It’s no secret that I have too much stuff. Though, since I last posted, I have parted with a considerable about of clutter. Coupons and discount cards from months ago? Gone. A $1 winning lotto scratch off ticket from Christmas? Cashed in. Dozens of books? Listed for sale or donated. My progress is more slow than steady, but I’m getting there. While I continue to tackle my clutter, here are some of my favorite posts on the subject that I collected from around the interwebs. This kind of collecting is OK, right?
Decluttering
A Guide to Decluttering – From Someone Who Has Done It
By now, you know if you’re looking for an expert, don’t look at me. Money guinea pig? Sure. Decluttering amateur? Absolutely. But if you want the real inside scoop on what it’s like to purge your belongings successfully, check out this post from Brittany over at Tiny Ambitions.
How to Become Twice as Happy with Half as Much
Chris from Keep Thrifty drops some scary statistics in this post. Like the average American has 2.93 TVs in their home. And then he challenges readers to go a step further and see if they can live with half. And I’m not talking about 1.465 TVs, either. This post chronicles the transformative decisions his family has made and the incredible impact it has had on their lives as they learn to live with less.
As someone who can wax poetic about everything from old birthday cards to shoes that I don’t wear, I’m no stranger to being held back by sentiment. Jaime from Jaime Declutters unleashes all sorts of wisdom in this post to help me—ahemm, readers—have a moment of reckoning with all of their sentimental items. Spoiler alert: she’s not here to tell you to toss everything.
Minimalism-ish: Four Big Challenges and Small Wins
Cameron at Save Splurge Deny Debt drops all sorts of truths in his post about his family’s foray into minimalism-ish. It’s a thing. Trust me. Not only does he share the lessons they’ve learned, but his journey also emphasizes some of the huge benefits to ditching your stuff.
Selling
Side Money Experiment: Selling on Swappa
Once you’ve decluttered, you’ve got another round of decisions to make. Do you sell? Do you donate? Do you carefully sneak just one pair of shoes out of the bag? (Bad Penny!) If you’re looking to learn more about selling electronics, Revanche from A Gai Shan Life has your back. In this post, she breaks down exactly what it takes to make a successful sale on Swappa…and if it is worth it or not.
How We Turned a Profit by Building a Handmade Gift
While we’re on the subject of hauling in some extra cash, I had to share Amanda’s mad crafting and selling skills. This post from Centsibly Rich chronicles how creating an extra gift turned into a bunch of green. Doubly impressive is the fact that she didn’t decide to keep the spare gift in her basement. You know. Just in case. Not that I would evvvver do that.
PS – If you want to connect with any of these awesome peeps on Twitter, here you go: @tinyambitionsbb, @keepthrifty, @SaveSplurgeDD, @RevAGSL, @centsiblyrich.
So Tell Me…What gems did you find in these posts? What has your journey with decluttering or selling been like? Feel free to drop a link in the comments! I’ll even fish it out of spam. I love you guys that much.
I love that there are so many bloggers out there working on decluttering their lives!! I’m still an amateur at selling my stuff- now I’ve got some ideas how to do it better. Thanks for including me in the roundup!!!
Thank you for sharing all of your wisdom. Your blog is a gem, Brittany!
Thank you for a collection of great posts… I look forward to checking them out!
It was so much fun to comb through them all. I have two more roundups scheduled for later this month, too!
Our neighborhood doesn’t allow yard/garage sales, and I find eBay to be full of crooks (even as buyers). I used to donate all of our stuff for the tax benefit back when we paid enough in mortgage interest to itemize. But now that we’ve almost paid it off, itemizing doesn’t do us any good.
So, we just donate stuff and throw things away that they refuse to take. I keep thinking there has to be a better way to make use of our stuff as we prune our material goods.
eBay makes me nervous, too. I have a decent about of luck with Craigslist. We also have Bookoo, an online yardsale website, that also works really well. Personally, I just need to get the stuff out of our house lately, so I just list it for free online or put it out by the curb.
Awesome! I recently went through a decluttering/donating/selling effort. I just can’t stand to have so many things in my house that I no longer want or need, so I get rid of them then I stop buying shit.
I keep having this idea that I will turn my massive book collection into an online bookselling business. And yet, I never do it.
We’ve been struggling with decluttering all year. The most I can say is that I now have Jon on board in theory if not in fact and that we haven’t added any major amounts of stuff despite Jon’s parents cleaning out their basement.
Not adding to the problem is a HUGE victory! For a long time, I would do one in, two out. But then I would wait and wait for the two out to sell. That was definitely not an effective strategy!
I love selling books. It’s so much fun. And I donated a bunch to our high school, too.
Thanks for sharing these! I walk a fine line between decluttering and hoarding. I do think it makes sense to hang on to certain items for a rainy day, but there’s a point where it makes sense to declutter, too.
That’s the problem I’m currently facing with our bathrooms. I decided that the best approach would be to toss what we absolutely won’t use, donate what wasn’t expired (hello, half dozen bottles of peroxide), and then use up the rest. By making an inventory, I can keep an eye out for sales (the only thing I hate worse than a cold is having to pay full price for cold medicine!), but I was able to weed out the stuff that was just clutter, too.
Thank you for sharing! Before we had our own place, we were living such a decluttered lifestyle. But with a home comes the eventual “lifestyle” creep, and “stuff” creep. We have racks in our garage lining the wall to keep even more additional stuff. Books from college, and boxes and boxes of old clothes. I’m afraid to look.
I’m learning that there is a whole additional level of this creep that comes when you add a kiddo into the mix. We are trying really hard to get our acts together and also be pretty firm on what stays and what gets returned for a store credit when it comes to baby gifts. I felt a little guilty returning things for a human who can’t voice his or her interests yet…but there are only so many onesies and stuffed animals that any human can use!
Awesome list Penny! Thanks for including my post and my wife’s as well!
She’s definitely been the driving force in our decluttering journey. If anyone needs advice on getting their spouse on board, let me know. I can tell you everything she did to get me converted 🙂
You two are both so inspiring! It’s been incredible to see what changing your mindset around “stuff” has afforded the two of you.
I’m sorry I’m slow seeing this Penny (we took a few days off!), but thank you so much for the shout out! 🙂 I LOVE decluttering and selling stuff. I always have an ad on Craigsllist or ebay. And thank you for sharing the other posts. My “to do” list for the fall is to go through and do a major clean out. My house is already pretty clutter free, but there are still items I have that I need to let go. And, really, Chris from Keep Thrifty has been a motivating factor in my desire to do this – love his family’s story!
My decluttering is slow and in fits and starts. For me, the hardest was letting go of a beautiful pair of shoes that I had purchased as a rare-reward during professional school. They just hurt now after a running injury. I was glad I found a friend with similar sized feet who coveted them and would actually utilize them.
I just moved into a new house last week and I keep telling myself I need to go thru what’s in the garage and sell or donate almost everything. I just hate seeing something that I paid $30 for sell for like $5.
I used to do that, too! I would obsess over how much money I was losing by selling things for cheap. The truth is, I lost the month when I bought the (100th?) pair of shoes I didn’t need. Now I just try to think of it as a separate fund of sorts. Takes the sting out of the sunk costs a little bit.