Thrifty Fifty: Tip #25 De-stash Your Home

This is part of The Thrifty Fifty series.  Each week I will give a tip on saving money, re-using, re-purposing, frugality, energy efficiency or just plain smart living.  If you have a thrifty tip to offer and would like me to feature it here, please drop me an email.  I'd love to hear from you. 

I know I am not alone in feeling like it's time to de-stash around here.  After Christmas the clutter and extra "things" in my home start to bug me.  Each day they nag at me to sort them out, and while I'm busy trying to have fun and ignore them, they only get worse.

So if I'm going to be able to enjoy the rest of the school holidays, the day has come to do the annual Christmas de-stash, then we can move on, more simplified into the coming year.  So here is my plan:

• The first step is to work out what toys the children no longer want/play with.  These can be put in a bag to give to charity.  Because I have children varying from ages 2 to 8 years, there will be some toys that are deemed too "young" by the older ones, these can be put away to be re-gifted to the younger ones at a later date.
• Now to find a home for all the new items.  The best way to do this is to have toys worked into categories and have a place for each category.  Our categories include "cars", "puzzles", "board games", "art/craft", "blocks", "dolls" etc.  We have boxes for each one or specific draws or cupboard space.

Let's see how long it stays this neat

• If there is not enough room for all the toy boxes to be out at once, store some away for a rainy day (or a really hot day).  My kids love it when I bring out a box of toys they haven't seen for a few months, and will play with them with renewed vigour!  For more tips on organising toys, make sure you pop over and check out Kelly's post over at Be A Fun Mum.
• Kids toys are not the only items that need sorting.  My kitchen also needs a good going over at this time of year.  It's good to look at what is in the most convenient cupboards and see whether you have used those items in the last 12 months.  If something is in there, unused, taking up vital space, move it to a higher cupboard or even consider getting rid of it altogether (one for the charity box).
• Christmas decorations can come down, sort through the broken/old ones as you are packing away for next year.  Christmas cards can be put away too.  I store mine in one of those zip up manchester bags and we use them to make Christmas crafts the following year.
• Now is a good time to sort through the kids clothes wardrobes also.  Hand down the smaller clothes to the younger ones and make a list of what new items are needed.  This helps with overspending as you know exactly what is needed and wont buy too much, it's never good to have too many clothes as this just leads to more washing.  True story.
• If your children wear uniforms to school, now is a good time to sort these out too, do any running repairs and labelling and make a list of any new items needed.  When I say "new", this can mean second hand of course, just new to you.

 I think that ought to do it, I'm going to leave the paperwork and filing for another day (I've said that before!) and now I'm going to enjoy the rest of the school holidays, guilt free.  Well as guilt free as a mother can!

Back to school holiday fun!