Written by Jasmine Birtles
Put your best photos in an album or frame
Clearing out your cupboards is often at the bottom of the “To Do” list. And sorting out those difficult items like financial paperwork, legal documents, family heirlooms and children’s things is even further down!
It’s easy to ignore piles of old paperwork or shove family photos into a drawer but soon enough, you’ll start running out of room.
But on Friday April 13th – Clear Your Clutter Day [http://www.clearyourclutterday.co.uk] – you can attack these things you know you should throw out, knowing that other people around the country are doing the same!
Clear Your Clutter Day is running in conjunction with online selling site Gumtree.com, encouraging you to people to spring clean your home in order to free up more space and money.
Here are some top tips to help you get to grips with your accumulated clutter.
PAPERWORK
- Give yourself a limited time frame. With really tiresome tasks like sorting paperwork, it can help to set aside a finite amount of time - maybe an hour or two – to do it.
- Hang on to documents that are hard to replace, like birth and marriage certificates, wills, Premium Bond certificates, mortgage papers and leases. Keep them all in one place so you can find them easily – try a colourful concertina-style organiser like the ones for £22 at Harrisandjones.co.uk.
- You don’t always need to keep bank and building society statements. Yes, they are important but if you can access them online, shred the hard copies and sign up for paperless statements.
- Remember to always shred any old paperwork with your name, address or personal details on.
- Use this sorting exercise to check balances, passwords and personal details on accounts and other things like your driving licence. It’s actually illegal to have the wrong details on your driving licence and you could be fined £1,000 for it!
PHOTOGRAPHS
- Go through all your old photos and get rid of any that make you unhappy, have people you don’t know or places you don’t recognise. Put whatever you have left into an attractive photo album.
- If you find some pictures you really like, display them in a nice frame or make up a photo montage.
- For even less clutter, scan the photos and upload them to your computer. If you have lots of old negatives, take them to a photography shop such as Snappy Snaps, which will be able to transform them into clean, digital images.
CHILDRENS’ ARTWORK
- Even if your kids left school 20 years ago, it can be hard to part with their old pictures and schoolwork. If you have space to display your favourites, create a collage and put them in a large clip frame.
- Save pictures of the work to your computer with detailed notes about when it was created and by which child.
- Collect pictures, stories and poems together to make a “book”. This can then become a lovely keepsake to look back on as the years go by.
FAMILY HEIRLOOMS
- If you are gifted something that doesn’t fit in your home or you just don’t like it, take a picture and save it on your computer before giving it away or selling it. This is a great way to “keep” an item of sentimental value without actually having to store it.
- Talk to the item before giving it away, expressing appreciation for it and the person who gave it to you. It sounds mad, but it’s the person who gave it to you or the memories attached to the item that make it hard to part with, not the actual item itself. Knowing you have shown appreciation will help you let go.
- It can help you let go of an item that is not right in your home if you know that it is going to a place where it will be appreciated for what it is. Hannah Wilson, Marketing Director of Gumtree says “Those looking to find a new home for special family items can do so easily and quickly online. Simply list the item for sale on a site such as Gumtree, it only take a few clicks, and it could then continue to be treasured and enjoyed by someone locally to you.”
Clear Your Clutter Day takes place on Friday, April 13. For more information, or to download a free eBook, visit http://wwwclearyourclutterday.co.uk.