Moving is a big process, but decluttering is a step that can make the whole process shorter and easier. If anything, moving out is the perfect time to declutter your apartment and get rid of anything you no longer use, but where should you start? If a shorter and easier moving process sounds good to you, keep reading to learn how to declutter your apartment before you move.
Keep your new apartment in mind
When decluttering before you move, you’ll want to keep your new apartment in mind and only keep things you’ll actually use. Plan out where you’ll be arranging furniture and decorations in your new apartment and get rid of anything that won’t have a place.
It can be helpful to compare your current things with pictures of the new apartment to make sure you’ll be satisfied with everything you keep. Take anything you decide you don’t want and put it into a box or a pile. You’ll decide what to do with it later.
When in doubt, throw it out
It can be hard to decide what to keep and what should go, but there are a few easy tricks to help you make your decisions. Be especially harsh on items in storage – anything you’ve never used since you bought it should automatically go to the sell or donate pile.
According to Marie Kondo, bestselling author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, “Clutter is caused by a failure to return things to where they belong. Therefore, storage should reduce the effort needed to put things away, not the effort needed to get them out.”
If you’re not immediately sure whether you want to keep something or not, you probably won’t even notice it’s gone, so just get rid of it! Your moving process will get easier the more stuff you get rid of, and if you end up deciding you shouldn’t have gotten rid of something, you can almost always replace it.
Sell anything you can
Once you’ve decided what you’re going to get rid of, you’ll want to sell anything you can to make some money back. If you’re moving to a smaller apartment, you might even want to sell some of your old furniture. Plenty of online platforms are great places to flip your old items and make some money back. A little extra money is always helpful to cover moving expenses!
Donate the rest
Put anything that won’t sell for enough money to be worth your time and effort into a pile to donate. You can box up all these items and bring them to a local thrift shop to finish your decluttering process.
Keep things decluttered!
The final step in decluttering is to keep your new place that way when you move in! Before buying anything, think to yourself whether you’re honestly going to use it often or not. The more junk you have in your apartment, the harder it will be to declutter the next time, so make it easy on yourself and avoid buying things you don’t really want! You’ll be thanking yourself next time you move.
