Reduce Clutter and Clear Your Home with Professional Junk Removal

Does your home feel like you’re living under a trash heap, or your outdoor property is starting to resemble a scrap yard? This article is for you. If you’ve been putting off decluttering because it feels like an impossible hill to climb, this article is for you. If you’ve tried decluttering before but didn’t know where to start, this article is for you. Decluttering and clearing your home can be cathartic and liberating. But it takes some work to get there. Luckily, with TrustDALE certified professional junk removal services, you don’t have to worry about the backbreaking labor of gathering, lifting, loading, and removing all that stuff you no longer need. You can focus on the important part: separating what you need from what you don’t. Then, you can let a professional junk removal company take it all away and responsibly dispose of it by donating what they can, recycling what they can’t, and safely disposing of the small amount of material left over.

Conquering Your Fear

One of the most common reasons people don’t declutter or let trash build up around their homes is fear. Specifically, decluttering brings up two types of fear. First, people are scared to start. They are scared of the seeming immenseness of the task. That kind of fear is common to many large projects. But it can be conquered. The second type of fear is the fear of letting go. This fear comes into play once you begin or think about beginning the actual process. With every item you pick up, you wonder if it might come in handy someday, and you fear that if you get rid of it now, you will kick yourself for it down the road. This fear, too, can be conquered with the right emotional outlook.

The Fear of Beginning

Any large project can be scary at the start. You don’t know how you will accomplish your goal, and it seems quite likely that you never will. But that fear is unfounded. As you have likely read on one-too-many motivational posters, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It’s a cliche, but it’s not without merit. The best way to tackle the fear of beginning is to break your decluttering project into smaller, more manageable mini-projects. You don’t have to draw up a master plan to start. And you can choose by breaking down your project into smaller units of space or units of time.

One method to get started is to ignore your whole house and break down the decluttering into smaller spaces. Just pick one small decluttering project that feels achievable. That might be a single room—like a bathroom or bedroom—or even a part of a room, like the drawers in your kitchen or a single closet.

If what worries you most is the amount of time decluttering takes, you can cut that into pieces, too. You could even gamify it. Start with three trash bags. One bag is garbage, one is to donate, and one is to sell. If you don’t plan on selling anything, just use that third bag as an extra trash or donate pile. Then take your three bags and move through your house as quickly as possible until all three bags are full. If you like a challenge, you can time yourself. See how long it takes to fill three bags, then the next day or a few days later, try again and see if you can beat your time. Just make sure to fill all three bags.

And if you’re really short on time, flip the game. Set a timer for as much time as you feel like you can spend decluttering. With your three bags on hand, rush through the house and see how much you can fill your bags before the timer goes off. Try it again tomorrow and see if you can beat your own record.

The Fear of Letting Go

You may have heard of hoarders. In its most extreme sense, hoarding can be a psychological disorder, especially if the collected items are affecting the safety and health of your living space. But the tendency to hold onto material things even when we may not need them is something that affects almost everyone. Whether an item holds sentimental value or you just fear that you might need it someday, it can be hard to overcome the hurdle of our emotions to declutter effectively.

One way to conquer the fear of letting go is to flip the equation. Picking up item after item and deciding if you can let it go can be exhausting. Instead, take a small area—like a few drawers or a section of a closet—and empty its contents. Then start putting things back. But only put back things you need and will use. You have basically turned your fear of letting go into a shopping trip. Pick up an item and think about whether you would purchase it if you didn’t have it. If the answer is yes, then put the item back in the appropriate place. (As a bonus, this method lets you organize as you declutter.) If the answer is no, toss the item into one of two piles: donate and trash. Remember, you can only donate items that someone else may want or need. If it’s broken, stained, or torn, it’s trash.

Another way to conquer the fear of letting go is to set parameters for what you will keep. Usually, those parameters will take the form of how much space you want to use. You could decide, for example, that you want to limit your clothing to a single closet. Now you can select which items should fill the closet. Instead of looking at each item and making a painful decision about whether you can let it go, you are now rating your belongings. Which of your garments deserve a spot in your limited closet? You’ll be left with a closet full of your favorite clothing.

Setting parameters can also help with quick decision making. For instance, you can decide that any magazine more than two years old is junk. Now you don’t have to think about each individual item. You’ve already made a decision, and you can quickly sort out the trash.

Get the Help You Need

One problem a lot of people run into with decluttering is the labor involved. It’s one thing to clean out a junk drawer in your kitchen. But when it comes to hauling around boxes and even furniture, the decluttering process can become a lot more difficult. But luckily you don’t have to do it alone. A TrustDALE certified junk removal company can come into your home and remove all the stuff you don’t need anymore. They can go into your attic, clear out your basement, or haul trash from your backyard. They can even do light demolition, like hauling away debris from a renovation or removing a hot tub or play structure. Got old appliances? They can take them away and either donate or recycle that old fridge, oven, or washing machine. If you’re clearing out an office space, a junk hauling company can remove old furniture, electronics, and more and responsibly dispose of it all. So if you’re ready to declutter your home or office, stop procrastinating. Call a TrustDALE certified junk and trashing removal company to get started!