Ultimate Guide to Holiday Decluttering

It’s time to un-deck the halls. . . We’ll tell you how to make it easy this year.

It’s the end of December, and you’ve probably just finished saying all your goodbyes to friends and family you traveled to see for the holidays or who you hosted in your home. Either way, I’m sure one thing is certain: your house is full of post-holiday clutter.

The holidays we celebrate at this time of year tend to keep us all extra busy, especially when your family includes young children.

With all the parties and events you’ve had to plan, attend, or assist with over the past few weeks, there has been a lot more clutter generated in your home and virtually zero time to keep up with it all, much less the normal everyday cleaning and organizing.

Well, pour yourself a cup of hot cocoa and follow our tips to make getting rid of all the clutter around your home a breeze and make way for a clean, organized, bright new year in 2019. (Don’t worry, if you decide to add a splash or two of peppermint schnapps to your cocoa, we won’t tell.)

Putting Away Holiday Decorations & Gifts

If you have to dig through boxes for hours on end every year to find your “good” decorations, it’s time to push through the year-end fatigue and handle the mess once and for all.

It may not be very joyous or fun, but getting this task out of the way now will mean you’ll have that much more time to actually celebrate and enjoy the holidays for years to come.

The following is a list of items you can go ahead and toss out along with all that crumpled wrapping paper:

• old greeting cards that don’t hold any sentimental value
• ornaments and decorations that are broken
• items that you have multiples of (keep only what you need)
• decorations, ornaments, etc that are rarely or never used
• decorations that take too much time and effort to set up and take down
• damaged wrapping paper, supplies, bows, etc

Declutter Your House

A decluttering method that works incredibly well and gets a lot done at once is for every gift received or new item purchased, get rid of 2 others.

While going through the after-holiday cleanup process, go ahead and do a little extra. An example of using this method would be to get rid of that ancient laptop and dead PC monitor since your Aunt Linda gave you a new iPad.

This makes the gifts you received even better because they’re also helping you cut all the clutter in your home. Add even more value by selling, recycling, or donating to charity the items to be tossed out.

If you’re like me, you did almost all of your shopping for holiday gifts online and your living room is now piled floor-to-ceiling with all the cardboard shipping boxes those gifts arrived in.

Before you go ahead and break those boxes down to have them recycled, listen to how they can be put to use in your decluttering arsenal.

Instead of throwing them away outright, make a goal for yourself to fill each and every one of those boxes with household clutter. Then, get rid of the cardboard boxes along with all of that stuff that was only taking up valuable space in your home.

If you received a few nice albeit useless gifts due to a white elephant exchange or office secret Santa, all is not lost. While you may not have any use for a bacon-scented candle or a color-changing yoga mat, you may know someone who does.

Set aside some space in a hall closet or chest as a “re-gift corner.” Then, keep these types of items that are nice but just not for you in that space until you find the perfect occasion and person to give them to.

Stay Clutter-Free

Keeping your home free of junk and clutter is a lot easier said than done, even if you wage all-out war on the existing clutter in your home. In order to keep it clean once you get it to a manageable place, you really have to stay on top of everything daily.

This means reminding yourself (and others in your home) to put things back where they belong when you’re done with them. However, in order for that method to work, you also need to have somewhere for everything to belong.

Establish places for everything to live when not in use. Keep unread magazines and newspapers in a neat stack on a coffee table, then send them to the recycling bin when they’ve been read or a newer issue has arrived.

Make sure each member of the household has a special place to keep personal effects like outerwear, rain gear, purses, homework folders, backpacks, and computer bags.

Set up a filing system for important mail and paperwork so it doesn’t get buried and forgotten in the kitchen counter clutter abyss.

Putting these kinds of organization systems into place (and sticking to them, of course) will make it much easier and more enjoyable to keep your home clear of clutter.

When you and your loved ones are able to spend less time sorting, cleaning, organizing, and disposing of tons of junk and household clutter, you’re left with much more time and space to enjoy each other.

Over time, if you’re able to stick to your daily, bite-sized decluttering routine, you’ll notice that you’re a lot less stressed and have more energy than you did before the Great Holiday Decluttering of 2018.

Get Help Throwing Away Clutter

Whether just getting rid of shredded wrapping paper and broken ornaments or decluttering your entire home top-to-bottom, once you’re finished you’ll likely find that you have an overwhelming amount of stuff to get rid of.

While you would prefer to make a little extra dough by selling the good stuff and donate or recycle the rest, the sheer volume of it all makes you want to chuck it all in a dumpster and run for the hills.

This is where junk removal comes in. Junk removal companies provide a service where they will come to your home, remove any bulky items or boxes of random junk items you need to get rid of, haul it all away, and properly dispose of it for you.

Using a junk removal company for the disposal of all your unwanted junk items can cut your decluttering time and anxiety in half – or more – quite easily. A junk hauler will have the manpower, equipment, experience, and disposal resources necessary to easily dispose of junk in a responsible manner.

Some junk removal companies, including LoadUp, have a green-minded approach to junk removal and disposal.

Instead of hauling the junk and clutter they pick up straight to the dump where it will sit in a landfill and harm the local environment, these junk removers sort through everything they haul away in order to donate items still in usable condition while taking everything else that qualifies to be recycled.

Rather than turning your successful decluttering home makeover into an exercise in shifting your clutter around to different parts of your house by deciding to attempt getting rid of it by yourself, you can pay a reasonable fee to have a junk removal company get it all out of your life in a matter of minutes.

While using just about any reputable junk removal company to aid in your clutter cleanse will be a huge boon to you, not all junk removal companies are created equal and some will be a better fit for you than others.

Best Junk Removal Company for Decluttering

When deciding which junk removal company to use, you’ll be hard-pressed to find one you would be more satisfied with than LoadUp.

LoadUp is a nationwide, professional junk removal company offering fast, easy, and affordable junk removal at a price that’s an average of 20-30% less than those of most other junk removal companies.

LoadUp provides customers with honest, upfront pricing before you book, green disposal methods such as donation and recycling, and fast pickup as soon as next-day.

All of the independently contracted Loaders carry a $1M insurance policy and undergo background checks before they’re allowed to complete pickups on the LoadUp platform, so you know you’re safe having them in your home or office.

At LoadUp, we’re excited to be on the forefront of the junk removal industry with our cutting-edge technology, which helps us provide our customers with awesome features, including real-time notifications, live GPS tracking, and white label pre-calling, to name just a few.

Want to know more about LoadUp and why we’re the best junk removal company in America? Ready to learn how to book your pickup with LoadUp? Give us a call, send us an email, or message us online through our website chat feature today!