How to Purge Clutter

• You’re moving and need to unclutter for an open house.
• A guest room needs preparation for a visit from family.
• A major home-maintenance project has been delayed due to the general disarray in your house.
• You avoid a certain room or area in your home because you don’t want to deal with it.

How to Decide What Stays and What Goes

• Does the item serve a key function in your daily life?
• Does it make you happy or evoke pleasant memories?
• Does it spur creativity?
• Does it help you enjoy your home more?

What You Need to Get Started

• Trash bags or bins
• Donation bags or boxes
• Storage boxes or bins
• Labels and markers or label machine
• Kneeling pad
• Table and chair
• Paper and pencil

Purging Tips

• Safety first: Don’t strain your back in your enthusiasm for cleaning up. If you’ll be doing any heavy lifting or bending, do some quick stretches to warm up. Use a kneeling pad to protect your knees when working on the ground, and always bend from the knees, not the back, when lifting heavy items.
• Throw out obvious trash: On your first pass, grab and toss things that are obviously garbage, such as packaging and tags from old purchases, junk mail, old magazines, used envelopes, and items that are broken, stained, or otherwise ruined.
• Relocate as a last resort: Pause before moving an item to another room in your home—you’ll only create clutter elsewhere. For example, if your entertainment system plays only DVDs, donate your old VHS tapes to the library rather than moving them to the den.
• Set up a workstation: If there’s space, set up a sorting table and chair surrounded by separate bins for trash, recycling, relocation, and donation.
• Be thorough: Organizing only works if you keep at it until every item makes it into the trash, recycling bin, donation center, or proper storage place.
• Take breaks: Sorting through belongings can be tiring, so make your goals realistic and give yourself breaks when you meet them.
• Make it fun: Play music or gab on the phone with a friend to make the time pass more quickly. Organizing doesn’t have to be boring or isolating.
• Empty as you go: Remove trash, recycling, and dona­tion bags from the organizing area as you fill them. This will make the room look cleaner bit by bit and give you a sense that you’re making progress. Place full bags as far out of your home as possible—donation bags should go in your car; trash bags, in the garage.
• Protect your system: It’s difficult to organize a whole room in one sitting, so move any remaining piles to the perimeter of high-traffic rooms, label stacks, and ask other family members to leave them alone.
• Note shortages: At the end of an organizing day, jot down a list of tools you’ll need when you start up again.

How to Make Donations

• Goodwill: Goodwill Industries operates more than 2,000 donation centers in the United States and Canada. See www.goodwill.org.
• Salvation Army: The Salvation Army has donation centers nationwide and also picks up donations in many locations. See www.satruck.com.
• Freecycle: There are more than 4,000 Freecycle communities in which members coordinate item dona­tions and pickups via email. See www.freecycle.org.
• Earth 911: This web portal offers useful information on recycling aluminum, batteries, paint, cell phones, computers, and more. See www.earth911.com.
• Share the Technology: This nonprofit maintains a list of public schools and nonprofits that seek used computers. See www.sharetechnology.org.
• Wireless Foundation’s Call to Protect: This program collects and refurbishes cell phones for victims of domestic violence or sells them and donates proceeds to related initiatives. See www.wirelessfoundation.org.
• Lions Clubs’ Recycle for Sight: This program collects millions of used eyeglasses each year and distributes them to needy families. See www.lionsclubs.org.
• Verizon Wireless Hopeline: This program collects used wireless phones at Verizon Wireless stores, refurbishes and sells them, and donates proceeds to local shelters and domestic violence prevention programs. See www.verizonwireless.com/hopeline.

To Sell or Not to Sell