Change the World Wednesday - de-cluttering

This week's CTWW involves cleaning out our closets and finding alternate places for the items.

This week, begin creating a list of unneeded household items to donate to nonprofits. Perhaps you have clothing, pillows, books or sports equipment which could be given to men's and women's shelters. Animal shelters are always in need of towels and food containers. So look around your home and see what could be offered. Donating keeps stuff out of landfills & supports local nonprofits that need all the help they can get.

Or ...

If you've already cleaned out your closets, please share other ideas on how we can keep "stuff" out of landfills.

Perfect timing with this challenge.  A couple of weekends ago Husband and I cleaned out one of the hall closets.  It wasn't that it was over-flowing with stuff, I'm actually a rather organized person.  He just happened to be in it one day and realized we didn't use half the coats hanging up or other items in it.  He mentioned we needed to go through it and make some room for baby girls stuff.    It didn't take us long to go through the closet but we managed to pull out almost everything and set it aside to get rid of it.  We actually have 6 shelves in that closet and two places to hang things up with hangers.  We went from everything being full to having only 2 shelves with stuff on them and one side with coats.

Where is the stuff now? Well, it's actually still in the soon-to-be nursery awaiting proper homes.  We had a vacuum cleaner that works great, but we don't use it and don't have a need for it anymore. That will be going on Craigs list.  We could take it too a goodwill and donate it, but we've had great luck getting rid of things on Craig's list.  We usually try to list things for a small amount and most of the time we are able to sell it.  If we can't sell it for even a small amount, we make the decision to either list it for free or take it to a donation center. A lot of things we'll list for free because they are too bulky or just weird items that we think a donation center would have trouble getting rid of.  

As far as the coats, those I'm going to take to a Veteran's donation center one weekend.  Husband recently went through his closet and pulled out a lot of clothes he doesn't wear anymore and they are in a pile waiting to go out the door as well.   Many times when we have clothes I'll contact a Veteran's charity to come pick it up but I noticed a drop-off donation center opened up not to far from us and we drive by it a lot of the weekends. I prefer to donate clothes and other items I feel they can use because I feel we need to do what we can for our vet's.  I would rather see the items go to vet's or be sold and the money going to a veteran foundation than just a normal donation center.

Some of the items we are getting rid of are also pet items and toys that our dog doesn't use.  These I'm going to contact local animal shelters to see if they need/want.  Since the items are used I'm not sure what they will take but want to make the offer. Otherwise I'm not sure how best to get rid of these.

Now that this closet is cleaned out, we're pretty much done. I love (cuz I'm nuts) to organize so throughout the year I will go through drawers and closets and re-organize and pull out things we don't use anymore.  So unless Husband finds a closet I've forgotten about, I'm done for awhile.  That is, until baby girl starts growing up and I have all of that stuff to deal with.