How to Get Rid of Your Stuff That You Don’t Need

You don’t use everything you own. I’m willing to wager you don’t use even half of the belongings filling your home regularly. So here’s how to get rid of your stuff and declutter your home.

A percentage of most people’s stuff is season-specific, like heavy coats or swimsuits, but my point is that you could lose a significant portion of your possessions without even noticing they’re gone. It’s time to get rid!

According to several surveys, most UK citizens are hoarders. People hold on to things for a long time.

The average home in the UK contains at least enough unused physical items to cover 4.8 square meters of floor space (about the size of a king-sized bed or 6 percent of an average three-bedroom home). That’s a massive amount of stuff!

But a surprising 1 in 3 homes devotes more than eight square meters (about the size of a bedroom) to storing junk. That’s not even mentioning the people who have to hire additional storage units for their stuff.

In total, the UK spends about £250 billion on storage alone, and together, everyone’s unnecessary belongings could form a mountain covering 78.4 square kilometres.

Worse, according to the Daily Mail, a woman will spend more than eight years of her life shopping for more things to cram into her home.

Simply put, you aren’t alone in your cluttered lifestyle, but you do have the power to change how you live and live clutter free instead.

At first, spending time getting rid of your possessions is daunting and uncomfortable. You might feel guilt for getting rid of things.

However, don’t feel guilty! Once you develop a strategy for understanding precisely what you do and don’t need, purging your belongings will feel liberating. It’s time to get spring cleaning, no matter what time of year it is!

Here’s how to do it as painlessly as possible.

Go Room-by-Room

The first step in the decluttering process is to start small. Cleaning and organising can be unpleasant, so it makes sense to endure it in small doses. Otherwise, it feels overwhelming.

By dividing your home organisation by rooms, you will be less likely to quit and more likely to search for stuff you don’t need.

It might help to make a checklist of places to look, organised by room.

For example, your kitchen purge list might look like this:

• Drawers
• Cabinets
• Counter-tops
• Pantry shelves
• Refrigerator
• Freezer

Check your fridge and freezer for any items that have passed their expiration dates, and throw these away.

Ask Some Questions

When you start decluttering, you should touch everything you see, and when you do so, you should take a moment to ask yourself a few simple questions to help you learn why you own it.

Here are some examples to help you get started:

• Why did you acquire it?
• What does it do?
• When did you last use it?
• When will you use it again?
• Why do you still have it?

More likely than not, you’ll find an abundance of possessions that serve you no purpose.

Often, you keep stuff only out of obligation to someone else, usually a family member or friend you feel uncomfortable declining. Sometimes you will hold onto things because they were expensive or sentimental items, but you don’t use them. This can lead to lots of sentimental clutter.

If you don’t know how to use something, if you haven’t used it in more than a year, or if it has no real sentimental value, or if you don’t love it, you can get rid of it.

Hide It Away

Before you start overloading your rubbish bins in a fury of clutter elimination, you might want to give yourself a breathing period.

It is wise to bag up all your decidedly unwanted possessions in trash bags or pop them into cardboard boxes and stash them somewhere out of sight, like the garage, the coat closet, or the spare bedroom. This will help prevent any regret you may have once you get rid of these things for good, as you’ll know that you can live without them. Just make sure you hide the boxes of stuff somewhere easy to find!

After about a month of living in a less-cluttered home, you will welcome the opportunity to give away your excess stuff, and you will know for sure that you don’t need any of it to survive.

Know What to Do Next

Finding the items you no longer need is one step, and getting rid of them is another.

Now that you have a healthy pile of belongings to part with, you need to decide upon your disposal methods. In general, you have three options:

• Throw it away,
• Give it away, or
• Sell your stuff.

Usually, what you do depends on what your stuff is and how it looks.

Suppose your stuff is in poor condition ― compromised by time, grime, or misuse ― or any type of single-use, disposable item (think paper clutter like birthday cards and takeout menus!). In that case, you should feel comfortable tossing it right in the bin.

Conversely, if it seems usable and in good condition, you can give your unwanted possessions to friends or charities. Board games, old clothes, DVDs and CDs are always welcome at charity shops or thrift stores. Donating items like old blankets and sheets to animal shelters is also a good idea.

Sometimes, organisations will even take items that seem broken down if they are particularly valuable, which means you can donate large items like boats, cars, and kitchen appliances.

Then again, if your stuff is in excellent condition and you have the time and energy to devote to a campaign, you can attempt to sell it yourself. Perhaps have a garage sale or flog it on eBay.

If you have the opportunity to do some good with your unwanted, unneeded stuff, you should. But, ultimately, all that matters is that you get rid of it and avoid accumulating more.

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