Follow These Six Steps to Lighten Your Load Before You Move!

Whether it’s rightsizing into a more appropriate home for your lifestyle or relocating for a job, we all inevitably move at one point or another. If you’ve been in your home for a few years or longer, certainly you’ve put down deep roots, and with that comes accumulation. Clothes, books, old appliances, old or unused toiletries at the bottom of your cabinet all coalesce into a lot of stuff, and when it’s time to move, addressing that accumulation can be overwhelming.

Moving is difficult enough as it is, but addressing clutter doesn’t have to be. The truth is, clutter is so important to address before you move because it means you have to pack and move less! The time to address clutter  is before you move to make your move go smoother and your load lighter! US News created a list of tips that can reduce the headache of your move, and we selected six points to tackle the clutter:

1. Start Early

It doesn’t matter if you’re moving next month, six months from now, or you don’t even have any plans to move. Start decluttering today. I know it’s tempting to continue to put it off as you tell yourself you’ll do it once you’ve moved into the new place. But think about it: why go through all the hassle of moving your stuff only to eventually get rid of it? When you do move, you’ll save a ton of money by doing it now because you’ll need fewer boxes and a smaller truck.

That’s also fewer things you have to waste your physical and mental energy on when hauling stuff back and forth.

2. Start Small

Looking at a house full of stuff you need to sort through can be really dispiriting. I know, I’ve been there too. This is why you need to start small. Focus on areas like your bedroom closet, or the living room media cabinet. Don’t try to do an entire room at once unless you’ve already won a Blue Ribbon for Decluttering. Trying to tackle a huge space, especially if you have a lot of items to sort through, is draining and might extinguish your motivation.

3. Be Prepared

Before you get started decluttering an area, make sure you have everything you’ll need right there. This includes several boxes (one for trash, one for recycling, one for donations, one for “thinking about” items), a shredder, plenty of water, and some great tunes to keep your spirits up.

4. Put It to the Test

My last move involved going from a nice-sized home to a small loft. All my stuff had to go up three flights of stairs since there was no elevator. I examined every item in my home and asked “Do I want to carry you up three flights of stairs?” Most of the time, that answer was “no.” I got rid of more than half of my possessions using this simple question.

5. Hit the Kitchen

Go through your kitchen and throw out anything with an expired date or that has gone stale (this especially goes for spices, which usually don’t last longer than 6 months to a year). Use this time to also get rid of any cookbooks you haven’t cracked open in the past year, and any strange kitchen gadgets you really don’t have a use for.

6. Keep Going

Make decluttering part of your everyday routine. Set up a Donate bin in your bedroom closet. Every day, find at least one thing to put in there. Do you have a pile of unwanted gifts you’ve received over the years that you’ll never use? Add those to the pile too! When it gets full, take it to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. As another option, if you decide to make money online selling these unwanted products through e-commerce sites like eBay, Amazon and Craigslist, you’ll be able to develop some awesome passive income stream opportunities.

 

Like anything in organizing, decluttering is something you can do everyday as a course of practice. Little bits every day can prevent having to deal with your mass of clutter when it really matters most!

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