Christmas can be a stressful time in any household. Cooking, cleaning, shopping, wrapping and decorating can all take their toll on even the most strong-minded parent – but it’s even harder to manage when there’s junk underfoot and clutter everywhere.
In order to maximise your chances of a calm and peaceful Yuletide, I would recommend clearing out your home before re-filling it with gifts, your tree, mountains of food and all the other trappings of Christmas that turn an everyday, functional home into a battlefield of green, red and gold.
Everyone knows that charity shops see a sharp increase in donations in the weeks immediately after Christmas: an inevitable result of new toys replacing old ones, unwanted gifts being strategically “re-homed” and guilt over festive excess forcing us to give a little back. But why do we never do things the other way around and clear out before we stock up?
Well, let 2015 be the year that you do things differently – and if you have kids, start there. Obviously waiting until after they have gone to bed, start going through the toys that they don’t use anymore or those that you are planning to replace on Christmas morning, then get them down to the charity store or onto eBay. Not only will this give you an idea of what to buy them if you still haven’t decided and give you more space to function in the run-up to the big day, it will re-affirm your kids’ faith in Father Christmas’ psychic abilities.
But we adults also need to take a good look at our own belongings and be equally ruthless in respect to deciding what we actually need to keep – and if our stuff has seen better days, figure out where the best place might be to discard them. If you have old electronics at home, you may visit the website of Backflip to know how to sell them online.
Furniture can be especially tricky to get rid of. For larger items you may need to hire a van or pay for the council to come and take them to a landfill site, whilst waiting for someone to answer your advertisement on Freecycle can take an age – but did you know you can recycle your own bed?
Bedstar, a UK-based retailer offer a service that (for a marginal fee) will see them come and collect your old bed from your home – and rather than sending it to the tip where it will serve as landfill, they will make sure that is recycled rather than dumped. If you have other waste materials at bay especially metal or copper which are tough to dispose of, you can turn to metal and copper recycling companies that offer metal and copper recycling services as well as focus on elements such as a slag conditioner.
Not only will this give you peace of mind that you are doing you bit for the environment (as well as providing this service at a time to suit you), their wide range of beds – which can be ordered online with free delivery over £299 – mean that an ideal replacement is available at the click of a button and without having to step outside.
Saving you time, offering great value, creating space in your home and respecting the environment – there really are no drawbacks. So make sure that you take advantage of this offer this December – and get your Christmas off to a stress-free start.