Decluttering, getting rid of stuff vs feeling wasteful.

[ImFree2doasiwant]

I really, really need to reduce the amount of "stuff" in my house. It's starting to get me down. 2 dc so all the stuff that comes with them, and me not being very good at "wasting" things.

I also don't have a lot of money.

I'm really struggling with the best but most effective way to go about this. I have 2 bags in the car to go to a charity shop, but the nearest one is 7 miles away. I've tried selling stuff, some sells, some doesn't. I list it on Olio to give away, some goes, some doesn't. By the time it hasn't sold or been given away I'm tempted to just bin it. Because it's already taken up too much of my time and I could have just binned it to start with. I could go direct to charity shop but ...I'm skint. So I feel like I ought to try and get money back.

I'm terrible at procrastinating, can you tell?

Can anyone help?

I'm disuading the children from buying a magazine (they save up their week £1.50 to buy a magazine once a month) because of all the crap toys that come on the front. I have just binned some of those. So yes, not bringing it in the house in the first place is key! Im pretty good at that but less so at refusing other peoples tat.

@black2black I'm going to try and keep this as my mantra "it's rubbish, it can be thrown away".

@AlbertBridge

I read the Flylady book and followed her tips on decluttering.

Put it all in your car boot, and drop it off at a charity shop when you're passing one.

Only try to sell the really really good stuff. Clutter doesn't sell.

Don't get delayed by perfectionism. Yes it'd be better to sell everything but how likely is it that you'll have time to do that? Better to donate/bin the tat now than later.

Around here you have to book appointments at charity shops for drop off.

Do you get charity collection bags? Its a good day for me when I get one with takes bric a brac.

How do you get rid of toys easily? Books are easy, there are often recycling containers, and my local parkrun venue has a "library" (ie a shed where you can leave books and take away others you fancy). Most supermarkets have a clothes and shoes container.

But toys? I really can't be bothered to go to a charity shop, add to their pile of tat to sort through and fill in a gift aid form. So it sits in ds' room until I book a slot at the tip, and like the OP, I don't really want to dump them. Why aren't there toy containers like book and clothes containers?

Our non-recyclable rubbish is incinerated for electricity too but I still don't really want to dump perfectly serviceable toys and games.

Do you get charity collection bags we do but they usually don't take toys and it's not uncommon for them not to bother coming back for the bags in any event so you go to the trouble of putting them out for nothing :(

Do you have charity bins near you, or at local supermarket?
I bag up and use them in preference to my local charity shops - the charity bin people sort and sell or recycle the contents. They’ll take clothing, shoes, books, handbags etc (not duvets or pillows). I dropped 8 bags in my local one for Combat Stress last week.
Libraries will take books in good condition here.
Toys I would offer on local Facebook etc or to playgroup.

@fakereview

How do you get rid of toys easily? Books are easy, there are often recycling containers, and my local parkrun venue has a "library" (ie a shed where you can leave books and take away others you fancy). Most supermarkets have a clothes and shoes container.

But toys? I really can't be bothered to go to a charity shop, add to their pile of tat to sort through and fill in a gift aid form. So it sits in ds' room until I book a slot at the tip, and like the OP, I don't really want to dump them. Why aren't there toy containers like book and clothes containers?

Our non-recyclable rubbish is incinerated for electricity too but I still don't really want to dump perfectly serviceable toys and games.

Some charity shops (Mind and Barbados around here) have a gift ad card scheme so you only have to fill in the form once then for all subsequent donations just give them your card to swipe (or just don't gift aid it if it's that much hassle). Or other ideas for toys are bundle up and put on facebook marketplace or similar for £2 collection only (funnily enough people will often pay £2 for something they wouldn't have gone for if free, nowt so queer as folk). Or put up on Olio, Freecycle or Nextdoor as a free bundle. Or put a box outside your house 'free to a good home' (or £1 per item for charity honesty box system if you prefer, although round our way the scallies would probably nick the honesty box before the first pound coin hit the bottom ). Or a lot of tips nowadays have a collection area for toys, book and good-condition clothes, an awful lot of un-selleable tat seems to get dumped in there from what I can see but apparently local charities do come and pick up the good stuff on a regular basis.

Smaller local charities are usually more than happy to come and get stuff, so contact a couple and see if you can arrange collection.

@fakereview

How do you get rid of toys easily? Books are easy, there are often recycling containers, and my local parkrun venue has a "library" (ie a shed where you can leave books and take away others you fancy). Most supermarkets have a clothes and shoes container.

But toys? I really can't be bothered to go to a charity shop, add to their pile of tat to sort through and fill in a gift aid form. So it sits in ds' room until I book a slot at the tip, and like the OP, I don't really want to dump them. Why aren't there toy containers like book and clothes containers?

Our non-recyclable rubbish is incinerated for electricity too but I still don't really want to dump perfectly serviceable toys and games.

Do you have a local 'Pass It On' style Facebook group? If not list it for free on Facebook market place, I have never listed anything (and some of it was real shit!) that hasn't been snapped up. Then I just leave it outside in a bag and they can collect whenever they like and it's minimal effort on my part.

Toys either in box outside free to take or bundle onto Facebook marketplace for free

Leaving stuff outside doesn't work say due to where I live.

I'm going to do another charity shop run next week, and spend any spare time this week sorting stuff to go. I very quickly get frustrated unfortunately, there's SUCH a lot to get through. I just need to keep at it.

