If you had two days to declutter your house how would you go about it?

[Honey1975]

I’ve had enough of all the stuff! Toys not played with, random papers, clothes current and old, bits & bobs, toiletries, make up tupperware, photos, kids arts & craft, old school books and so on and so on.

It’s getting me down. I can’t function properly. I can’t get a thing done when my dc’s are home so I’ve booked Thursday & Friday off to tackle this mess.

Thing is I have trouble staying focussed & don’t know where to start. I don’t want to waste the time and achieve very little. I have to do this for my mental state!

Please can anyone give me some tips on how best to tackle this in the time I have?

Do not freecycle unless you have only a couple of items and all the time in the world to fart around online then wait in for people to show up.

Do not get distracted by charity shops/recycling/freecycle. They are secondary to sorting out your living space. This clean is for you not for all mankind.

Part of the reason lots of us have cluttered houses is guilt: still useable, someone might want it, don’t want to offend the giver...etc. At the cost of living well for us.

I do a declutter every 3 months, its amazing how much shit you gather in that space of time! 1 room at a time, start at top of house and work way down. I empty every cupboard into the middle of the floor, clean the shelves and cupboards then as i put back all the stuff i decide wether i keep, throw or donate.

Thats interesting Persona I think you’re right, that is how I feel, guilty & overwhelmed with crap.

Get a skip from wastecycle. Chuck as much as you can in it. Let the skip people recycle it. I think they recycle 80%. If you haven’t used something for a year chuck it.

Don’t despair honey but I started at the start of the school holidays. 😂 But big house, very full, kids underfoot, lazy, etc.

I started by emptying cupboards so I had space to move things into.

There are loads of clutter pages on FB, so look there and find your tribe. Loads of stuff like getting rid of ten things a day, or sorting out a particular space in a series of ten minute bursts.

Personally, I’d leave kids rooms til last because you won’t benefit from them being clutter free in the same way you would the kitchen, for example.

I would to kids rooms last.

Black bin liners for everything else.

I'd go through and remove everything from shelves, floors and drawers, and heap it into 3 different pile: for a different room (mis-filed), for a different house (eBay or charity) or uncertain. Then I would only replace items that need to be kept, but this time there's a place for everything and everything is in its place.

Next I'd put the eBay/charity shop bin bags in the car, just to get them out of the house. You can do eBay at your leisure next week, but now is not the right time.

I'd put the 'other room' items in the correct room, but only on the floor as I haven't sorted that room yet.

The biggest trick I taught myself was to think it through and imagine where the best place would be to keep a thing, then work out how that can work in this house. Once you've got it organise din your head like that, it helped to see the woods through the trees.

When I sort out that awful kitchen side pile, that every kitchen has, I tell myself it all had a place; in someone's room, in the bin, or in its 'place' (if I haven't worked out where the place is then I soon make it up and file it!).

Ive always found that 3 big bin bags in the now tidy room feels much better than the contents of said bags being all over the place!

Set a timer and do just 10 minutes at first in each room, chucking out the stuff that needs chucking (or charity shop). Work around the house, 10 mins in each room. Very motivating to be up against the clock!

With the toys/clothes in saleable condition, do you have a teenage relative or neighbour that could put it on e-bay for you for 50% of the profits? Then it's out of your house, you don't have the faff of selling yourself and still get a bit of cash from it?

This thread has inspired me to do a bit of a sort out!

Start with the toy box if they haven't played with something in ages bin it, broken puzzles bin, McDonald's toys bin,
Kitchen draws I do one at a time with a black bag.
Paper work I shred if I haven't needed something within the last 3 months.
Makeup has an expiry date if you haven't used it in last 6 months bin.
Clothes if you've not worn it this year ? Bin it. If you can salvage some for charity shops that's good but if not just bin, it took me around 3 years to declutter my clothes because I kept holding onto things I might wear again but I didn't!

Forgot to add, there's a blog that I used to follow called Living Well, Spending Less. It has published mini e-books (or maybe just blog posts) on de-cluttering, down to giving you a timetable and telling you how to do it.

Charity shops where I live will not take toys - even new ones. So the only way to get rid of them is to bin them. Look at it this way, they are a sunk cost. You are no way fed up with them and for your own mental health - which is priceless - you need to dump them.

My DH is always trying to sell stuff on eBay. In the end I just take it to the dump as it gets me down seeing the mess.
You need to get rid of the items the same day as you de clutter them so forget about eBay.

