One of the best things you need to do before you move is to declutter. This has lots of advantages. Rather than taking all the junk and items you no longer use with you, use your move as an opportunity to simplify your life. If you don’t know what to take with you and what to leave behind, your move will also be a great opportunity to re-assess the things that are adding value to your life and those that are just taking up space. Decluttering will also help you spend less money on moving and storage company services. You will have fewer items to move, so the move won’t cost a lot. This is the same situation even if you are looking for an office moving company. Wondering how to go about organizing and decluttering before moving? Here’s how to go about it.
Start as Early as Possible
The best way to go about things if you are planning to declutter before you move is to start as early as possible. This is an important part of organizing and decluttering before moving. The more time you have to figure things out, the more thoughtful the process is. If you try to do your decluttering last minute, you will likely feel pressured and rushed. This can stress you. And as you might imagine, you end up doing things in a hurry, and you may make lots of mistakes. Instead of thinking about what you want to use and what you don’t need, you’ll end up throwing everything in boxes without figuring things out.
You need lots of time to go through your things and make the right decisions as far as decluttering is concerned. Additionally, the majority of people can only declutter for a while before the quality of their decisions starts decreasing.
Another benefit of starting the decluttering process while you still have time is it also makes it easy to clean the home and sell it if that’s in your plan. A clean home that’s clutter-free will be way more appealing to buyers. Hopefully, that will make the process easier and smoother. It’s not always possible to declutter while you still have time. However, you should try to do it while you have time.
Moving involves lots of expenses. You need money for dumpster rental, corrugated boxes for packing, hiring moving companies, and other expenses. The expenses won’t end when you have moved. You may find that you need to fix your new home and install new residential wiring, so you must save as much money as possible. Therefore, dealing with your decluttering early will give you more time to plan your finances.
Put a Decluttering Plan in Place
Most people don’t know how long it can take to declutter. As a homeowner, you gather a lot of things over time. This means you are probably underestimating the things you need to go through. The only way to complete your decluttering process with less hassle is if you come up with a solid decluttering plan. This is an important part of organizing and decluttering before moving.
A decluttering plan will help you assess everything you need to go through. That way, you can get an idea of how much time is needed to get the job done. Once you know how much time is needed to complete the whole process, you can then come up with a solid decluttering schedule. If you do everything correctly, you can be done before you move.
There are several stumbling blocks to avoid when organizing and decluttering before moving. A solid plan will help you sail through nicely and avoid these stumbling blocks. For instance, you need to figure out what you should do with the things you want to get rid of. You will also need to figure out how to stop avoid getting demotivated. If you do things in a hurry and without a plan, chances are you will forget about certain categories and spaces.
As you are organizing and decluttering before moving, it’s important to categorize all your unwanted items. Place items that you need to donate in the same pile. Do the same for the things you need to sell, give away, or those that will be handled by the waste removal guy. You must also take time to find home junk removals to help you get rid of all the things you will be leaving behind, especially those that are going to the trash.
Use Up All Your Consumables Before You Move
One of the easiest ways to reduce the number of things you have is to use up as many of your consumables as possible before you move. As soon as you know you are going to move, you should start using up your consumables. That way, you will have plenty of time to go through everything before the moving date.
For instance, you can try to deplete as many pantry items as possible. That means you will have less food to move with. You should also use up all your personal care products. This includes things like lotion, shampoo, body wash, and other things. Other things you need to use up include paper products, cleaning supplies, and laundry detergent. If you manage to use up as many of these things as you can, you will generally have fewer things to move with.
While books may seem like they don’t fall under consumables, they do. You can only read a book so many times. As such, try to start reading and passing along some of your books. You don’t need to move around with lots of books that you have read.
The goal here is to move with as few consumables as possible. This also means you have to stop buying lots of things. You should only buy the things you really need and nothing else. There’s no need to stop up your pantry if you know you are going to pack up and go soon.
