GETTING IT OUT, OR THE CASE FOR THE DONATE BOX
I ’m a big fan of donating. I totally understand if you’re not because it took me a long time to come to that point, but know that all decluttering advice in this book will include instructions to “stick it in the Donate Box.”
I have done it all. I have milked every dollar out of my stuff by selling it on eBay. I’ve sold on Craigslist and through Facebook groups. I’ve been a member of Freecycle (a group where you are only allowed to give things away for free), and I’ve held multiple garage sales in one year.
While I did all of those, I struggled with clutter. I lived way above my Clutter Threshold, and clutter was a constant source of stress in my home.
As I shifted into the mode of fast and furious decluttering, I began selling less and donating more. And once I stopped worrying about how much money I could get for things, I started making major progress.
SPEEDY DECLUTTERING
The biggest advantage of donating is the speed at which I get stuff out of my house.
When I donate, I’m (almost) done the moment I place an item in a Donate Box. There is no work left to do other than take a trip to a local charity or make a phone call to schedule a pickup.
There’s physical work involved in getting stuff out of my house, but there is no scheming or analyzing or calculating to be done. Scheming and analyzing and calculating get me into trouble.
When I shifted into almost exclusively donating, the stuff was gone from my house soon after I decided it needed to go. Selling on eBay required a holding area where things could stay until I had the time (and the season was right) to sell them. But a space like that was beyond the limitations of my Clutter Threshold. I love looking at rows and shelves of perfectly organized and labeled containers, but I can’t keep that up in my own home.
Having a garage sale meant a garage piled high with junk while I collected enough stuff to make the effort worth my while and found a Saturday with no soccer games or swim meets.
Even idealistic giving away was a problem for me. Giving things to the perfect person who would perfectly appreciate my thoughtfully unloaded clutter involved a detailed, complicated system of sorting.
As I went through bins and bins of my kids’ clothing, I wasn’t only deciding which things to keep. I also had to determine which way I was going to get rid of them.
My idealistic logic said clothes that have been given to us as hand-me-downs by nonfamily members should be given away. I didn’t feel right selling them, so I made piles for random people I knew who had kids in whatever ages the clothes might fit.
Hand-me-downs from family and gifted clothing could be sold. But even that wasn’t a single pile. I analyzed each item for trendiness and flaws. If it was in perfect condition, I could sell it on eBay. If it had flaws, I’d put it in my garage sale.
Every time I decluttered kids’ clothing, I ended up with an entire bed covered in piles. And no one could help me because I was the only one who understood my nuanced system.
Once the piles were made, it wasn’t over. The eBay piles and the garage-sale piles needed separate holding areas to wait until their ideal selling times arrived. Piles going to various people had to be bagged separately, the people had to be contacted, and I had to remember to take them their things.
And remember how remembering really isn’t my thing?
My system for everything else (other than clothing) was equally complicated. (Who could use this? How much money could I get for this? What’s the best way to sell this?) But nonclothes couldn’t be bagged up and thrown in a corner. They had to be wrapped or placed somewhere where they wouldn’t be damaged while they waited to leave my home.
Worst of all, my effort often made my home look worse. Piles and stacks sat in the open, waiting for their Ideal Decluttering Method to happen.
When I began decluttering like my sanity depended on it, I simply did not have time to use my complicated systems. I just donated.
When I donated, I didn’t have to remember where this particular onesie came from. I could stick it in the Donate Box. I didn’t have to examine every seam and hold each romper up to the light to check for slight discoloration. Anything could be donated. No moral judgments needed. Donating is always acceptable.1
Once I made the decision to donate everything, I felt incredible freedom, and I was able to move through my clutter so much more quickly. I made the decision about whether something needed to stay in my house or not, and that was the end of it.
FINDING A PLACE TO DONATE
When I stopped sorting and started donating, my progress accelerated. But where should you donate? My main criteria for a donation place is that they take everything and don’t require me to sort.
But how do you find a place to donate? Ask.
You can search on the Internet, but many charities do not have a detailed online presence that explains their particular policies, and there’s nothing worse than trying to donate a carload of stuff and being turned away.
Ask friends who live in your town. Don’t be embarrassed. People whose homes aren’t cluttered know how to get rid of their stuff. They know where to take donations. It’s probably so normal to them that they won’t think twice about you asking. You don’t have to give details or explain that you’ve been living above your Clutter Threshold. Use social media: “Hey, local friends, where do you donate things?”
Once I made the decision to donate everything, I felt incredible freedom, and I was able to move through my clutter so much more quickly.
I live in a small town without a ton of options, and I still learn new ways to get rid of things when I ask or see other people ask.
But when? Establishing the routine of stopping by a local charity every Wednesday at three o’clock to get rid of that week’s donations is a great idea. Really. That idea is totally on my Someday When I Have It All Together List. But if you’re anything like me, you know that would likely mean driving around with the first week’s donations sitting in the trunk of your car for a year and a half.
For now, while you’re in Major Decluttering Mode, load your entire vehicle with donations or call a local donation pickup service to schedule a pickup.
CONSIDER THE HASSLE FACTOR
Because of the Internet, there are a million ways to get rid of things, for free or for sale. Freecycle.org is a group that was around before Facebook groups were a thing. I found a local group early in my post-eBay-selling and pre-donate-it-all days. I thought that group was the answer to my problems. I would give things away. And doing it through this Freecycle group would ensure that my amazingly awesome things wouldn’t go to waste. They would go to someone who really needed them, and I would have some control over that.
But there was hassle involved.
Even though I was giving things away, I was giving them away one item at a time. Each item required a description and photo to be posted online. That post had to be monitored for responses. I had to coordinate pickups, and this often meant multiple e-mails back and forth with a second or third person after the first or second person decided they didn’t want it.
If I posted something lots of people wanted, I had to figure out who claimed it first. Sometimes I had to defend that decision to the people who weren’t first.
All that hassle meant I intended to use this amazing Internet-age resource to get rid of my stuff, but I put off actually using it.
And then there was the issue of my own excitement over free stuff. I was a recovering junk addict. For years I brought things into my home without considering the harm it was doing to my home, my family, and our well-being. Now I was trying to get stuff out, but being in a Freecycle group was, to me, like an alcoholic hanging out in a bar.
I’ve had the same experience in the more currently relevant Facebook swap/buy-and-sell/everything-is-free groups. The best way for me to get stuff out of my house quickly, and without emotional hassle, is to donate.
It just is.