With summer coming to an end, now is the perfect time to de-clutter your home, sort through your belongings, and eliminate the things you no longer need.
A clear-out can create extra space for your autumn décor and help you stay organised over the coming months until it’s time to prepare for your annual spring clean.
If you’re moving house soon, de-cluttering now can help you avoid paying to move unwanted furniture and furnishings.
Likewise, the property you’re moving into may require a full house clearance if you’ve inherited it or the previous owner passed away.
With so many potential reasons to de-clutter your home, let’s dive into what a house clearance is and explore top tips and advice for getting the job done.
What is a house clearance?
Firstly, what is a house clearance? This is defined as sorting through everything in your home and removing waste items by throwing them into a skip or donating reusable things to charity.
A house clearance differs from a typical de-clutter due to the scale of the job. A small clear-out might involve one or two bags being sent to the charity shop, but a house clearance entails removing much more. Sometimes, it’s an entire property being emptied.
An essential piece of house clearance advice is to sort one room at a time. This avoids the overwhelm of having lots to do but little space to move and store items.
House clearance advice
Sort everything into piles
When organising your belongings, divide things into three separate piles to keep, donate, or bin.
Be ruthless when getting rid of possessions, as you’ll regret it otherwise. For instance, throw a piece out when sorting through clothes if you haven’t worn it in the past six months. Likewise, if something is collecting dust in your home and you’re keeping hold of it “just in case”, it’s time to get rid of it.
Once you’ve completed the first room, keep the donate and bin piles there and add to them as you finish each room. Having just two piles rather than two in each room will help when you’re ready to dispose of the waste or arrange a charity collection.
Donate where you can
While de-cluttering, any items in good condition should be salvaged, donated to charity, and given a second life.
If there are items you’d like to donate, check with your local charity shop to see if they’ll accept them.
Charity shops typically take a wide range of donations, while some concentrate on specific items — for instance, there’s an Oxfam bookshop in Headingley.
It’s always worth calling ahead if you’re planning to drop donations off, as sometimes, a charity shop will stop accepting donations when their stock room is full.
Most charity shops can collect from your home if you have bulky items or a lot to donate. Alternatively, you can request charity bags and leave bagged items outside for collection on pre-agreed days.
Review the amount of waste
If you feel highly motivated to clear the clutter, you’ll have a lot of waste to shift, so you must consider what to do with it.
When you’re unsure whether to hire a skip or visit the tip, it’s worth weighing up the pros and cons of both options. This all depends on how much waste you have, whether or not you can fit it all into your vehicle, and where your local recycling centre is.
Alternatively, you might decide to arrange a waste collection.
Consider hiring a skip
The simplest solution to dispose of a large amount of waste at home is to hire a skip.
A skip is an easy and safe way to eliminate large amounts of waste. You can quickly dispose of many things in a skip and arrange for collection at a time to suit you. With our hire flexibility, you can book a skip for three days or weeks, depending on how long the house clearance takes. Hiring a skip is also cost-effective as it’s a one-time fee.
We provide a bespoke and cheap skip-hire service across Leeds and West Yorkshire
What size skip do I need?
We have many skip options available, suitable for domestic and commercial use.
Our midi skip is four cubic yards and can handle 40-45 bin bags of waste, whereas our jumbo skip is 14-16 cubic yards and can hold between 100 and 200 bags.
For more details, check out our skip size guide or contact us for a quote.