When you have too many possessions, they can become so overwhelming and all-consuming that they clutter the mind, too. If you want to declutter your surroundings in the new year but don’t know where to begin, Clark.com offers a month-by-month plan that promises to get your home and life in better order by the end of 2019. January is a good time to make an assessment of the things you received as gifts over the holidays, for example. If you haven’t used a gifted item or know that you won’t, now is the time to return, sell or regift whatever it is, or donate it to a worthy charitable organization such as ClothingDonations.org!
Tag: decluttering your home
Resolve to Cut the Clutter in 2019
Now that the busy holiday season is over, it’s the perfect time to take stock of your home and all of the worldly possessions that continue to spill out of your closets and cupboards. Resolve to cut the clutter this year! Go through your closets and chests of drawers — is there anything there that you didn’t use at all in 2018? Get rid of it. Likewise with those crafty little projects that never got started: “Perhaps you have a chair you wanted to paint, or a picture frame you wanted to repurpose,” A Few Shortcuts says. “If you have been holding onto these objects for a year, it is time to let them go. Let go of old and undone projects so you can make way for fresh opportunities in the new year.”
Happy New Year from ClothingDonations.org!
Use Your Extra Hour to Declutter
First proposed by Benjamin Franklin as a way for Parisians to save money on candles, daylight saving time became ingrained in American society as a way for farmers to make the most of longer days. In the 1970s, daylight time justified itself as a solution to trim energy usage. Today, those long summer nights are still coveted for leisure activities.
Daylight time comes to an end this weekend, so people in most of the nation (except for those in Arizona and Hawaii, which do not observe it) will turn their clocks back an hour on Sunday morning before dawn. And while it may be disheartening to see darkness fall before dinner, you can use that extra hour in your schedule.
Many Americans see the extra hour in the middle of the night as a bonus hour for sleep. However, few will actually take advantage of the extra hour of rest, the Harvard Health Blog says. Since most people’s bodies have become accustomed to rising at a particular hour, regardless of what the clock says, it will take several days to adjust.
If you’re up early, however, you can use the extra hour to do something you’ve been meaning to do anyway. Follow Simply Designing’s advice and do an hour of decluttering every day starting with the kitchen, and your home will be cleaner and more clutter-free in just seven days.
Be More With Less suggests getting rid of 100 things in a “decluttering burst” that lasts only an hour. Grab a box for donations and a bag for trash, set the timer, and eliminate 10 things from the junk drawer. Then move on systematically to the kitchen, car, closets, bedroom, and so on. When the bell rings, you’ll be amazed at how quickly the eliminated items have piled up!
Sound impossible? It isn’t. In every one of those rooms, there are products that have expired or failed to live up to their promise. “Just in case” items are the worst kind of clutter, the blog says, because “just in case means never.” Get rid of them, and you will be able to “stop living in fear of not having enough.”
Once you’ve used the extra hour that daylight time’s end has provided to get rid of a few things, contact ClothingDonations.org for a donation pickup; it’s another time-saver in your ongoing decluttering quest that helps veterans nationwide. Then, take solace in the fact that you’ll be spending five months of wintry darkness in a newly clutter-free home.
Kick off Decluttering in Time for Football
Even though the temperatures may still be muggy outside, the Labor Day holiday marks the symbolic end of summer break. Now complete, the kids are back in school throughout the country and the leaves will soon be starting to turn in the northern climes. Fall is on the way.
Also synonymous with fall is the start of the football season. When the players hit the gridiron in earnest, it’s time to hole up indoors in front of the TV — or bundle up at the stadium — and root for your favorite team. But you may still be ill-equipped to have people over for game day.
For one thing, your home may be too cluttered to entertain in, even in the most casual beer-and-chips kind of way. The answer is to gather up all of that extra stuff that’s lying around and contact ClothingDonations.org for a pickup. Once clear of clutter, you can have people over without having them trip over your old junk.
With summer nearing its end, you can get rid of the T-shirts and shorts that didn’t get worn, and store or toss those bathing suits and pool toys. And once you start to get those fall sweaters and coats out of storage, you may find a few things that you know you won’t be wearing in the seasons ahead. Get rid of them now, before they can take up valuable closet space.
You may need some fan gear to cheer on your favorite team or teams. Thrift stores supplied by donations to ClothingDonations.org can be a good source of lightly used jerseys advertising your team preference, as well as housewares to help you welcome gametime guests. Thrifts can also be a good source of cold-weather gear that you’ll start to need in the next few weeks.
Think of clutter as the opposing team — the immovable object that you must continuously advance against to score a “win” on the playing field of your home. Unless you are a football player yourself, outdoor activities will be less of an option as the weather gets cooler, so the time to start reclaiming your space — yard by yard — is now.
Take Advantage of Kids’ Back-to-School Time
Many parents will be sending their kids off to school over the next two weeks, making for a bittersweet moment whether they’re heading to kindergarten or college. But what most parents don’t realize is that when summer ends and the offspring leave the house for at least part of the day, the demands on their own time will ease.
Without the kids constantly underfoot, needing rides or foraging for food, parents will have additional hours during the day to pursue their own career, learning and life goals. If you are in this situation and want to make the most of this newfound freedom, you’ll need to plot out a few projects for those extra hours.
Time management is the first step, Project Me says; without a plan, those extra kid-free hours will evaporate fast. Start by listing the things you would like to do with your extra time, such as going to the gym, starting a new work project or going back to school yourself. Identify your most important tasks, put them on a daily schedule and get started.
Decluttering is an excellent option, the site says. Step back and take an objective look at your space, create a plan of attack (doing one room at a time, for example, or targeting a number of bags and boxes to donate to ClothingDonations.org), and dive in. When each step in the task is complete, reward yourself! You’ll be much more likely to complete it if you have your eyes on a prize.
Back-to-school clutter likely needs organizing, says All Parenting’s “20 Things to Do When your Kids Go Back to School;” many areas may be cluttered with new clothing, backpacks and homework. Household cleaning tasks probably took a backseat to summer fun, too, so now’s the time to catch up on deep-cleaning the refrigerator, ceiling fans, baseboards, bathrooms and floors.
A digital decluttering can also help you get organized for the season ahead. Go through all of the summer photos on your phone(s) and camera(s); download them to a safe place and print the best ones out for framing and display. And while you’re at it, clean up your desktop and delete the mobile apps you haven’t used in months.
Whether you’re a stay-at-home parent or work full time, you’ll find that having the kids at school will free up a little bit of your time. Plan on making the most of it!