You will feel fab when it is done.
do one room at a time. Personally I always start in the playroom not the bedroom as I spend more time looking at the mess there - it is beside my kitchen. When that is done, tackle the bedrooms.

Pinterest have loads of helpful articles on this - I declutter my kids stuff regularly but still like to read the articles to get me started.

Good luck - you will feel so much better once it's done.
Be ruthless.

You could call a charity now and book in for them to come and collect your stuff, once it's sorted out. (The British Heart Foundation does this and they take electricals too.)

I think I’m ok for dropping off to charity shop as dh has a van so we can just load that up😊

I second the advice about freecycle for getting rid of things quickly that are worth reusing but you don’t want to take the time to sell. List it as a bundle suitable for car boot sale and you’ll probably have someone to collect the same day.

If you can find the time though eBaying doesn’t have to be that much hassle. Get a couple of sheets of address label stickers and a pack of mailing bags for a couple of quid off eBay and pack each item into a bag after you’ve listed it. Start them all as 99p auctions ending the same day and all you will need to do is write on the address labels, seal up the bags and do one big post office trip. Some people will end up getting a bargain but you might be surprised by how much you end up getting for some things. It gets a bit addictive watching your total add up.

One thing I’ve found works better for me in the children’s rooms is to get a big box for KEEP as well as bags for Throw and Donate. Then go through every drawer etc systematically and everything then has to go in a bag or box. You don’t waste time deciding where to put things you want to keep. Then the surfaces are all clear for you to clean them. Then I ask the children to put the stuff away themselves!

I really need to do this too. There's some great tips!
I cleared out the under stairs cupboard yesterday and feel so much better for doing it. I need to go through the garage too.
Good luck OP

Our local scout group has a jumble sale twice a year, I send all old (not broken) toys to them, might be worth having a look to see if you have somewhere locally that does this?
I will add that they do 2 sales a year and each one makes around £2k, they are extremely popular!

Isn't it awful that we are all now so drowning in stuff that we have to make frequent runs to the tip to dump plastic into landfill?

It's unsustainable and life is going to be very different for the little kids who play with that plastic right now.

I would keep everything I possibly could out of landfill because I wouldn't be able to sleep at night otherwise. The guilt would be enormous.

I would go room by room. Three piles of stuff. One for selling/ebaying. One for charity shop for stuff not good enough to sell but too good to dump and one pile for dumping. Get rid of stuff or clothes which have not been used in a year.

I agree we dump too much stuff these days. We use Facebook selling and freecycle. I would rather give something away than dump it. Only broken stuff gets dumped.

Facebook marketplace is great for giving away stuff for free that has value but you don't want to sell/tip. I've had stuff taken away within a few minutes of putting up for free on there - and I feel much better knowing someone might get use out of it rather than filling a skip.

Ooh this thread is beautiful, I love talking about decluttering.

I haven’t rtft (but I will), I decluttered over the summer and I put so much stuff on a Facebook group and said ‘must collect today by 4pm’.
It all went and there were no time wasters, it was so efficient it was like poetry :)

I really recommend a room at a time, and a timer, and don’t let yourself leave the room for any reason until the time is up. Say an hour.
Bin bag for rubbish, pile for things that should live in other rooms, box for charity and box to sell. Don’t leave the room at all until you’ve cleared all the surfaces and clutter. Be ruthless. Put away everything else that doesn’t belong in one of the bags/boxes.
When you do leave the room take the bin bag straight to the bin, the stuff for other rooms to the appropriate rooms (if it’s a room you’ve already sorted then put it away, if it’s a room you’ve yet to tackle then just stack it on the floor) and the charity/sell boxes stacked somewhere (car boot or against a wall of a tidy room). Have a cup of tea and return to the room to briefly wipe surfaces and vacuum or mop.

Repeat for all rooms. You should only be left with a trip to the charity shop and a stack of boxes of things to sell. I’d not try selling stuff until you’ve done all the rooms - you’ll get distracted and disheartened!

Just an idea for those trying to get rid of toys, have you thought about asking your local nursery and reception class if they would like them. Often they are very grateful as their budgets are tiny for replacing/buying new toys.

Plan a treat for yourself over the weekend to celebrate all the work you have done. It could be anything - a chocolate ice cream, a bubble bath or going to watch a film or settle down with Netflix. (Maybe pick something like a shopping trip that brings new physical stuff in).

You get the treat even if the whole house doesn't get decluttered. Be gentle on yourself especially if you have MH problems- clearing one room (or part of a room) could be a great success.