Tag: Donation Pickup

Store the Holidays Away Sensibly

Posted on by Jordank

Even the most diehard #holiday celebrators will admit that it’s finally time to take down the tree, wind up the lights and box up the tchotchkes for most of the year ahead. They’ve communicated your holiday cheer dutifully for several weeks, and it’s time to give them a rest.

A little ingenuity will help you pack away and preserve those holiday items for next Christmas. And a little judicious weeding out will save you some space so that holiday clutter can’t get the best of you next season.

First, of course, is the weeding out. As you take down the lights, toss any strings that no longer work and can’t be fixed with a simple swap of bulbs. And throw away damaged ornaments and other decorative items — the only place to stores trash is in the circular file.

You’ll want to preserve what you keep to create that winter wonderland again quickly, so take time to sort, organize and store decorations carefully. Good Housekeeping offers a number of clever ways to keep thing safe and organized for the months they’ll spend in the attic, garage or basement.

Wrap string lights around squares of notched cardboard so they can’t tangle when stored, for example, and put fragile ornaments in plastic cups or egg containers to keep them from getting crushed. Bag any artificial wreaths to keep them dust-free, and consider shrink-wrapping the tree.

Remember to label all bins and boxes with their contents, even if you opt for clear-plastic containers. If you really want to streamline 2020 decorating, The Spruce says, you can number your bins to know which ones should be reopened first.

After all, the biggest benefit of getting decorations organized as you put them away for the season is that you’ll be able to locate and use them easily next fall! The holidays are hectic enough without your having to hunt down every item or buy it again.

If there are still-useful items you just don’t want to store or display next year, bag them and contact ClothingDonations.org for a pickup. They will be resold to benefit veterans’ initiatives, and other families will be able to use them to create holiday cheer.

It can be bittersweet to take down and shelve your holiday decorations, but that’s what makes the season so special. Get #organized, and this year’s holiday season will be better — and more stress-free — than ever.

Resolve to Cut the Crap in the New Year

Posted on by Jordank

One of LifeHacker’s favorite easy-to-keep #resolutions is to keep one’s home cleaner. “Cleaning is one of the first chores we start to neglect when we start to get busy, but it doesn’t need to be difficult. Start by de-crapifying your home” to eliminate unwanted #clutter, it says, then schedule 15-minute cleaning sessions to keep everything neat and spotless. And while you’re de-crapifying, resolve to contact ClothingDonations.org to have all of that unnecessary junk whisked away with a free donation pickup. You’ll not only help yourself own the New Year, but help veterans, too!

Out With the Old in the New School Year

Posted on by Jordank

Back-to-school time is the perfect opportunity to get rid of all sorts of extra stuff that kids have brought into the home in years past, says #decluttering expert Tracy McCubbin. Toys that the kids no longer use, books they’ve read and won’t pick up again, clothing they’ve outgrown, equipment for sports they no longer play, and last year’s backpacks and bags are good targets for your seasonal purge. Bag or box these items and get them out of your house by scheduling a free #donation pickup from ClothingDonations.org. “Next year, think about doing this decluttering while the kids are at sleepaway camp,” the dClutterfly ounder adds.

Moving? Don’t Forget to Declutter

Posted on by Jordank

The average American will move 11.4 times in his or her lifetime, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And the Organizing Blog thinks that summer 2019 may be more mobile than most — those orange box trucks seem to be everywhere this season, taking people and their stuff across town and across the country.

One thing is certain: Moving is not easy, and it gets harder as you accumulate more stuff. Everything you keep has to go into boxes and onto that truck, and the more you have, the longer it takes and the more it costs. There is a solution, however; and that’s to keep less stuff. #Declutter before you move, and the process will be (somewhat) less of a burden.

A pre-relocation #decluttering differs from an everyday decluttering (although if you’ve followed the Organizing Blog’s advice consistently, you’ll already have limited your possessions to only the essentials). For one thing, says The Art of Happy Moving, you’ll want to declutter by category rather than room so that you pack like items together.

Begin with the heavy stuff — books, records, etc. Even if you’re an avid collector, the less of these weighty items you keep, the better your friends/movers will manage. Have extra boxes and bags available as you pack; seal up the things you want to “Keep,” sort out what you want to “Donate,” and “Trash” anything that too broken, outdated or dilapidated to use immediately.

Set the donation bags and boxes aside and contact ClothingDonations.org for a pickup. Once some of the trashed and donated items are out of the way, you’ll have more room to carefully pack up the things you want — and likely be ready to #declutter more of the things you don’t want more aggressively.

Pack three or four boxes of keepers per day, Nourishing Minimalism suggests, and start well ahead of the move so that you have plenty of time to get the place cleaned when the zero hour finally arrives. It’s toward the end of the packing phase when things can get frantic; random objects will wind up in boxes together — some essential, most not.

While it’s an incredible chore that brings lots of stress, moving is the perfect opportunity to edit nonessential stuff out of your life for good. When you unpack only the things you need and cherish in your new home, you’ll be glad you decluttered before the move.

Get the Kids to Declutter on Their Summer Vacation

Posted on by Jordank

School’s out (for the summer)! And if you have kids, that means you’ll be looking for something to keep them busy for six or eight hours on most weekdays. Summer camp, a family vacation and other diversions are great options, but they can’t fill every one of those hours fast enough. This summer, get your kids involved in a good #decluttering.

You can already hear the collective groan you might hear as you suggest such a chore. But if you organize and incentivize the task, you might find that it gets done faster and more completely — and then everyone can really enjoy the summer fun.

Set a goal; the Making Lemonade blog suggests a summertime target of reducing stuff by one-third. Kids tend to accumulate lots of toys, clothing and other junk that they outgrow quickly, leading to overstuffed closets and drawers, so extra stuff should be easy to weed out. Put each of them in in charge of choosing what to keep.

Find a rainy day or quiet weekend to have everyone pitch in and declutter their personal spaces, or simply set a deadline. As an incentive, put a garage or yard sale on the calendar; anything that the kids are able to declutter and sell will mean extra money in their pockets — money they can spend on whatever they wish.

Toys can present an especially challenging decluttering task, says Simply Well Balanced. Sort them into categories — building toys, stuffed animals, craft supplies, etc. — and ask your child to keep only a limited number of favorites. Those few items will go back to the closets and shelves, and the rest will be bagged and boxed for sale or #donation. Anything broken or unusable can go directly into the trash.

After you hold your sale and distribute the proceeds, you can box up the leftover clothing, toys and other household items and schedule a ClothingDonations.org pickup. A driver will stop by on the appointed day, load up your stuff and leave a donation receipt for tax purposes. That lightly used merchandise will then be resold to fund veterans’ programs.

This, in itself, can be a lesson in personal responsibility for younger children, decluttering coach Gari Julius Weilbacher told WHYY. “It’s wonderful to teach kids from a young age about making meaningful donations. Involving kids in packing up the books, toys and clothes that they are no longer using can engage them in the process.”