About six months ago my family moved from Chicago to the suburbs. Our Chicago house had been in my family for 30+ years and was bigger than we really needed. When we moved to our new house, which is smaller, we had a LOT of de-cluttering to do. A LOT. Like 30+ years worth. We had a garage sale, sold things on eBay and Craigslist, gave things away to family and friends, and donated a ton of stuff. To my surprise, the donating was the difficult part. We had clothing, toys, furniture… even a piano to donate, but it was difficult to find places to take all the things we had. Let me tell you, it’s not always easy giving things away!
I recently got an email telling me about Zealous Good and I really wish I had known about them earlier! Zealous Good matches up donors with charities. It’s free for donors to use; just register on the site and then fill out a form about what items you have to donate. You can even add photos of the items to increase the likelihood that a charity will request the item. Local charities can then request your items and you choose which one will get your item and arrange for pick up or drop off. Zealous Good is in Chicago, but is now expanding to the North and Northwest suburbs. And of course when you donate to a non-profit agency the donation is tax deductible!
When do you usually de-clutter? How often?
