Do you give a big sigh in January once the holiday extras are packed up and put away? This can be the best time to organize and declutter to keep it simple.

As much fun as I have to put up all the decorations and prepare the house and yard for the holiday season, I love the feeling of “less” when it is all tucked away for another year. Putting away signifies a major shift with the sorting, organizing, cleaning, and decluttering of your home.

The cupboards, closets, and rooms are now ready to clean reorganize and declutter your way to simplicity and a clean house.

Simplify with Organizing Frenzy

January can be an organizing, cleaning frenzy because not only do we set personal goals and resolutions for the New Year, but our living space namely our home, indirectly has goals for re-organizing, decluttering, and even minimalizing too.

We don’t often say the goals or resolutions out loud or put them on paper but we do self-talk about what needs to be done.

So what do we do?

We declutter to keep it simple.

The bedrooms get a spruce-up from the roof down. Curtains get a cleaning as do the blinds and duvets or comforters. Dressers drawers are opened to remove old, tattered, too small, or too big clothing, which is then tidied, straightened and the new items are put in. The same thing happens to the closet. Toys, books, and crafts get exchanged for more age-appropriate ones. Sports equipment is sized up to accommodate the growth or worn-out items.

Mom and Dad don’t get left out of this either. Nor do the other rooms in the house. Older books are now relinquished to the bookshelf. The new ones go on the nightstand, and on the coffee table, then old books are put away in a box.

The garage and outdoor shed will get the once over too so they are ready for spring and summer.

But now to figure out what to do with what we don’t need anymore. Where is a good place that can recycle, reuse and repurpose the stuff you don’t need?

What can you do with “stuff” to help declutter to keep it simple?

So what really does happen to all those things that are not needed anymore. Hope and pray that it is not going to the landfill. There are so many other options that help others, help the environment and provide someone with something they can use.

It is important that we all do our part to dispose of items, stuff, and household things so that it doesn’t end up in the landfill or out in some field or gully. These 6 suggestions provide enough options for anything coming from inside your home, garage, and shed.

Here are 6 ways to dispose of stuff.

1.Value Village, Goodwill, and Salvation Army

These stores take donations of clothing, shoes, and boots for men, women, and children for all seasons as well as household linens, furniture sporting goods, books, kitchen stuff, craft stuff. These items are then sold at reduced prices and in some cities, a pick-up up service is available to take away your items.

2. Architectural Restore, and Habitat for Humanity Stores

These stores will take any kind of construction materials such as building products, appliances, old cupboards, doors, windows, and any hardware for doors, and windows, curtain hooks, screws, nails as well. They even take furniture and tools of all kinds.

Some of these products will be used to build Habitat for Humanity homes by volunteers. These homes are built for low-income families that may not have been able to have a home of their own. Participants help to build the home with “sweat” equity and learn new skills in the process.

3. Consignment Stores

A consignment store will display your items and when sold will split a percentage of the money received between you and the store. This amount is agreed upon prior to displaying the item. I currently live in a small mountain community in Panama in Central America that has 7 of these stores. One store sells family clothing, three stores are ladies wear from shorts shoes, and jeans to jewelry and evening wear. The rest are middle-of-the-road stores with a good variety and there is always a great deal to be had.

4. Amazon, Etsy, and e-bay

On these sites, you can sell clothes, toys, books, puzzles, anything and everything vintage, jewelry, crafts, linens. to name a few. Each site has specific applications requirements to be completed in order to sell an item but this could be made into a part-time job if you were so inclined.

5. Second Hand Furniture Stores

These are a gold mine to the knowing eye because you find antiques, treasures, and just darn good deals at these places. Each store is different in how they operate with some having furniture donated and selling the item, with the money going to charity. Some stores buy and sell in the “as is ” state and a number of people buy and repurpose. They then resell in little boutiques or markets. There are many, many options to dispose of furniture.

6. SHARE! It is so simple to help you declutter your way to simplicity.

Sharing can be done as a means to help out family, friends, women’s shelters, churches, Red Cross, and many other charities. They are always looking for good clothing, kitchen items, health and beauty samples, and blankets. This is a better way to have items that are still useable being made available to those that are in need of the items.

Giving is Simple and easy to help you declutter to keep it simple.

Declutter your home, garage, and even your shed, to make way to simplify by giving items to others. It is simple to do, easy to do, but also a great way to reduce unnecessary waste in landfills.

So there you have it! Hopefully, you have learned about at least one more place that your items could go to. It is very possible that your clutter is someone else’s gold mine.

Like this blog, try this one too! And don’t forget to leave a comment about this topic and your experiences.