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A donation station might not be adequate space for your declutter items from the Declutter Challenge, so don’t confuse this suggestion with setting up the bins in How To Declutter. The Donation Station I’m talking about today is one you keep setup permanently and is great for maintaining decluttering throughout the entire year. A Donation Station encourages you to go ahead and remove an item immediately when you realize you don’t want or need it, instead of letting it linger until the next time you declutter that room.
One of my teens is my mini-me, and is regularly decluttering her stuff. Her always-impeccably-clean-room reminds me of my own childhood room. Regularly she will show me a grocery bag full of t-shirts or other things and then tell me she’s going to put it in the donation bin. She will even hand me a post-it where she has listed out the types of items and quantities (her self-made version of the Donation Tracker printable you can download below). Yes, I understand that this level of decluttering is rare in teens but when you’re born with the “tidy gene” AND your mom is regularly preaching about decluttering, you get to the advanced level really quickly. Don’t worry if you’re not there yet, this is a habit and routine you can form if it doesn’t come naturally.
In 2014, I first wrote about this concept of a specific spot for gathering decluttered items to donate. Back then my kids were so young that I was the only one using the Donation Station. I shared this topic again in 2019, adding more details as so much had changed in those 5 years and I had multiple people using the bin. As I’ve been working on cleaning up my old declutter posts and creating videos, I wanted to bring all these ideas into one place and add my current perspective.
My kids have grown up in an atmosphere where decluttering is regularly normalized and it has had amazing side effects. My kids are now 19, 19, 17, and 11, so I can see the effects more clearly than when they were children and I was just hoping my training would make a difference. I would say the effect has been massive. My kids aren’t really hungry to get more stuff for the sake of more stuff! They don’t really ask for a lot of junky stuff for birthdays and Christmas, or really at all. When they want something, it is usually something they really need or want and will actually use. One example to illustrate is my kids, even my girls, prefer a couple pairs of quality shoes instead of a closet full of cheap ones. Sometimes this can make gift-giving more difficult because there is an unspoken expectation in our household we all seem to follow that gifts be somewhat practical. Not that we don’t do fun gifts, but our “fun gifts” are things the kids will use regularly, like a new game, soccer ball, or fun accessory. No one wants to waste a gift on something likely to be decluttered soon. This is THE most important side effect of regular decluttering: it completely changes our perception of stuff in general.
The other day I was one of the parent chaperones of a high school club Christmas party. They were doing a mug gift-exchange. I was complimenting some of the exceptionally cute mugs kids brought for the game. A few girls told me that the adorable mugs weren’t expensive and offered to give me links to buy them for myself. I told them as much as I loved them, I probably won’t buy any mugs this Christmas because my kitchen mug shelf is full and I’d have to get rid of one to make space for a new one… and I like all our mugs. They totally understood that concept and said “oh that makes sense.” These are easy concepts that children and teens can definitely understand, they just need someone to teach them.
2013 Donation Station:
2019 Donation Station:
2020 Donation Station is now a purple laundry basket down lower on a garage shelf, so everyone can reach it better than when it was on top of the freezer!
Creating a spot in your home that everyone in your house has access to, and that doubles as a reminder to declutter the annoying stuff getting in their way, helps everyone! I believe every home needs a Donation Station!
I’ve always kept our donation stations somewhere in the garage. I like the symbolism of the item leaving the house! Of course, there’s no dictating that’s where it has to be. You could certainly find a spot for a bin in a bedroom closet or hall closet.
The Donation Tracker
If you don’t itemize your taxes, you can completely skip this step. Itemizing is worth it to us, so I do keep track of every item we donate. Well, I say every item, but I mean most items. There are just certain things that are too little or random to categorize on a list. When we go to do our taxes, I’m in charge of entering in all this info into TurboTax. I’m not being compensated to tell you I use TurboTax, but I like that the program generates the estimated values for me based on standardized amounts so I don’t have to fill out that section and guess the value. All I really need is what the item is, the quantity, and the condition, but I did leave the value column just in case that would be handy because ultimately you need that number, one way or another, for tax purposes.
Download this simple Donation Tracker.
I repeat: Decluttering changes our perception of stuff. When you start to declutter, you don’t have to lecture yourself about changing, you will naturally just start to think about it differently the more you get rid of things.
If you don’t have a designated place for donations yet – make a spot today. It’s easy, you just need an empty container. Then, put stuff you don’t need or want or use anymore into the container. I keep the donation tracking sheet on a clipboard at the top of the bin. When the bin or basket is full, I make a trip to donate. I repeat this many times during the year, easy-easy. Go and start a Donation Station now!
From my home to yours,
Mary
(Originally published on 5/15/2013 and the 2nd edition on 10/11/2019.)
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