When we moved, I came to the conclusion that we have too much stuff. The things we have aren’t particularly expensive or fancy…just…STUFF we have accumulated over the past 14ish years of knowing each other. Also, when we unpacked the house, I found things still in boxes from when we moved last time! If I haven’t needed it in a year, there is a good chance it should be tossed anyway.
It’s kind of overwhelming when I think about purging things from my home, and to be honest, I have to be in a particular “mood” to get this done, if that even makes sense (hopefully someone knows what I’m talking about so I don’t feel crazy? Well, at least not crazy in this instance.)
I decided to just do a little at a time as I felt like it, and start where I felt I could do the most damage…I hit up our office and guest bedroom closets and just started pulling things out. I ended up with a couple of huge piles of things and I already feel better and cleaner. I wanted to share a few tips that I used to help me decide what stays and what goes.
What Stays and What Goes:
1.) Pick a room: Pick a room and focus on it until it’s completely done instead of hopping all around your house. This will help you feel more accomplished once you get a complete room done. (I know this TOTALLY goes against what Marie Kondo says but it works for me.)
2.) Make multiple piles: I like to make a “donate”, “sell” and “maybe” pile as I sift through my stuff. Sometimes I end up going through a room and will have a huge maybe pile of things I’m just not quite sure I want to part with. At the end of it after going through everything and having some time to think about the contents of the maybe pile, I can usually go back through and get rid of a large portion of it.
3.) Pick a price: I sell a lot of things locally on Facebook yard sale groups. My rule is if it’s going to sell for under $10, it gets donated. I am not going to sell an item and then spend an hour conversing back and forth with someone about a time and a location to meet, then wasting my gas and money to go meet someone in the Wal-Mart parking lot to sell a stapler for $2. I sell a lot of baby clothes to the local consignment shop so I don’t have to waste as much time handling it myself. Also, my parents have a used bookstore by their house that you can trade in books for money to use in the store to buy other books. I love it, so I always send my mom books I don’t want so she can go get some different ones. Search around and see what you can find!
4.) Pick a good cause: If you do some searching, you will find lots of places that will take donated items that you may not have even thought of. Find somewhere you really want to help, and that you believe in. It may soften your heart and make you more willing to give up some of your possessions for those truly in need if you know where it is going.
5.) Do the wear test with clothes: Turn all your hangers facing a certain way. Then, as you wear an outfit and hang it back in your closet, turn the hanger facing the other way. At the end of the season, anything with a hanger turned the first way (meaning you haven’t worn it all season) pull out of your closet and sell or donate.
6.) Get rid of multiples: Yes you may need more than one ink pen in your house, but do you REALLY need 50? (guilty.) Do you have 5 of the exact same sized pot? Are you really going to be using those pots all at once to cook, wanna-be Martha Stewart? Consider maybe keeping 2. What about your cups/water bottles/glassware? Yall, I had so many water bottles before we moved last time, it was a sin. I got rid of about 10 and still have too many. I do dishes constantly, so it’s not like I run out of clean ones. Go through your house, especially your kitchen, and consider ditching things you have multiples of.
7.) Get a file cabinet: If you don’t have one already, get one. Yes you, the one with five different stacks of mail, magazines and papers you don’t know what to do with sitting on your kitchen counter. Sit by your file cabinet with a trash can, and make folders for bills, receipts, and other important paperwork, and trash anything you will never read again (or won’t read once!)
8.) Clean out that pantry: When we moved, I was embarrassed at some of the things I found in my pantry that had been expired for a YEAR. A year yall…just let that sink in. The truth is we probably all have food in our pantry that is expired, we didn’t like and never threw out, or we just plain forgot about. Clean out your pantry and stop hiding things in layers behind each other so you can SEE everything in there. The same rule goes for your medicine cabinet. Get rid of expired meds and get a basket for each person in your house to put their medicine in so it’s easy to grab when needed.
9.) Buy some bins: You know those big storage bins with lids? We have a bunch of them in our attic. I prefer the clear ones so I can see the contents, but any will do. Anything in my house that I want to keep but I haven’t necessarily used in the past year like photo albums, keepsakes, etc. go into the bins and into the attic so they don’t junk up the rest of the house. You can even keep an inventory sheet of what is in each container in case you forget or are looking for something. (Keep the sheet in your file cabinet, NOT on your kitchen counter. 
)
10.) Get rid of excess toys: Kids rooms can quickly become a breeding ground for toys. I don’t know where they come from…they just kind of…appear… I think a great rule is that when it is Christmas or birthday time, she has to get rid of a few toys before she can get more. We just did this at Easter actually. It makes sense really because a lot of the things they were playing with last Christmas they will have outgrown or will be too “babyish” the next year. If you are saving toys for a younger sibling, put them in a bin in the attic, and get them out of your child’s room. Less mess for mom and dad to have to “help” clean up when there aren’t as many toys to make a mess with! I would involve your kids in this and not just take toys from their room if they are old enough to understand. If you are donating, explain that there are other kids who don’t have toys that would so enjoy the ones that they don’t even play with anymore. A great learning experience and a lesson on giving!
Related: 7 Amazon Finds to organize your kid’s room
QOTD: What is your best tip for de-cluttering your house? Ok I’m off to put some of my tips into practice!
Great tips!! Ugh I hate decluttering but feel a million times better once I do!
I hear ya on the water bottles!!!! I normally put clothes and home decor I don’t want anymore in storage for a while before I get rid of it. In a few years I will shop through it and things are “new” to me again..lol. I am SO glad I kept a set of old drapes from years ago because I just painted my living room and these drapes match perfectly. So glad I didn’t get rid of them when I took them down the first time. Also, some of my old clothes become throw aways for races!
Emma Kate’s room is pretty cute!
I go through some of that whenever I move apartments. I’ll think I lost something and won’t see it again until I’m packing. I figure if I didn’t need it for the 2 or more years I couldn’t find it, then I don’t need it.
These are great tips! I am especially going to use the first one of staying with one room at a time. Our apartment has become so cluttered. We have been working the past week to clear some things out! Thanks for your help!
I just got a chance to read this post…great tips! The major problem in our house is definitely paper!! We always have stacks of mail around and those papers that “you know you should keep but are never going to look at again”? A filing cabinet would be a life saver!
Yes! So much paper! A cheap file cabinet def helps our sanity!