Decluttering our home

This post is all about our declutter efforts and focussed on our recent steps towards further decluttering our property. I hope it inspires, but also please leave feedback or write your own blog post and tell me about your efforts, if you are also decluttering.

For a long time we have been slowly decluttering our lives and our property: Shredding old paperwork, sorting through boxes, draws, cupboards and shelves. We used to have four bookcases overflowing with words, threatening to spill out, but that was many years ago. In recent years we are down to one bookcase crammed full of delicious words.

We have always given items to charity. A couple of year ago we gave a huge collection of star trek books and graphic novels to charity and every so often we give more items to various local charity shops. Some of the major giveaways or actions:

• Giving away books, DVDs and CDs.
• Scanned in hundreds of old photos and disposed of originals.
• Given clothes and furniture to charity.
• Stopped buying newspapers and reduced magazine purchases.
• Given away computer bits ‘n’ bobs or sold.

When you are clearing out items you can make a mistake along the way, I’ve made two in recent years and perhaps I will make more. The benefits of disposing of what often is cluttering up your life can serve multiple benefits.

• Giving you more floor space.
• Free up shelf space.
• Making a room appear tidier and bigger.
• Giving to charity.
• Giving items to friends and family.
• Sell a few items on ebay for pocket money.
• Cleaning becomes easier.

We have recently sorted through clothes and another bin bag is ready to depart. However when you want to keep items you can also free up space, such as taking the majority of dvds out of their cases and putting into a few cd storage packs. Three shelves reduced to a small area on one. Of course that has impacted resell value, but we are not interested in reselling those items.

In recent years we have brought storage boxes, but for small items to go on a shelf you can find cheap or free alternatives such as:

• Plastic butter, margarine and even hot chocolate containers for small items.
• Plastic ice-cream containers for larger items.
• Shoe boxes and other cardboard boxes that goods were sent in.
• Large plastic and metal sweet containers.

Furniture is another area we have been tackling for some time. We resisted bringing some bulky items during our last move, but we did buy a couch too large for our requirements a few years back. Something we must replace in the next year or two.

Last weekend I took apart a lovely old standing shelf unit in the hallway, half the items found new homes and the other half to go. The hallway looks better and all these small steps help us towards reclaiming floor space.

Before our last move we gave away a lot of kitchen items such as mugs, glasses, cutlery and more. Our current kitchen is half the size of our old one and we cope just fine. Yet there is more to be done and we are planning a few small changes to the kitchen that will make a huge difference. Some of the old changes were:

• Giving away dozens of mugs.
• Reducing our plates and cutlery by over half.
• Giving some old glasses to charity such as wine, sherry and port glasses.
• Disposing of unnecessary oven trays.

We have a long way to go on our declutter journey, but we are heading in the right direction. It takes time and serious effort. There are hard decisions along the way and yes we do keep some items because we just want to.

We have also thought about future hobbies such as keeping cheap electrical components for a new hobby I wish to start soon. Their individual worth is peanuts, but still will save money and me time of purchasing.

Blimey this was a lengthy post! Why not write a post yourself about your declutter efforts at home or leave a comment?