How do I declutter before moving house?
Moving is the one time decluttering pays for itself directly, because everything kept is paid for twice — once to pack and once to move.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 4 hr
- Read
- 2 min
Short answer
Work room by room in the order you will pack, starting with storage areas rather than living space. Decide by whether you would buy it again for the new home, not by whether it is still usable. Deal with disposal routes early, because charity shops, tips and collections all need lead time.
Decluttering in normal life competes with everything else and gets abandoned. Before a move it has a deadline and an obvious payoff, and the decisions are easier because the question changes from "do I want this" to "do I want this in the new place", which most people find far easier to answer.
Step by step
- Start with storage, not living space.Lofts, garages, sheds and the backs of cupboards hold the highest proportion of things nobody has thought about in years, and they are where the volume is. Living space is mostly things in use.
- Use the would-I-buy-it-again test.Not "is it still good" — most things are. Asking whether you would buy it again for the new home cuts through the sunk cost that makes decluttering hard.
- Book disposal routes before you need them.Charity collections, bulky waste collections and tip slots all have waiting times, and they get booked up. This is the step that decides whether the pile leaves the house or moves with you.
- Sort into leave, sell, donate, recycle and dispose.Five destinations, each with a physical place to put things. A single "not sure" pile becomes everything, so give uncertainty a deadline instead of a pile.
- Be realistic about selling.Selling takes photographs, listings, messages and meeting people. It is worth it for a few valuable items and rarely worth it for a carload of ordinary ones.
- Measure the new place before deciding on furniture.The most expensive decluttering mistake is paying to move something that does not fit or has nowhere to go. Check doorways and stairs as well as rooms.
- Deal with paperwork separately and early.It is slow, it needs concentration, and some of it needs shredding rather than binning. Doing it in the last week is how documents get lost or dumped unsorted into a box.
- Keep an essentials box out of the process.Whatever you need for the first day and night stays with you and is not part of the sort. Decluttering the kettle is a mistake people only make once.
Tips
- Anything you cannot decide on can go in a dated box. If the box is unopened a year after the move, you have your answer.
- Do the sorting before the packing materials arrive. Boxes make it far too easy to defer a decision.
Questions people ask
How early should I start?
As soon as the move is likely rather than certain. The storage areas can be sorted long before anything else happens, and they are the slowest part.
What about sentimental things?
They are the slowest decisions and should not be first. GuideHQ has a separate guide on decluttering sentimental items; leave them until the easy volume is gone.