How to Get Rid of Things When Moving

Even if you consider yourself to be a minimalist by nature, having lived under one roof for years must have made you amass more materials things than you actually need. Sure, some of the household items you own will be highly practical (a vacuum cleaner, for example), while others will be there to add more charm and aesthetic beauty to your home (framed art, decorative pieces, and so on). Let’s not forget the objects of sentimental value which can fall anywhere within the range of super practical or utterly useless. In any way, under ideal conditions, each and every object in your residence will have a clearly defined purpose and will have served you well until now.

However, when the time comes for you to start getting ready to move to another home altogether, the sheer thought of having to sort, pack, and transport all the earthy possessions in your home will probably make you cringe. You just take a look around and wonder how on earth you will manage to move all those things. Two distinctive words start flashing in the back of your mind – MISSION and IMPOSSIBLE, and then you can’t help but feel overwhelmed by the true challenge that lies ahead of you.

The good news is that, in most cases, you will know what you have to do – you know that you need to reduce the number of the items you own. You probably feel that this is the right thing to do, but have you wondered about the true reasons why you should get rid of things when moving?

5 good reasons to get rid of unwanted things

You may not fully realize the importance of the de-cluttering operation prior to a house move, and if that is the case, you might even reach the conclusion that by packing and moving your belongings without sorting them out first could actually save you valuable time.

However, this line of thinking is plain wrong. As proof, here are the top 5 reasons why you should get rid of stuff before moving:

1) To save time. This is a tricky one because the task of going through all of your household items and personal belongings, deciding their fate and then getting rid of the unwanted items in your home will actually require time. Nevertheless, simple mathematical calculations can easily prove that optimizing the number of possessions prior to a house move you will save you valuable time in the end. This is so because much fewer items means less time spent in packing and then unpacking. And as you probably know by now, packing and unpacking are the clear winners when it comes to time-consuming jobs before and after the relocation.

2) To save money. This, of course, is the best reason of them all to get rid of unwanted items when moving house. It’s important to remember that one of the factors that affects the final moving price is the overall weight of your shipment. In other words, the more items you plan to take with you, the more money you should be prepared to pay for their transportation. This money-saving idea is too logical to really surprise you, but the thing that can amaze you here is the amount of money you can actually save by purging your home of no longer needed and/or wanted things.

3) To earn money. To sell unwanted items and thus pocket some cash is a very interesting concept that will make you a double winner. Not only will you reduce the number of items to move to your new home, but you will also secure fresh money to your moving budget in order to cover some of the numerous expenses along the road. There are a few excellent ways to sell all the stuff you’ve decided to leave behind – read on to learn what they are and how to maximize your profit at the same time.

4) To save space. Of course, you know perfectly well where all the household items in your current home are going, but have you really thought whether there will be enough space in your future residence to take them all in? This is vital. Getting rid of unwanted things before moving will give you that extra free space in your new home which you can decorate in a drastically different way to reflect and celebrate the brand new chapter in your life. You will probably be surprised by how liberating it can be to have more open spaces inside your new house or apartment.

5) To de-clutter your mind. It may sound a bit strange but having fewer items in your new home (at least in the very beginning) can help you restore that invigorating flow of positive energy. It can be amazing how much emotional energy holding on to things can take up! Besides, you will not really need any of the things you have decided to leave behind, so the best course of action is to let somebody else have them, thus unlocking the full potential of your unwanted stuff.

How to identify your unwanted items from your wanted ones

The key to having a smooth and largely trouble-free house move is to simplify it as much as possible. And your decision to move fewer items by getting rid of unwanted household items /furniture you will no longer need, books you will no longer read, clothes and shoes you will no longer wear, and toys your child will no longer play with, and so on/ will contribute greatly to that essential simplicity.

But before you are ready to take matters in your hands, you will need to know exactly what you have in your home, and then continue the sorting process from there. And to get that important information, you need to inventory your entire home.

Click here to learn how to make an inventory for moving – the very first step in any de-cluttering project. It’s not very hard – you just go from room to room and document each and every possession of yours. Although it’s not a complicated pre-move task by all means, allocate plenty of time for it as it is a slow process that can even get slower whenever an important decision is to be made.

As you’re going through your stuff, mark the individual items into your detailed inventory list and place them in any of the following categories:

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  Category 1: Vital items. These are all the items that you need and use every single day. There’s really no question about whether you will part with those practical belongings or not. That’s right, you won’t.

• Category 2: Valuable items. These are all the belongings that have high monetary (market value) or sentimental value for you. As with all the possessions in Category 1, you won’t even think about leaving any of them behind for whatever reason.

