Unless you are truly living the minimalist lifestyle, everyone has a little clutter hidden somewhere. It may be a hall closet, the trunk of the car, the basement, or a storage shed, but there is something, somewhere, that you own, but you don’t really need, or care about, anymore.
For this household, that’s a lot of things. We are a family of six, that tends to accumulate unnecessary stuff. Grandparents will drop off old toys or clothes, items will bet boxed up and tossed aside, only to be forgotten about for years. There are still unopened boxes from our move six years ago! I recently came across a box in our garage that had toddler shoes in them. Our youngest just turned 10. They were boxed up from our old house, moved here, and never opened and unpacked, and now everyone outgrew everything in that box.
With our current house project encompassing moving the girls from one bedroom to two bedrooms, that means we are going through every single belonging they have in these rooms. Every piece of clothing, every stuffed animal, every colored pencil. It is a long, tedious process. That’s where the donation box comes in.
I keep a spare cardboard box (or a few) from an Amazon delivery downstairs and designate it the get rid of box. Anything they no longer want or care about, they can toss into that box. That gives me the opportunity to look through it and pull out broken items that would best in the trash, and to make sure items placed in there aren’t missing pieces we may come across later on.
Sure, it’s not the prettiest thing to have a cardboard box hanging out in the living room or dining room. Sometimes we hide it away in our spare bedroom since we don’t use that room much unless we have overnight company. It is a critical part of our organizing arsenal though, so for now, the cardboard box stays (alternating rooms) as we continue to clean and organize the house.