Sympathies OP, it does sound like you maybe need to prioritise your own health right now and if that means stuff goes in the bin that had a 10% chance of being of some use to someone somewhere, that's a fair price to pay? Personally I try really hard to be low-waste but when my parents had to move out of their (very cluttered) family home in a hurry due to sudden health deterioration, loads of stuff went in skips or to the tip, towards the end whole cupboards were just being emptied out without being sorted at all, no-one had the time/energy/headspace to dedicate to sorting it out properly. I do feel a bit bad about that but at the end of the day it all got done, they moved, no-one died and nothing truly precious was lost (that we know of!) so it's not the end of the world. We all strive to do better in the future and can't allow perfection to be the enemy of progress, or something like that anyway .

Personally I find doing frequent but small chunks of this kind of task stops me feeling overwhelmed. Can you set a 10 minute timer and challenge yourself to race around collecting as many items that are 'to go' as you can (this is fun to do with the DC as well although you might have to police what they find a bit, my kids would absolutely have counted important paperwork/each other's precious toys as junk!)? Or take one carrier bag per day every day and fill and deal with it, whether that's putting away in proper places, binning or taking to charity shop or tip (or even easier, start by selecting just one item per day, then once that's easy, do 2, then 3 and so on?).

Thank you @maxelly. Im going to try to do a charity shop run each week for a few weeks. I'm also doing a 10 items a day challenge - I've done this before and found it really easy for the first few weeks, I could stand I a room, let my eyes rove around and identify 10 things pretty quickly (often small, sometimes paperwork, but it all makes a difference)

I just feel like I need a month off work to achieve what I want!

Another item collected today from my Olio posts, and made a quick start on the kids colouring/craft storage before work!. We have loads of this stuff and I have managed to weed out a lot of random bits of paper, half coloured things, too young colouring books and mostly finished activity books! I've left a couple of things out for the DC to get on with when they get home, and am going to make a point of doing this a couple of times a week. They enjoy it but as the things are mostly put away/in a muddle it makes it hard for them to access . I think I could have been more harsh with my "getting rid" but still a lot has gone and I was time limited.

I feel your pain - my house feels unmanageable at the moment.

But, I feel buoyed up by reading everyone's comments, as chucking stuff in the bin feels alien to me.

Sound like you’re making good progress @ImFree2doasiwant!👍

I’m glad that what I said resonated with you. It’s so important to have the right balance in these things and I could tell that the responsibility was weighing heavy. But no ones shoulders are broad enough to carry the whole of the world. 🌷

Keep going @ImFree2doasiwant. It is really relentless work, but well worth it. I have been decluttering for a couple of years now (yep, I'm pretty rubbish at getting rid of stuff, and young DC haven't helped). I've found it harder as I want to find a good home for things and have guilt about throwing things away.

I've managed to give away a lot on a preloved for postage site on Facebook which is really helpful for stuff that I think a charity shop won't take (like big bundles of little plastic toys). But it's been really hard work and there have been things that I've had to admit no one will want and throw away. My DH helps me with that though as he knows I struggle to throw anything.

If you have a room you can use as your sorting / waiting to get out the door place then do use it (we don't which is annoying). Try to start with the easy non emotional stuff first, and ideally the big things / visible spaces like work surfaces where you will feel the difference when decluttered. It really helps keep you motivated and then you can move on to other things.

Anyway, just to reassure you that it does eventually begin to make a dent and does become easier. I am looking at things now differently and wondering why on earth I kept them so long. I'm starting to see spaces appear (like on top of the wardrobe which was previously covered in boxes!). I'm doing little and often and it has made me very very determined to never get to this point again. I've reduced the amount I buy and when we do buy anything I'm strict that it means something has to be donated.

Starting January 1st I’m going to do a month-long de-cluttering challenge where you get rid of 1 thing on the 1st, 2 on the 2nd, 3 on the 3rd, etc. I’m excited for it, tbh. It’s the last push toward a properly minimal mindset going forward, at least in terms of adding new things into our home.

@ChampagneCommunist I'm glad this thread has helped spur you on. I will try to keep posting as I find it helps me along.

@HollyandIvyandAllThingsYule thanks again, you are quite right, and I feel better thinking that i need to do this for myself.

@clutterstop it's tough isn't but? I made a really good start last year, noticed the difference a lot, and then just stopped I think although some of the habits stayed with me (Not buying stuff, abd keeping on top of the daily things like paperwork) I don't have a spare room sadly, but do have a very large bedroom which has quickly become my sorting area, but i don't mind if it helps the rest of the house look better. After the DC are in bed, going to finish the area I made a start on this morning.

My nemesis is the cupboard under the stairs. There's too much stuff in it which makes it inaccessible when i was something out of it, I have to shift stuff around. I end up opening the door and chucking stuff in. It's an endless work in progress

@HollyandIvyandAllThingsYule that's a good idea too. I'm aiming for 10 items a day but that can include every littke thing.

Following g everyone's lead I chucked stuff away. Actually in the bin.

They couldn't be donated, they couldn't be recycled, they couldn't be reused and my daughter and I didn't want them any more.

So, without (too much) angst, they went in the bin. And the world did not end.

@ChampagneCommunist Well done. It is really hard. I even struggled to put completed puzzle books in the recycling.

Don't bin them, donate them. Use clothing banks/charity shops.

well done @ChampagneCommunist. I hope it felt good.

I've got better at it over time. Especially with outgrown toys and clothes. I've sorted a box of "stuff good enough to sell" and then stalled at that point, several times. Usually when I come back to it months later, I find it's not quite the hoarded treasure that I'd thought. Lesson learned.

The best thing I've found with games is to buy them second hand in the first place, when you can. It's much easier to part with something you bought for £2, and there's a lot less guilt.

Have you thought about getting in contact with a women's refuge? I gave some stuff to one a couple of years ago and they said they would consider most things as they are providing for women and children who may have walked away from homes with little more than the clothes they are wearing.
Obvioulsy they aren't going to want rubbish, but it is worth asking them.