Spring Cleaning: Good for Your Wallet, Your Spirit and the Environment
Spring cleaning chores can actually feel therapeutic — cleansing your home and spirit of winter’s accumulated dirt and clutter. But did you know that spring cleaning can also benefit your household budget and the environment?
From coins collecting under your sofa cushions to your vast CD collection, spring cleaning affords an opportunity to recoup some cash in ways that are also earth-friendly. Here are a few ideas to turn spring cleaning into a money-making proposition:
Expand Your Decluttering
Spring decluttering often focuses on the garage, basement or attic. Expand your efforts to encompass those “junk areas” we all have in our homes, whether yours is a drawer, cupboard, closet or spare room. Take a hard look at items you just don’t use anymore (or maybe have never used) and decide whether they’re salvageable for resale or destined for the dump.
To turn clutter into cash, separate items into boxes marked “keep,” “donate,” “sell” and “throw out.” Hold a garage sale to empty your “sell” box, or consider selling items online.
Clean Out the Storage Unit
If you have so much stuff that you have to pay to rent a storage unit, you have too much stuff. Save yourself storage unit fees that can run hundreds of dollars a year by sorting through everything in your unit. If a box has moved with you three times without ever being opened, chances are it doesn’t contain anything you really need. Someone else may be able to use the contents. Add the items to your garage sale or online sale.
Reducing the amount in your storage unit may allow you to rent a smaller space, or even eliminate the need for rented storage altogether.
“Recycle” Your Coins
You may think the coins accumulating in your coin jar (or under the sofa cushion or the car floor mat) aren’t costing you or anyone else anything. But the more coins you return to circulation, the fewer new coins the government will need to mint, thereby reducing the need for the limited natural resources used to create new coins.
Gather up your change and take it to a Coinstar Center, found in retail locations across the country. You can now count your coins for free when you place the value of your change onto gift cards or eCertificates from national retailers like Amazon.com, Lowe’s, iTunes, Starbucks and more. Visit www.coinstar.com to find a location near you. To learn more about how “recycling” your coins helps the earth, visit www.changeforourearth.com.
Renew Your Art
Tired of the artwork in your living room or family room, but not willing to spend on pricey prints or paintings to replace it? You can turn that old grocery bag of photos you’ve been collecting into fabulous, meaningful art for your home. Enlarge your favorite photos, find a funky frame at a second-hand store, and update the decor in your living room quickly, easily and personally.
Toss out blurry photos or snapshots that no one will really care about in 10 years (like the cool floral display you shot on your last Disney World vacation). Keep the images that are near and dear to your heart, and likely to remain so, such as junior’s first steps or Christmas with three generations of the family around the dining table. Put those treasured images into an album.
Clean Up Your Music Collection
Anyone with even a modest-size collection has CDs separated from their cases, missing case jackets, scratched discs, damaged tapes and case-less cassettes. Gather it all together in one spot.
Separate CDs into stacks and toss damaged ones. Not only will you find the ones that went missing, you can take the CDs you no longer listen to and sell them at the local music store.
Spring cleaning is a great time to find some extra cash in your home, create a fresh and decluttered atmosphere, and give unused items a new life in your own home or in someone else’s.