How To Declutter Before Moving: 12 Tips To Make Your Life Easier

3. Take Before & After Photos

Before you get started on your decluttering-before-moving journey, snap a few photos of your most cluttered rooms and areas, like the garage, storage closets, cabinets, and your pantry. When you’re done, take a photo of the end result. Seeing the progress you’ve made will help motivate you to finish other areas of your home. Plus, there’s no harm in doing a little showing off to friends and family!

4. Start With the Rooms & Things You Use the Least

Ok, you’re in the right headspace, and you’ve given yourself plenty of time to clean out your home. But you may still be a little stuck. If you find yourself asking, “How do I get rid of all that stuff?” Maija’s advice is to get your feet wet by starting the decluttering process with rooms and items you don’t use that often.

“I highly suggest you do not start with memorabilia,” Maija says. “If you start with rooms that are less used, you have the time to go through all of those things — and you’ll likely get rid of one-half to three-fourths of it.”

Starting with your basement, attic, or garage is a great way to train your brain to think about the value and purpose of your belongings. That way, by the time you reach the really important stuff, you’ll be a pro. Plus, you can pack the items you’re keeping into boxes or plastic bins as you go, tackling two birds with one stone — and with minimal disruption to your daily routines in the rest of the house.

How To Downsize Before Moving — Easy Wins

Get that decluttering inertia going by tossing or donating items that are a no-brainer to part with. Here are some ideas to kickstart your process:

• Clothes that don’t fit
• Clothes you haven’t worn in a year
• Socks that have lost their pair
• Pens that have run out of ink
• Expired toiletries (makeup, medicine, etc.)
• Expired pantry items
• Random cords and cables
• Food storage containers without lids
• Old magazines and newspapers you’ve already read
• Duplicate tools and gadgets
• Instruction manuals, mail, receipts, and other paper clutter you don’t need (you can always take a picture!)

5. Pack While You Declutter

You’re decluttering before moving, right? So why not pack along the way? Especially those areas with items you won’t be needing before the big day. But we’re not talking about just dumping your “keep” piles of stuff in big boxes and calling it a day.

You’re taking the time to go through each and every item in your home already; you should also take the time to ensure your wanted items are clean, dust-free, and that you brush up on how to pack boxes for moving (bonus points for categorizing them!). The best part about doing this? You’ll cut down on wasteful packing materials, potentially saving you money on the cost of the move. And who knows? You may even look forward to unpacking those boxes since it’ll be such a cinch!

Sorting through sentimental items can be one of the hardest parts of decluttering, especially when learning how to downsize before moving — keeping a few meaningful pieces can help prevent regret.

6. Don’t Linger on Sentimental Clutter

No matter what you do, you’re going to end up sifting through emotional items — it’s unavoidable. Just try to veer back to the present if you suddenly find yourself on a trip down memory lane (trust us, it’s easy to do, especially if you’re decluttering before moving by yourself). “I have many clients who were trying to declutter before moving on their own, and they’ve been like ‘I opened this box and I was there for two hours — all I could finish was this box,’” Maija says. “You pull out a picture and all these memories come up and you have to process all of that.” Fight the urge. If there’s really a strong connection, keep the item and dip into the nostalgia at a later date.

Sorting your things into categories makes it easier to figure out how to declutter before moving — and what exactly to do with each item.

7. Create Keep, Toss, & Donate Piles as You Go

One huge decluttering-before-moving hack Maija uses with her clients is separating sorted items into different piles that determine their fate. Here are a few examples of piles you might want to use to categorize your things as you go through them:

Keep

The goal of a big declutter before moving isn’t to leave you with nothing — it’s to pare your belongings down to your favorite and most essential things, so you have a lighter load and a happier new home. The KonMari method is a helpful, thorough method for tidying (you’ve probably heard of Marie Kondo because of her bestselling book or her Netflix show); even if you don’t follow all six steps, the sixth step can help you decide what to keep: Ask yourself, “Does this spark joy?” If it does, that’s probably a good enough reason to keep it.

