De-Cluttering Your Home in 4 Easy Steps

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of Le Petit Prince is quoted -

Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.

He may well have been onto something.

It’s come that time of year again that I am set to move house.

I’ve not stayed in the same location for more than twelve months at a time since moving out of my parents house and up to university four years ago – four years, it should be added, that seem more like ten.

Every time I move I am amazed and horrified by how much stuff I own.

Friends and family have testified time and time again that I actually own a comparatively small number of belongings – but still – when it’s all laid out infront of me, smothering the carpet, bed, table and windowsill, I do feel a vague sense of embarrisment. Surely I don’t need all of this?

In light of this, I have been, and am continuing to reduce my possessions slowly but surely.

I could lie and say it was entirely for the good feeling of living with less, designed purely to make me feel better about my place in the world – but in reality it’s got a lot more to do with the stress and strains (physically, as well as mentally) of moving house year on year.

Here are my top-tips for de-cluttering your home and ridding yourself of unnecessary possessions in 4 easy steps.

CDs and DVDs

If you’re anything like me, you will have hundreds of these laying around your house.

Call me a cynic, or even a dangerous voice towards the future of the music and film industry, but we’ve seen the way things are going.

The Cloud in the sky that experts have been talking about for years is growing in momentum, soon we won’t own anything physically, it will all be digitally available to be streamed at our leisure either through payment plans, ad funding, or a combination of the two.

I advocate selling as many of your CDs and DVDs as you can, as soon as you can.

I’m not suggesting you part with items that hold special memories for you, but I am suggesting you need these items in your life a whole lot less than you can imagine. I’ve whittled my own CD collection down from approximately 130 to 40, and I reckon I can still do without a fair share of those.

Equally with DVDs, some of them you will be able to part with easily – others I simply lined up and thought to myself “Do I want to see this film again?”.

It’s surprising how well this works – films I would have considered in my top five a few years ago I now realise I have no interest in ever seeing again, whereas some that I’ve seen 10 times over still hold excitement for me when I imagine viewing them again.

Recommend resources: Music Magpie, We Buy DVDs, Second Spin. You can always use eBay, of course, and in many cases gain a higher price for your items than you would using the above websites, however the simplicity of these bulk-buy websites is what makes them so attractive. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it would be to sell hundreds of CDs and DVDs individuality on eBay.

One-off unnecessary items

You know the kind of thing; an empty goldfish bowl, a guitar amp, a disco ball, a clothes horse.

Do you really need any of this – now or in the future? Most likely the answer is no.

In this case I do advocate eBay. I’m going to take it that many of you have a standard eBay buyer account but not so many of you have branched out and upgraded to a seller account. Don’t worry, this is far easier and less time consuming than you’d think.

As it currently stands, eBay will bill you monthly, whether you put anything up for sale or not. Again, don’t fret. If you don’t list an item in a particular month, your bill will be zero and nothing will be taken from your account. eBay’s insertion fees are minimal.

The main fee you have to look out for is Paypals transaction fee when you receive payment for your item (if you take payment through Paypal – by far the easiest way of doing so). Often this will make your gain very minimal if you’re selling low cost items, but it’s fair to say this does not matter so much as we are here to de-clutter, not make large financial gains.

I have lost money on items I’ve sold on eBay in the past. If I were to place the item cost (including postage) at a rate that will bring back a small gain, I would receive no bids due to the much lower cost of the same item from other sellers. This is okay, because we’re de-cluttering – not running a small business.

I would suggest for bulky items – such as gym equipment, ironing boards, sports equipment and model elephants, that you advertise the ‘delivery cost’ as free pick up only, then charge a very low price for the item.

Not sure how you’re going to break down your old bookcase and somehow dispose of it with your household rubbish? Advertise it on eBay for free with free pick up. Somebody will want it.

Clothing

You have two main options here. Recycling, and charity shops. You could of course go ahead and sell them on the aforementioned auction website, or similar, but I’ve never looked into this so I’ll stick to what I know.

For clothing that you believe to no longer be in a sell-able condition, due to holes, fading, or the belief that nobody would be seen dead in it ever again, recycling bins are a good option.

For other items of clothing that you believe could be given a second home, head to the charity shops. There are many famous high street charity shops in the UK, such as Oxfam, Cancer Research UK and Help the Aged.

Though the temptation may be to head for one of these big players, if you know of a smaller local charity shop in your area it’s likely that they will be a hundred times more in need of your unwanted clothing, as they wouldn’t be called upon as often as the well-known charities. Of course, they’re your items and they’re your views – so give to the charity that you believe in, or you believe needs it the most.

Books

Books are a difficult one.

So far as I have seen, there are no websites, such as the ones in the CDs and DVDs point above, that bulk-buy books. There are several websites that will buy unwanted books from you, but only if it’s a popular title that they’re currently looking for – which is not often the case.

Larger books, such a text books, and non-fiction hardbacks could be sold on eBay, but keep in mind that the postage cost (once you’ve accounted for the packaging as well) will always be more than you budget it to be, and as ever with eBay, you have to factor in the time you spend stood in the Post Office queue first thing in the morning.

In my opinion, when it comes to paperbacks you don’t believe you’ll read again, you should first head to a second hand bookstore specialising in your genre to see if they’ll give you anything for them (don’t expect much more than 50p a piece), then take all rejected books to a charity shop of your choice.

They’ll love you for it.

As a side note, I noticed, while sifting through my possessions, that de-cluttering would be far from necessary if I hadn’t bought so many unnecessary possessions in the first place.

I’ve since made much more informed choices about my purchases, and drastically cut my spending on material goods. I hope you can take away some points from this post and de-clutter your own home as easily as I am continuing to de-cluttered mine.

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity. — Bruce Lee

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