4 Easy Ways to Get Rid of Things You Don’t Want

The holiday season is nearly upon us – and if your house is looking cluttered lately, you might not be entirely excited about that fact. Clutter causes your body to produce stress hormones, and that’s probably even more likely to happen during the holidays as you look around your home and wonder how you’re going to fit your decorations between the piles of junk mail and old receipts. If you want to enjoy the holiday season to the fullest, you’ve got to declutter your home first – and that means you’ll need to get rid of things that you don’t want and aren’t using anymore.

If your home is cluttered with items that you don’t want and aren’t using, this is the guide for you. You don’t want to just throw things away if they’re still useful – you want to give them a new home. If you can manage to earn a few quid in the process, that’s even better. In this article, we’re going to discuss some simple and fast ways to unload your unwanted items. The best way to get rid of things you don’t want depends on what those items are and how much work you’re willing to do, and we’ll walk you through every possible scenario in this guide. Sit down, grab your Elux Firerose and get reading.

Sell Small, Valuable Items on eBay

eBay isn’t just a bygone relic of the dot-com era. More than two decades after its founding, it remains the world’s most popular auction website. There’s a good chance that you’ve bought a few items from eBay over the years, in fact, and that’s a good thing because it’s easiest to find buyers for your items on eBay if your account already has some positive feedback. If you want to get rid of items that are small and easy to ship – collectibles, video games and DVDs, for instance – eBay is generally the best venue for selling those items because listing an item on eBay exposes it to an audience of millions rather than just the people in your local community.

If you have the time to list, package and ship your items, eBay is the best place to offload small unwanted items because you’ll generally earn the most possible money selling there. For larger things, though, eBay isn’t the best choice because shipping large or heavy objects is prohibitively expensive. To get rid of those items, you’ll need a different strategy.

Sell Larger Items at a Garage Sale

eBay might be the best place for selling small items, but that’s not the case for large items like furniture and appliances because packing and shipping those items costs too much. If you want to get rid of larger items, the best way to do so is by selling them to members of your local community and letting the buyers handle transporting them. One good way to get rid of larger items is by listing them on a local classified ad website like Craigslist. If you have more than a few items, though – or if you don’t want to go through the hassle of selling things online and shipping the products to the buyers – the best way to sell them is by holding a garage or yard sale.

People love hunting for deals at garage sales, so you should make potential buyers happy by making sure that your asking prices are reasonable. Remember that you’re reducing your potential earnings by selling your unwanted items locally instead of listing them online, but the benefit of holding a garage sale is that it’s the buyers’ responsibility to take their items home. That saves you both time and money. If you’re trying to get rid of a large number of unwanted items, it may be worthwhile to take out an ad in the local newspaper a week or so before the planned sale date.

Donate Items to Charity

What should you do if you want to unclutter your home, but you don’t want to go through the trouble of creating appealing online listings and shipping those items to buyers? In this case, you should consider giving the items away instead. One of the easiest options is to gather all of your unwanted items together and drop them off at your local charity store. Donations are especially important during the holidays because many people have difficulty scraping together the money to buy gifts. Your donation could save someone’s holiday season, and it may even entitle you a tax write-off.

Before you donate your unwanted items to charity, remember that there may be people in your own family or social circle who may appreciate lightly used items that are still useful. If you have some baby items that you no longer need, you might know some new parents who could use those things. If you have a computer that you aren’t using anymore, you might know a young student who would like to replace an aging machine. Giving unwanted items to friends and family is a quick way to unload those items while simultaneously doing something nice for those close to you.

Move Items to a Storage Facility

One of the reasons why getting rid of unwanted items isn’t always easy is because you may not necessarily want to lose those items permanently. Some of the items taking up space in your home may be gifts from family members, for example, that have sentimental value even if you don’t really use them or want to display them. If you want to get those items out of your home but don’t want to part with them permanently, the best way to do that is by renting a room at a local self-storage facility.

Online reports suggest that a storage room or locker costs about £25 per square foot per year. Although that certainly isn’t cheap, it’s worthwhile to see if you can find the room in your budget because uncluttering your home can actually reduce stress and help you become more productive. If you move your unwanted items to a storage facility, it also frees you from the stress of trying to figure out what to do with those things – and that’s a lot easier than creating dozens of listings on eBay.