Trash

From takeout menus to flower food packets, there are all kinds of little things you’ve held onto that you certainly don’t need to pack into boxes. Taking the time to go through all your junk drawers and cluttered corners, then tossing things you don’t need is a key part of how to clean out a house before moving.

Shred

While there are some paper documents you should absolutely keep (and pack carefully) like your birth certificate or Social Security card, there are other documents you can go ahead and shred: Resumes, old bills and bank statements, pay stubs, and other sensitive documents that you no longer need a physical copy of.

Donate

There are all sorts of items you have in your home that are probably perfectly usable, but not necessary to hold onto. When evaluating these things, a helpful framework is the 90/90 rule, which says that if you haven’t used an item in the last 90 days and don’t see yourself using it in the next 90 days, you can probably declutter before moving it. Let someone else make good use of it instead by donating to a friend, shelter, or nonprofit organization.

Sell

One perk of doing a big declutter before moving is the potential to make a little money. It may be hard to downsize your closet, but selling some items on secondhand clothing sites like Depop or Poshmark (or bringing them to your local consignment shop) can be a sweet incentive to declutter before moving.

Store

When you’re trying to figure out how to get rid of everything and move, it can feel like everything must go — either into the trash bin or a neatly packed moving box. But there is another option, depending on your circumstances: Storage! If, for instance, you’re downsizing to a home with no room for your kayaks or camping gear, but you know you’ll still use them, it makes more sense to stash them in a storage unit than to give them away just to repurchase them later. It could also be helpful to store things like your precious vinyl record collection (just be sure to invest in climate-controlled storage) that you don’t have space for but don’t want to part with (it sparks joy!) or bulky winter gear you only need one season out of the year.

Recycle

Old spice jars, paper clutter without any sensitive information on it, empty shampoo bottles, extra cardboard boxes — these are all things you can recycle rather than tossing in the trash bin. You can even recycle things like electronics, old CDs or DVDs, textiles, clothing and accessories (try using The Take Back Bag!), or some furniture, though you’ll need to research centers or organizations in your area where you can

8. Involve Your Kids With Their Things

While it may take a little longer, it’s important to involve your children in the decluttering of their own belongings — if you have the time and patience, that is. This helps a great deal when you’re trying to declutter before moving. But how do you get five-year-olds to go through their prized possessions and decide what to keep? “Ask them,” says Maija. “Say ‘Hey, do you still play with this toy? Are you ready to let this go and let another kid enjoy this, or do you still want it?,’ and they are pretty honest.”

Now, of course, we realize it may be a bit of a struggle if you’re going through items that your children haven’t seen in a while. They suddenly become their absolute favorites, right — even if they’ve been “out of sight, out of mind” for months? Just take a deep breath and remind them that other children would love to get a chance to enjoy some of their lesser-loved items. You may be surprised at how generous your children suddenly become. Bonus? They’ll grow up with the emotional skills and know-how to declutter their own things later in life.

9. Schedule Dedicated Time for Decluttering

Look, you’re likely not chomping at the bit to sort through all of your things, which is exactly why Maija recommends putting it on your schedule. In fact, she says neglecting to set aside periods of time to declutter is one of the biggest mistakes people make. She suggests scheduling one to three hours of dedicated decluttering time on a weekly basis, preferably on a specific day of the week, every week, to create a routine. “Tune everything out — no appointments, no schedules, no nothing, and actually set that time,” she says.

In crunch time, and need to know how to declutter before moving in a hurry? “You’ll probably want to do it more like three to six hours at a time,” she recommends.

Using a portable storage container lets your declutter before moving by packing items gradually and keeping your space organized throughout the process.

11. Consider Hiring a Professional Organizer

If you’re still not sure where to start or just want (or need) some help figuring out how to declutter before moving, it’s probably worth adding a professional organizer to your team. Maija says by the time her clients reach out, they’re “really wanting help,” though she suggests not waiting until you’re at your wits’ end to seek someone’s help.

Grab recommendations from family, friends, and neighborhood group sites like Nextdoor, and then do a consultation with the top candidates so you can get to know each other, see if you vibe well (you’ll be working very closely with them, remember), and get a feel for the scope of the project and their fee.