• Category 3: No longer needed but still usable items. This is the category that will give you the hardest time in terms of right decisions and corresponding actions. This broad category includes anything that you’re planning not to take with you but you won’t just throw away for recycling because the things are still highly usable. Read on to find out the best way to get rid of stuff when moving house.

• Category 4: No longer needed and no longer usable items. All items that are too worn out to be used once more, broken beyond repair or badly damaged should be thrown away properly for recycling. Find the best ways to do so below.

How to get rid of unwanted household items

Now that you know 1) the top 5 great reasons to get rid of unwanted stuff when moving, and 2) how to identify your unwanted items through the help of a detailed home inventory, it’s time to answer the important question of what to do with all of the belongings you have placed in the abovementioned Category 3 and Category 2. To help you select the best option under your specific circumstances, here’s a little more information about the available choices to discard the things you won’t need anymore.

Sell your unwanted items

It goes without saying that the best way to toss out your unwanted things is to sell them. This way, you will manage to save and win money at the same time – a huge bonus while getting ready to move out. However, before you can successfully sell any of your possessions, you need to make sure that 1) they are still usable, 2) they are in working order, 3) they are clean and presentable, 4) they have a decent market value that will make up for your lost time and invested efforts.

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  Sell your stuff online. This is a great option to dispose of items that are still worth something. Selling things online gives you a good level of flexibility and an unraveled degree of reaching people from practically anywhere in the world (if you’re willing to ship outside the country). However, one of the few downsides of using the immense power of the Internet to your advantage is that this sale method requires plenty of time /process time for your ad, time until your target audience is reached, time to finalize the deal, and so on/. Therefore, if you don’t happen to have the luxury of having at least 2 months /preferably more/ until Moving day, selling things online may not be the best option for you. eBay, Amazon and Craigslist are the most popular nationwide site where you can sell your still usable things prior to the move, but there should be good local e-commerce site around your area as well.

• Organize a yard sale or do a car boot sale. Provided that you have ample time prior to the scheduled moving day, you can also choose to organize a profitable yard sale or a car boot sale to lose your no longer wanted and needed household items, with a profit at that. The organization of such direct contact sales requires meticulous preparation and good weather, plus there are a number of essential rules to follow if you wish to walk out of the whole thing with a big smile on your face. Learn everything there is to know about car boot sales here.

• Sell some items to friends. Now, this can be really tricky. If you do choose to offer a piece of furniture or any other type of possession to a friend of yours, you need to make sure they understand your intentions as some of them might assume that they will have whatever it is you’re offering for free. Be careful how you approach such a decision, for a simple misunderstanding could lead to undesirable results. Either offer a huge discount so that your friends won’t feel that they are treated like a random buyer, or avoid this sale option altogether.

Give away your unwanted stuff to friends and family

This is probably the best way to get rid of unwanted things prior to a move because you get to be the winner no matter how you look at it. You may have noticed how a friend of yours looks at your antique coffee table or wants that red pair of high-heel shoes you don’t like that much anyway. Just do the right thing and give those things away to somebody who will appreciate them and maybe even value them more than you. If you have the chance to make somebody close happy, don’t hesitate even for a second. In fact, the upcoming relocation can be a great reason to give parting gifts to the people you love.

Donate to charity

The easiest, and interestingly enough – noblest way to get rid of perfectly usable things when moving house is to donate them to charity. Besides, it is the right thing to do in a cruel world of too much injustice and indifference. There will always be people in dire need of furniture, electric appliances, electronics, clothes, shoes, books, children’s toys and practically almost anything which you’ve decided not to take anyway. Some charitable organizations will even come to your home and pick up the donations, so you don’t even have to do anything else except make the items be more presentable, if needed, while other organizations will accept donations at their local offices. To help you make up your mind, here are the top 10 charities in the UK. Also, you can easily find a suitable charity for your unwanted stuff at CharityChoice.

In additional to specific charities, consider donating some of your items to various local schools, libraries, day care centres, hospitals, clubs, shelters, orphanages, and other institutions that seek donations.

Recycle

The final option to get rid of unwanted items in your home when moving is to recycle them properly. Whatever item you come across in your home to be no longer usable, functional or wanted by anyone, and if that item can be recycled, then you should do just that – recycle it. Take a look at this highly informative Recycling Guide to learn why you should recycle your unwanted things, how to do it, and where you can do it. Also, click here to find out whether your council collects recycling and the environmentally acceptable way to get rid of household waste once and for all, including green waste.

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