Decluttering Your Home – Handy Tips
Decluttering is a key element of the whole house moving story. Most people need to do a declutter before even thinking about getting an estate agent round to do a valuation. A neat and tidy house won’t necessarily affect the actual value but it will make it more marketable and therefore more sellable.
It’s also part and parcel of what you need to do before getting your photographs taken.
If your decluttering for the valuation and the photographs meant shoving stuff in the loft/shed/cupboards then the real work starts when it comes to moving.
You have put your house on the market because you really want or need to move. You know it might take a few viewings to sell. You know it might take a few months to negotiate a sale to completion. BUT, don’t underestimate the time it will take to declutter.
Getting that stuff back out of the loft/shed/cupboards and deciding what you want to take to the new place takes some serious effort.
One option is to do a room at a time. Another way of tackling it is to do it by the end result. I.e. go through and sort the stuff that is being skipped or tipped (not forgetting that one man’s trash is another mans’ treasure – see below). The week after decide what can be sold on second-hand sites like eBay or Vinted or Facebook Marketplace, or at a car boot sale. Do set aside enough time for them to be able to sell and be picked up/posted well before a sale.
Next, you could look at the stuff that you no longer want or need but that someone else might. Freecycle is a great national network of sites where you can offer up your stuff and people come and collect from you. And don’t forget your local charity shops. Some advertise what they are short of and what they don’t want, and may limit you to two bags for example. But, charity shops waste nothing, they will usually welcome bags of rags too as they can weigh them in. We don’t advocate chucking everything at them, but a bag of rags alongside other useful stuff will probably be most welcome. Some larger charity shop operations also do picks ups, particularly of furniture so you might be able to offload stuff in one big batch.
Packing is a heck of a job and so much easier if you’ve already decluttered. It might be that you do a lot of the above not knowing what your new property will be yet. You might have accepted an offer but not yet found your dream home. You can still do some decluttering on the basis of what you might not have used for years/fallen out of love with/grown out of.
Don’t underestimate the time it will take to do all this, for each household member. Break it down into chunks and don’t leave it until the last minute. It will make your eventual move so much easier!