Don’t Add New Things to Your Home
The tip about buying fewer things towards your move doesn’t only apply to groceries and consumables only. You also don’t need to buy new furniture before your move. This will just add many things to what you have to pack. This is an important part of organizing and decluttering before moving.
The time before you move is a great time to avoid buying anything unnecessary. In fact, you may have to sell some things, so you travel with less. As the move approaches, it’s time to prepare garage sales and put up ads online.
Think About How Your New Home Will Change Your Needs
The best way to declutter properly is to think about what you will need when you get to your new home. You should also think about the space available at your new home. That can help you determine what can fit and what won’t.
For instance, you may have four bedrooms in your current home and fewer in the home you are moving into. That means you need to get rid of some bedroom furniture because there’ll be nowhere to put it. Also, if you have a dining room in your current home, and your new home doesn’t have one, you should let go of dining room furniture.
Apart from taking into account the number of bedrooms, and rooms in general, you must also think about the spatial configuration in your new home. Think about the things you have space for, where they will go, and what things will fit in your new space.
What Do You Really Need, Use, and Love?
Having space for something doesn’t mean you have to carry it with you even if you don’t use it. As such, apart from assessing what you have space for, you should also think about the things you need or want to bring with you to your new home.
Moving is an opportunity to start afresh. Take this opportunity to let go of the things that no longer make you happy or serve you. Ask yourself if all the things you are planning to keep are worth the money, effort, and time required to move them. The goal here is to only pack what you love, use, and need. That will make your move easier and cheaper. It also gives you a chance to fill up your new home with the things you need around you instead of clutter.
For instance, maybe you have been thinking about updating the style of your home. If that’s the case, you really need to think about what will fit into your vision of the new space. If anything doesn’t fit, let it go before you travel with it.
When you get to your new home, you’ll get enough time to enjoy and embrace the space you will have created by decluttering. That way, you can focus on intentionally decorating.
Remember to Declutter the Sentimental Items
This won’t be an easy step during your organizing and decluttering before moving. Sentimental items are the hardest to get rid of. Instead of tackling them first, you can go through the rest of your things and address them last. Most decluttering tasks allow you to make more logical decisions that don’t involve a lot of emotion. For instance, when removing things in your pantry, bathroom, and coat closet, you probably won’t struggle too much.
Did you know that decluttering is a skill? As such, you generally get better at it the more you do it. This means the easier decluttering projects can act as practice for what you need to handle later. Think of it as exercising your decluttering muscle. That will help you tackle the more difficult tasks like decluttering your sentimental items.
However, you must avoid leaving your sentimental items to the end. You will need time to sort through everything and decide what you want to keep. Additionally, you will need more breaks as well. You must never make rushed decisions when it comes to decluttering sentimental items.
Go Ahead and Do a Final Check While You Are Packing
During the packing process, you can also do one last check for clutter. This is an important part of organizing and decluttering before moving. Packing should be done carefully and ahead of time so that you ask yourself if what you are packing is truly needed and wanted. Also, think about whether it’s something you will use.
Use the time you spend packing as the last chance to remove clutter. However, as you are doing things, make sure the clutter is going into a dumpster or somewhere where you won’t need to start organizing it again.
If you manage to handle the process of organizing and decluttering before moving properly, you may even find that you will request a smaller truck from the mover. This will save you lots of money. You also won’t have to part with money looking for truck accessories and trailer companies for those truck accessories. This may happen if you have too many things and you want to transport some of them on your own.
Decluttering can make your life super easy. It will also make the process of moving a lot easier. When you declutter, the idea is to only take the things you need to use and leave the rest. When done successfully, you can enjoy a fresh new start in your new home. You will be surrounded by things you love, and you’ll have enough space to decorate and think about what you want the new home to be like. The tips we have listed above should make the process of decluttering and organizing before moving easier. One of the most important things you should do is to start early. Don’t wait until you are too close to the moving date to start trying to figure out what should go and what should stay.
