Congratulations! You have taken the big step to clear the clutter from your home!

Now you have a few trash bags sitting in the corner waiting to be dealt with. Don’t lose your momentum and let those bags just sit there (speaking from experience)! It is time to make a decision about where to unload the clutter. Do you sell, donate or give away your wares? Before we look at which option works best for you:

Consider your Strengths

Are you a true Home Economizer who thrives on making your money go as far as possible? Or is the idea of selling unwanted items more of a chore?

Be honest with yourself on your current ability to make these sales happen. If the time it takes to sell your items is not worth the money you get in return, then let yourself move on to another choice.

Donate

pros

• gets the clutter out of your home quickly (especially if you put it in the back of your car immediately for drop off)
• supports worthwhile causes
• ability to write off what you donated on your taxes

cons

• no extra cash from your clutter
• takes time to record everything donated (optional unless you are going to write off the donation on your taxes)
• Yearly deductions can not be over $500 in one year (without an appraisal)

In order to qualify for a tax write off, the clothing or goods must be in “used good or better condition.” But really charities don’t want items that are not in good condition anyway.

photo via Bob Jagendorf

You can write off the fair market value of the items, but not the original purchase price. Anyone who has taken a stroll through a thrift store has a good sense of the current value. Craigslist and ebay also give you a good estimate of current value and you can even print out examples to document how you came to your fair market price if you are ever audited. The Salvation Army has also put together a handy guide to help you find the value of your donations.

A simple table can record an inventory of your donations for deductions. The columns can be labeled with something like items donated, date purchased, original price, and current market value.
I am not a tax professional, so before you start writing off your items or for more information about valuing your donations you can check out the always captivating IRS Publication 561

Sell

If you believe you have more than $500 worth of items, it might be worth it to have a garage sale or (my personal favorite) sell the premium items and donate the rest.

pros

• receive more money for your items
• money

cons

• the extra time and effort
• many times need to have quality items (name brand clothing, etc.)

As you know, there are many options when selling items. A few I have personal experience with are:

Craigslist-

The easiest to do in my opinion, best for large and mid-range items. We purchased all of our baby furniture from Craigslist and then sold it 3 years later for just a little less than we paid for it. If you are selling items that you purchased retail than you should be able to get around a 50% return depend on the wear and tear and demand. I have never tried to buy or sell clothes on Craigslist but have used it to find all sorts of things from a bike to a juicer successfully.

Amazon-

I used amazon for selling some books and was able to make over $150. When you calculate my hourly rate based on the amount I made and the time put in, it was totally worth the time I spent on the process. Not all books are worth selling, so you have to do some research (simply input the ISBN number to see the going rate of your book).

Ebay-

I find Ebay, with the photos, calculating the shipping, and going to the post office to be more trouble than it is worth; unless you have items that are collectibles or highly sought after. I am sure there are many that would disagree with me but I have never been a fan.

Consignment-

Consignment can be a great option for clothes, specifically children’s clothes. My local baby resale store offers 40% of what they sell the clothes for. For example, dresses are sold for $4.49 and so you would get paid $1.79 for your kid’s dress. They would buy 3T jeans for $1.50. Depending on your garage sales, this could be more than or pretty close to what you get for them. The drawback I have experienced with adult clothes is the consignment store was only interested in name brand items. You’ll have to check with your local store to see if the price feels worth it to you.

Garage sales-

I have a love/hate relationship with garage sales so it needed its own pros and cons list.

photo via colros

pros

• able to sell a large amount of items at once
• control over prices (compared to consignment or Ebay auction)

cons

• time-consuming and labor intensive!
• super bargain hunters looking for deals can leave you giving away items dirt cheap or you’ll be left with items still to unload because they are priced to high

Garage sale gives you the smallest bang for your buck since items are priced at 25% or less of retail price. Mandy from Biblical Homemaking describes it best:

An example:
Those $35 jeans that don’t fit you anymore, but are in great condition.

Garage Sale Value: $2.
Tax deductible value if donated: $12.
If you are in the 15% tax bracket, the tax credit of those pants: $1.80
If you are in the 25% tax bracket: $3.00

You get almost the same amount or more, and you didn’t have to wake up at 6 am to move the tables out of the garage!

This example only strengths donation as my favorite option!

Give Away

Whether it is giving to friends through a clothing swap, listing items for free on Freecycle or Craigslist, or even putting the items on the side of the road with a free sign on it; there can be extreme satisfaction in watching your items go to someone super excited to get free swag.

While this might be considered one of the easiest, (besides the dumpster) be careful not to saddle yourself with too many tasks trying to make sure the right things get to right people. My friend wanted to give away items, but wound up holding on to them for months until she was able to get together with those particular friends again. Those items still took up valuable space in her home. It is one thing to help others with your unwanted items and it is another to create a pile of to-dos that will be easy to push to the side when life gets in the way.

Whether you decide to do one or a combination of the options above, there is no better feeling than when you remove the clutter from your space!

What is your favorite way to unload clutter? Do you tend to donate items or sell them? Did I miss your favorite selling site?

Hi Space for Living readers!  I am very excited to work with Autumn to bring you this project shared on Mission Decorate today.  I hope you enjoy!

This, ladies and gents, is my ultimate project for August.  For the cost of going to the movies, I made an entire wall of art!

