How to get rid of clutter & make money

Good morning (or should I say freezing morning!)I wanted to tell you all this awesome news for a couple of weeks but had to wait until we told everyone else that needs to know first…

 We found a lovely new home to rent. It’s a lot smaller than our current house so hopefully, it will be easier to heat. The downside of this is that we have to get rid of a lot of our belongings before we move so I’ve spent the last week giving each room a ‘Kon Mari’ declutter and only keeping what we love or really need. I’ve altered it slightly to things that bring joy, things we use regularly, things we need to keep (important documents, work stuff etc) & sentimental gifts. There are certain things that don’t give us joy that we use regularly but we definitely can’t afford buying so many new things and that would be very wasteful.

We’ve made the biggest dent in our clothes, only keeping about a third! Again, I would have thrown out more clothes but then I’d be left with one or two outfits to wear and I currently can’t afford to buy more clothes to replace what I need. Now all of our clothes fit into a set of drawers and it’s a lot easier to find what I want to wear in the morning. It’s a lovely feeling. 

We live in a small town with no charity shops, a return bus ticket to the nearest big town is £20 and we can’t drive so deciding what to do with our clutter has been quite challenging. Luckily, the Internet is a wonderful place full of selling platforms and people who are looking for a bargain.


1. Sell on eBay 

When I first started using eBay, I was quite disheartened as I was making a loss. I would put up a piece of clothing for £5, if it didn’t sell I would be paying the listing fee out of my own money. This put me off using eBay for a bit as I didn’t have enough money as it is. I was speaking about eBay to a friend over coffee one day and he said the magic words: “you know about starting your listings at 99p don’t you?” I’m very glad he told me about this. If you start your listings at 99p or less, you don’t have to pay a listing fee which means no loss if it doesn’t sell. We all love a bargain so people are more likely to start bidding on your items when it starts off at a bargain price! Also, having 100% positive feedback will get you more sales. Regardless of the final selling price of the item, I treat all of my customers with the same loving customer service. I make sure my items are spotless, add a small free gift, a thank you note and send it to them as soon as I can.

2. Sell of Facebook

There are plenty of selling groups on Facebook. I’ve found the most active ones (with the least spam) are local selling groups and preloved groups. There is, of course a risk when you buy something that you might not receive it but that hasn’t happened to me once. When selling, I make sure the buyer pays first (through PayPal for extra protection) before I send the item. The biggest benefit of selling on Facebook is that there are no selling fees, you only have to pay PayPal fees.

3. Give unwanted items as gifts

That item that no longer brings you happiness might brighten someone else’s day! Obviously, you have to draw the line somewhere, don’t give someone a top with lots of holes in it (unless they are specifically looking for fabric). If you think a certain item will be perfect for someone or will help them in some way, gift it to them with a note saying why you’re giving it to them.

4. Give to charity

As I mentioned earlier, we don’t have a charity shop near us and we can’t drive to one. We do, however get charity bags through the door for collection every week. All you need to do is fill the bag with lovely items you no longer want and place the bag outside your door on the specified collection day. Please read the bag as they don’t always accept everything and make sure your unwanted clothes are clean (remember that someone has to go through that bag!)

5. Reuse and recycle 

Ripped, unwanted tshirts make brilliant cleaning cloths and old socks are brilliant at dusting the skirting boards. We didn’t have a sugar jar so I cleaned out an old coffee jar and used that. For a pen tidy, I’ve cleaned out and reused old sauce jars. If you’re not sure what to do with your junk, Pinterest is always full of brilliant recycling ideas. Just don’t find a use for ever single bit of your clutter as you’ll end up at square one again.
Those are my tips for decluttering! If you have any other tips, please comment below as I’d love to know any more!

Until next time,