As I mentioned in my April goals, I am on a total mission to eliminate clutter from my house. I wouldn't say I'm a crazy hoarder or anything, but I do like to save a lot of random things. Not even intentionally save, just throw into a bag, then into a closet, and then forget about.
Last week, beginning on Sunday, I spent about an hour a day on this goal. Don't worry, I still went to work and continued to exercise, I swear. Some of my major accomplishments were: reorganizing my two upstairs closets so that I really know what I have (and tossing a ton of crap I had just stuffed in the bottom of the closet), reorganizing my dresser drawers for the same reason, getting rid of 3 bags of clothing, cleaning my bathroom and tossing out empty or old lotions/make up etc and donating some old books I will never read again to Good Will.
I thought I'd share some of the fun things I did to get rid of clutter that you might want to try.
Sell Clothes on Twice: I usually get rid of clothes about once a year, either by giving things away to people I know or donating to Good Will. However, this time I decided to try out a company called Twice. It's an online clothing company that will buy your old clothes and it's absurdly easy. All you have to do is go to their website and request a bag, they will send it in 3 days. Fill up the bag with clothes you don't want any more. The clothes must be less than 5 years old and on their brand list- things like JCrew, Express, Gap are good- but they won't accept cheaper brands like Old Navy or Target. Then, you take your bag and drop it off at the post office or just give it to the mailman, no postage required. In a few weeks, they will e-mail you an offer for your clothes. If you accept it, you get paid immediately. If you reject it, you can have your clothes back for $5. Apparently the average person sends in about 20 clothing items and gets paid about $50. That's $50 I wouldn't have had otherwise. Also, if you want to buy more clothes you can get more money in Twice cash, so you can buy clothes from other's closet. I don't need more clothes so I won't be doing this, but the idea is good. Anything that didn't fit the description because of brand mostly, I just put in a bag for Goodwill and I still had 2 bags for them. Yay!
Consolidate Gift Cards: I've mentioned before that I have a gift card hoarding problem. It really has not improved much, and part of this is that I end up with too many gift cards to actually keep in my purse at all times. I decided to consolidate some of these gift cards onto my phone which will help me actually use them, and cut down on clutter. I had 9 Starbucks cards, which I put all online, consolidated them all into one card and I can now get rid of ALL the cards and use the app on my phone to pay for my drinks. I was also able to consolidate my Target gift cards. I also had an absurd number, and a lot of them had like $2, or $8 etc. I put them all my online account, and I think I can also get rid of those cards too with the Target app (but I haven't figured that out yet). Finally, I had a couple of iTunes gift cards which I finally put on my account. I still have a few gift cards to a local teacher store, TJ Maxx and Bertuccis which I can't do anything about, but now I can actually fit them in my purse because I'm down to less than 10 total rather than probably 30 something!
Do you have any tips for eliminating clutter?
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That clothing company sounds like a great idea! I've heard of similar ones, but wonder if they have them in Canada. Might have to look into it!
ReplyDeleteI may have to try Twice! My clothes are on their last leg (I dont buy clothes often and they are worn down) and I am thinking about getting rid of just about everything I have and starting over. Whatever I got could contribute to the new clothes
ReplyDeleteGreat job! I DID NOT spend this past weekend cleaning out the clutter from one room in the house (fail!!!) so I am going to try tackling the two upstairs rooms tonight. I think between the two of them it will only take an hour or so since I'm pretty good at cleaning out my closets regularly. For me it's going to be FORCING myself to let go of things I don't wear. I'm so bad for hoarding clothes because I might wear it one day, or I think it's a really cute piece but I just don't wear it. I need to be strict with myself that if I haven't worn it in the past 6 months or so (or it doesn't fit properly) it needs to go!
ReplyDeleteTwice seems like such a great idea! I so desperately need to go through my closet and get rid of clothes I haven't worn for years. The only problem is my closet is in Gavin's room and my spare time to clean said closet is when he's sleeping. You see my dilemma, don't you!? One of these days, I'm going to send Gavin and my husband out for the day so I can just do it!
ReplyDeleteI got rid of a lot of things before my move. I donated 2 trunk fulls of stuff and threw out bags upon bags of old clothes and old lotions, etc. I thought it was enough, but it not nearly enough so I will have to do another round of purging as my closet is bursting at the seams and looks horrible. I hadn't heard of twice but might have to try that!
ReplyDeleteI have three barnes and noble cards at the moment that are taking up precious space in my wallet hahaha. I needed to organize bathroom crap so I took time during Isla's bathtime one night and organized all but two drawers in the bathroom and threw stuff away and bought organizers from the dollar store to separate stuff in my drawers. We also take an hour a few times a year and go through our closets. We have bins around the area where you can just throw bags of clothes in and I do that on my way to work. We usually go through our clothes the week after Christmas, June and September. I go through Isla's stuff as she out grows it and it goes into a save bin or the sell bin. I also post things in local fb groups to sell stuff quick. We have a garage sale once a year with friends that I save stuff in a bin in our basement to sell then.
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