You know those cabinet doors you have been hearing so much about.  Yes, the ones I bought at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.  Well, I have finally put them to good use…

I bought these doors with no real plan in place so I spent the first month glancing at them every time I went in the garage thinking hmmmmm what should I do with these.  I woke up in the middle of the night several times thinking “Ah ha!  I’ve got it!”  Actually that is where the idea for the shelf came up.  It was about 3am and I was lying in bed not able to sleep and I thought “SHELF!”  Wow, that is just as sad as it sounds.

Well, let me break this down for you a little bit.  I bought 4 cabinet doors for $2 a piece.  (I actually bought one more huge door, which you see behind the four doors in this pic but that is being saved for something else.)

Each door began with a different finish and color and they all received different pampering.  The small door was primed, painted, stenciled and splattered.  The cream door was sanded, primed, crackled unsuccessfully, sanded again then painted and stenciled.  The wood finish door was sanded, primed white and painted blue.  And the black door was painted with 4 coats (darn black), roughed up with the sander then given a shelf.

One of my favorite parts of this project are the knobs.  I thought putting knobs on the doors would not only tip people off to what the things hanging on my wall originally were but I also thought it was a little playful and fun.  I bought the knobs on the same trip to the ReStore for 50 cents a piece.  Again I had no idea what I was going to do with them at the time but I figured I would come up with something.  They started out looking like this…

And with some acrylic craft paint and a little creativity they came out looking like this…

The craft paint worked great, but I will say that I am not certain it is the best for knobs you will be handling everyday.  I think with more use the paint would rub off.  But since my knobs are just for show, I think they will hold up just fine.

So all in this amazing wall of art came to about $15!  $10 for the doors and knobs and about $5 in various paint.  One great way to save cash on paint is if you only need a small amount buy those handy dandy tubs of paint samples.  That is what I did for the blue and it was the perfect amount for about $3.

So I hope you all enjoyed my re-purposed project!  I can’t wait to see what y’all have been working at the  Facebook party on Wednesday, August 31st.  “Like” the Mission Decorate Facebook page to get updates and to join in on the fun.

Have you ever dreaded cleaning out your closet? (I may actually be the only one who looks forward to it.)  I have done a lot of closet purging in my life, but none have been quite as enjoyable as the latest purge for my first ever clothing exchange. Who knew that a clothing swap could be so much fun? You get a clean closet, a get together with friends, and the joy of seeing folks enjoying your hand-me-downs.

To get started, I invited a group of ladies to participate and asked them to bring along clothes from their closet they no longer wear. I then went to work sorting through my own closet. I had lots of clothes I had been wavering about, but this time I was ruthless.

Everything that had previously dodged donation made it to the swap pile. Like a special occasion dress I had worn only once, but just never quite fit right on my post-baby body. It had been too easy to say that it was “such a nice dress, maybe I will wear it again someday.” I grabbed it knowing that if no one wanted it at the swap, I could schlep it back home again.

In the past I’ve recommended focusing on donating items to a good cause. By remembering that others will actually use and benefit from this item gathering dust, it can help give you the extra push you need to part with the item. I still definitely recommend, and regularly do, donate to charity but I can now also add a clothing exchange to my list of options. Seeing someone else enjoy something you once loved is a great motivation. And since not everything I brought to the swap made it to a new home, I donated those items rather than haul them back to my closet (except my dress that looked great on another girl!).

Our fabulous host (thanks Shayna!) made the swap a breeze and we all left with some new wares! Here’s how it went down-

When guests arrived, they sorted their clothing by size and type into pre-designated areas. To keep it super simple you could just dump everything in a pile, but we had some mega organized ladies with clothing racks and everything. Sorting the clothing definitely made browsing merchandise much easier.

After some “window shopping,” it turned into one big dressing room as we tried on things that we liked before handing it to the next person who had their eye on it.  After the frenzy of trying on clothes, the final exchange began to look much like fantasy football draft picks (so I’m told). We each picked a number out of a bowl then went in number order to choose an item we wanted.

After 4 rounds, everyone had picked their favorites and it morphed into a polite, lady-like shout out, “Does anyone else want this?” Once the “store” was thoroughly picked through, we bagged up the rest of the clothes to donate.

I attempted to channel my inner model to show some of the loot I hauled away for FREE.

Apparently, models always stand with their hands on their hips!

These pics don’t even show all of the clothes!  But since my husband got sick of taking pictures for my fashion show, I figured I’d leave it at 8.

Not everything fits perfect; I am going to try to alter a few shirts using this method I found on Biblical Homemaking. I am also going to try to dye the jeans a little darker in an attempt to get rid of the faded thigh look that feels a little too youthful for my 30something self.  (Any ideas?)  Totally worth it for all the new outfits (only the white pants and dark jeans featured in the pictures above were originally mine).

It was such a fun time and everyone loved leaving with new outfits and actually seeing their old clothes go to a new home.  If you need a good excuse to clean out your closet, call up your girlfriends, have them bring their friends too, and make a date for a clothing exchange. Don’t forget accessories and purses too.

I’d love to hear if you have ever had a clothing exchange. Did you get some good loot? Any tips to share from your own purge party? Has anyone ever tried a kid’s clothing exchange?