Junk in your Trunk and how to make money to pay off debt

Year of Profit

Click here to go to the Year of Profit Facebook page

Click here to go to Joe's Book

Click here to save on High-end Clothing

Please remember to Subscribe and Share the Show.

In today’s episode, I talk about Decluttering your home and making money doing it. You really need to get your house, garage, shed, and basement in order and cleaned out. Plus you can sell everything you can to get out of debt.

You have more money in your things than you know. A lot of people think “I don’t have the money” or “how am I going to get the money” to get out of debt. But you do, it's all around you in your house. Start by throwing out the broken or unsellable things you have. Then separate the things you are going to sell or donate. For the items, you plan on donating try to sell them first. If you try to sell them, online give it 2 – 3 weeks, and if they don’t sell in that time donate them. Or have a garage sale and if they don’t sell donate them.

Beware of spaces and places in your house that are “out of sight, out of mind.” What happens in this space is we tend to shove things there that we aren’t sure we want to keep but we aren’t ready to get rid of.

Start by printing or writing "Toss," "Give" and "Do" on separate pieces of paper. Tape each sign to a large bin.

Toss

Toss items that are broken, stained, ripped, outdated or have missing parts. Some examples include:

1. Expired food
2. Restaurant receipts that aren't tax deductible
3. Broken electronics, appliances, and games
4. Old makeup and broken jewelry
5. Broken kids' toys
6. Old craft supplies
7. Worn clothing and linens

Give or Donate

Give or donate any items that you no longer need but that are still in good condition. If you can't let go of a sentimental piece, snap a photo of it to help free your attachment.

Take Control of Paper Clutter

Paper clutter is the hardest to control, but you just have to find a place for all important documents. Follow these tips to help you get started:

1. Enter information from business cards into a digital contact list, and toss the hard copies.
2. Come up with a system to file bills and important paperwork.
3. Make any needed store returns, and get rid of receipts.

Once you go through the clutter in your home, throw away everything in the "Toss" bin and donate items in the "Give" bin. Clutter can build right back up before you know it. Repeat these steps every season to keep your home clutter-free.

Don't let your clutter control you. Start small, perhaps one shelf at a time, or one pile at a time, and remind yourself that you don't have to tackle the entire project in just one day. It takes months or years for clutter to build up, and it won't unclutter itself in a day.

The payoff I am referring to is the psychological relief one gets from being organized. I believe it is better for your health to be organized because it creates less stress in your life. When items are easily found, you save time.

Organizing is hard work, but in the end, you will feel as if a huge burden has been lifted from your shoulders. Here are a few quick tips to help you throughout the process.

When sorting through clutter, determine how frequently you use the item. This will serve as a guide for where you place it in your home. For example, if you use something every week, you should have a home in your daily living space. If the item is something you use just 10 times a year, then it should be placed in a more long-term storage space like the garage.

After your initial sorting process, review what you have placed in the Keep pile if the pile seems excessive. Sometimes when you give an item a second look you realize that you don't need it after all.

Display mementos sparingly, rather than an entire collection of items from a certain event. Photos are also a great way to remember things like trips, parties, or holiday gatherings. The nice thing about photos is that they don't take up much space in your room and can serve double duty as decor for the walls and bookcases.

We put off the decision by saying, “I’ll just put it here.” The truth is if you went to one of those spaces right now and pulled things out, I bet you’ll find several things you didn’t even know were there. Sometimes you can put those things to use, or put them in a place where you won’t forget about them. Most of the time, you can put them in the “giveaway” or “throw-away” piles.

Creative Decluttering Tips

If you’re struggling and need guidance on how to declutter, you’ll need to get creative with your plans. Here are several interesting decluttering tips to get you started on decluttering your home:

Start with 5 minutes at a time. If you’re new to decluttering, you can slowly build momentum with just five minutes a day.

Give one item away each day. This would remove 365 items every single year from your home. If you increased this to 2 per day, you would have given away 730 items you no longer needed. Increase this number once it gets too easy.

Fill an entire trash bag. Get a trash bag and fill it as fast as you can with things you can donate at Goodwill.

Donate clothes you never wear. To identify them, simply hang all your clothes with hangers in the reverse direction. After wearing an item, face the hanger in the correct direction. Discard the clothes you never touched after a few months.

Create a decluttering checklist. It’s a lot easier to declutter when you have a visual representation of where you need to get started. You can use our decluttering checklist.

Take the 12-12-12 challenge. Locate 12 items to throw away, 12 to donate, and 12 to be returned to their proper home.

View your home as a first-time visitor. It’s easy to “forget” what your home looks like to a new visitor. Enter your home as if you’re visiting the home of a friend. Write down your first impression on how clean and organized the home is and make changes.

Take before and after photos of a small area. Choose one part of your home, like your kitchen counter, and take a photo of a small area. Quickly clean off the items in the photo and take an after photo. Once you see how your home could look, it becomes easier to start decluttering more of your home.

Get help from a friend. Have a friend or family member go through your home and suggest a handful of big items to throw away or give to someone else. If you defend the item and want to keep it, your friend has to agree with your reason. If they don’t agree, it’s time to get rid of it.

Use the Four-Box Method. Get four boxes and label them: trash, give away, keep, or relocate. Enter any room in your home and place each item into one of the following boxes. Don’t skip a single item, no matter how insignificant you may think it is. This may take days, weeks, or months, but it will help you see how many items you really own and you’ll know exactly what to do with each item.