As fall rolls around, you’re getting ready to close up your home as you prepare it for cold months. As you do so, you might notice that there’s a lot of junk taking up your precious space. Here are some of the most common things you should get rid of while doing your fall cleaning this year.
Old Food Containers
Sure, keeping those old yogurt container to use as Tupperware for leftovers may have seemed like a good idea at the time. However, now your cabinet spills dozens of old food containers whenever you open your cupboard. It’s time to weed out your stash so it can be used with ease. Get rid of containers that are missing lids and lids that are missing their containers. If containers or lids have become warped overtime due to heat or being squished into too small spaces, get rid of those too. Finally, get rid of any oddly sized containers that you don’t use.
Old Shoes
It’s good to have an extra pair of ratty shoes around for when you need to do like mowing, gardening, painting or washing the car. However, having multiple spare pairs lying around is unnecessary. They’ll only clutter up your home. Because you only need one old pair of shoes at a time, get rid of the excess.
Clothes
Look through your wardrobe. If there’s anything in your closet that you haven’t worn at least once in the last year, get rid of it. If you haven’t wanted to or had an excuse to wear it in that timeframe, you probably don’t need it. Take your unneeded clothes down to your local op shop for people who will get more use out of them than you have. There may even be some shops that will pay you for them. Now you’ll have more space in your closet and a little extra cash.
Papers
It’s not uncommon to keep old warranties, contracts, mail, leases, and other legal documents. You should make sure you have everything you need or may need in the future on file and protected. However, some of those papers may be things you don’t need anymore. Old warranties or instructions for things you no longer use can be thrown out or recycled to reduce clutter. Also get rid of any old cardboard boxes you don’t use. These can take up more space than you might expect, so look into different skip bin types to make your fall cleaning much easier.
Expired Medication
If you don’t use medication too often or if your medicine cabinet has gotten cluttered, you may not know what all you have. Likely, over time, many of the medications you don’t use regularly like cold medicine, pain killers, and antibiotics have expired. Past their expiration dates, medication will no longer be as potent as it should be. In fact, depending on their composition, they may change enough to be dangerous. Take stock of what you have, and throw out anything that is past its expiration date, especially if you have doubles of anything. Make sure you are always aware of what medication you have and how much of it is left.
Single Socks
Fall cleaning is a great excuse to clean out that sock drawer of yours. Sort through the drawer and pair up any matches you find, setting the singles off to the side. When you’re done, all those leftover single socks that you’ve put aside can be chucked. If you haven’t found its match, it’s very likely you’re not going to.
Old Towels
For some reason, we tend to collect old towels like they’re something precious. Because of that, you probably have a lot of old towels that aren’t in good condition anymore. If they have straggly threads hanging off them, holes, or odd bleached patches, throw them out, now. It’s easy to say that you might need them in the future, but if you really do need extra towels at some point—for guests or the odd spill—these probably won’t do a proper job. They’re just too worn to be properly absorbent. Get rid of those old towels and replace them with something new.
Beauty Products
While you have your dumpster waiting, it’s a good idea to look through your beauty products. As the first rule of thumb, if you can’t remember the last time you used a product, throw it out. Second, look at the expiration dates of your items and chuck what is expired.
Freezer Foods
We all tend to have food items that get lost in the back of our freezer. If items stay in there too long, they get that nasty freezer burn taste. Do yourself a favor and clean out your freezer so you don’t have to worry about biting into any nasty foods.
Fall cleaning is a great time of year to weed out the things in your home that you’re no longer using. The above are just some of the many items that you should consider throwing out this fall. We’re sure once you start cleaning, you’ll find many more items.