In a culture like ours that tends to throw away so many things that other people could use, it can be nice to know that perfectly good items are not just ending up in a landfill—and it’s even nicer if you can make some money while you’re at it. In part one of our series on decluttering before a move, we talked about some of the ways that you can get rid of your items and make money through online marketplaces. But decluttering is more than just making money, and there are a lot of additional benefits to it.
Here in part two, we’ll continue the discussion with some offline ways you can make money out of your clutter as well as a few of the additional benefits you’ll see once your move is free of clutter.
Getting the Most Value Out of Your Clutter with Goodwill
When to use Goodwill
When you need to dispose of items, for big items you will normally need to pay a large item removal fee to your garbage company. As we discussed in part one, you can avoid these fees by posting items that are still usable like couches to Facebook Marketplace. If you have access to a truck however, you can use Goodwill instead. This actually applies to all sorts of things, not just large items. Goodwill is a great option for items like clothes that are unlikely to ever be used again, shoes that you no longer use, kitchen appliances that work but you do not consider worth selling, household art decorations and other items of that nature.
The Benefits of Donating
Many of the things that Goodwill accepts would not likely go for very much on Facebook Marketplace. You might even have to pay money to dump most of these things if your trash can can not fit all of them. Through Goodwill, however, you can actually get decent money in many of these cases. They are also willing to give you tax-deduction forms that will allow you to claim deductions that can save you money come tax season. Sometimes, that is almost as good as trying to sell the item outright—even if it only deducts from the amount you pay taxes on and not the amount of taxes themselves.
Reaping the Benefits of Your Decluttering
Save on Your Moving Company Bill
Almost every moving company determines the cost of their services using a complex formula that takes into account the square footage and total weight of your items as well as the number of fragile or specialty items to be moved. This approach allows them to be uniform in their pricing. But if you declutter, then you can make sure that you are only paying for things that you actually want to bring to be moved. As well, sometimes you can make sure that everything will fit in one truck instead of needing to pay for a second only partially full truck for your move.
Save Time & Stress
Decluttering will leave you with fewer things to worry about during your move This combined with the effects of saving money, saving stress, getting tax deductions and earning extra cash can make it absolutely worth it to do some decluttering of your own before your big move. Studies have shown that moving is one of the most stressful things that a person can do, and anything that you can do ahead of time to reduce the amount of stress you have to deal with when it comes time to move is going to be a net positive.
