Cleaning out your home can be an arduous task. The longer you’ve been there, the more you’ve piled up over time. Whether you are making space for a new addition to the family, cleaning out a room, or looking to sell some of your old things to make some money, there are a few basic strategies that can help you through it. While you’re working to make space, evaluate the technology in your house. This is one area that’s easy to clean out. You can recycle, repair, and repurpose a great deal of it.
Begin by writing out which rooms in your house contain your tech (computers, televisions, DVD players, video game systems) and then gather it into one space. Consolidate as much as possible. There are ways you can get rid of outdated technology that don’t involve throwing it into a trashcan.
Recycle & Repurpose
When you establish which items you can do without, make sure that you are disposing of them properly. There are recycling programs for batteries, town or county-wide collection days for old computers, and places that will accept donations for any of your items in working order. If you are the artistic type, there’s also plenty of ways to repurpose your tech for decorative or practical reasons.
Repair
Once you’ve weeded through all the outdated technology in your house and made peace with the fact that you need to let go of sentiment, it’s time to review what’ s left in your pile. Many people have items lying around the house that are broken that they haven’t gotten around to repairing for various reasons. Start by sorting out the pile based on cost. Some items are cheaper to replace than repair. If your DVD player isn’t working, for instance, go on Craigslist and pick up a new one. Don’t give it a second thought. On the other hand, if you have a cell phone, laptop, or tablet that needs to be fixed, you want to prioritize it.
Two of the reasons you should fix these items are the data on them and the fact that they are still current. For example, iPad repair can be surprisingly affordable, and then you’ll be back to reading on your tablet and playing games on it in no time. With cell phones and laptops, if you are getting them repaired, consider whether or not you should upgrade. For cell phones, if it’s more than 2 years old or for laptops, more than 3 years old, you should strongly consider this. With a laptop, you don’t have to replace the whole thing, just add some more RAM or a bigger hard drive.
Everything’s Going Digital
Hard copies are excellent to have for various media, but when it comes time to consolidate space, remember the following words…everything’s going digital. An entire room of your house could be consolidated onto a hard drive that’s smaller than a shoebox. Books, photo albums, movies, music, and magazines are all available online. Scan your photos, rip CD’s, and upload copies of your movies. Much of your collection will already be available through Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix, but you may want to consider holding onto anything that’s rare.
Mike’s job is to make sure that you are getting the most out of your living space by making necessary adjustments and clean ups in your home.