You’ve Got Too Much Stuff. 3 Smart Ways to Declutter Your Home by 2024.
Worried about new acquisitions filling up your home this holiday? Here, organisational experts share tips to jettison old, unwanted items—whether you’re motivated by profit, charity or sheer exhaustion.
2 min
SMUG MINIMALISTS often tout the “one in, one out” rule, a clutter-control practice that involves removing one item from your home any time you add another. But during the amped-up accumulation of the holidays, even typically type-A housekeepers can find themselves derailed and searching for ways to cull the excess. “So much stuff is coming into our homes this time of year, along with pressure to be jolly,” said Chicago-based professional organiser Sarah Parisi of the Clutter Curator. “It’s a natural time to declutter.”
To help expedite the process, here she and other home experts share tips for deaccessioning effectively.
What to Do If…You Want to Make Some Cash
Prioritise. “The biggest question I ask my clients is what’s worth their time,” said Washington, D.C.-based decluttering expert Jenny Albertini. “Identify which pieces offer the highest return and focus your efforts on [selling] those.”
Local auction houses or upscale online décor marketplaces—like Incollect, 1stDibs or Chairish—are Albertini’s go-to for unloading particularly valuable furnishings. For everything else, New York-based interior designer Amy Lau prefers Facebook Marketplace. “It’s quick and commission-free,” she said—and though managing the selling process can be laborious, the payoff is usually worth it.
Craving a truly clean slate? Check EstateSales.org to find a house-clearing company to prep your home for a monster tag sale. “They’ll keep a percentage of the profit,” explained Albertini. “But you do much less work.”
What to Do If…You Want to Do Good
“The best way to get rid of stuff is whatever gets it out of your house fastest—usually donation,” said Dallas-based decluttering expert Dana K. White. For that reason, she encourages clients to think of organisations like the Salvation Army as service providers—and not to get hung up on which charity feels like a “just-right” match. Start with local homeless shelters, churches or Goodwill, which is as “ubiquitous as Starbucks” and a “good option for generalised donations,” Albertini said. Animal shelters sometimes accept odds and ends—like pillows and bedding—that other organisations won’t.
If you’re ready to part with an item but believe someone else could cherish it, steer toward organisations like Humble Design. This nonprofit—which operates in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, San Diego and Seattle—collects donated furniture and household items either by drop-off or pick-up and stores the goods in their warehouse. Humble’s designers and volunteers later “shop” the warehouse to furnish homes for families emerging from homelessness. Similarly, to keep reusable household items from landing in landfills, Habitat for Humanity’s ReStores accept used furniture, appliances, housewares and building materials and resell them to the public at discount, using the profits to build affordable housing worldwide.
What to Do If…You Want to Do Almost Nothing
Does decluttering seem like just another chore? For clients who are loath to add another item to their to-do list, Albertini recommends OfferUp, a classified service akin to Facebook Marketplace that requires fewer fussy photos and descriptions. She also likes the consignment site Kaiyo; it will pick up, store, clean and deliver your furniture to its eventual buyer for a percentage of the sale price. For anything leftover, hire a hauling service like 1-800-Got-Junk, Dolly or Junk King, which do 100% of the heavy lifting for you. Bottom line, says Lau: “If you don’t love it or use it, lose it.”
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This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
The latest round of policy boosts comes as stocks start the year on a soft note
2 min
China’s securities regulator is ramping up support for the country’s embattled equities markets, announcing measures to funnel capital into Chinese stocks.
The aim: to draw in more medium to long-term investment from major funds and insurers and steady the equities market.
The latest round of policy boosts comes as Chinese stocks start the year on a soft note, with investors reluctant to add exposure to the market amid lingering economic woes at home and worries about potential tariffs by U.S. President Trump. Sharply higher tariffs on Chinese exports would threaten what has been one of the sole bright spots for the economy over the past year.
Thursday’s announcement builds on a raft of support from regulators and the central bank, as officials vow to get the economy back on track and markets humming again.
State-owned insurers and mutual funds are expected to play a pivotal role in the process of stabilizing the stock market, financial regulators led by the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Finance said at a press briefing.
Insurers will be encouraged to invest 30% of their annual premiums earning from new policies into China’s A-shares market, said Xiao Yuanqi, vice minister at the National Financial Regulatory Administration.
At least 100 billion yuan, equivalent to $13.75 billion, of insurance funds will be invested in stocks in a pilot program in the first six months of the year, the regulators said. Half of that amount is due to be approved before the Lunar New Year holiday starting next week.
China’s central bank chimed in with some support for the stock market too, saying at the press conference that it will continue to lower requirements for companies to get loans for stock buybacks. It will also increase the scale of liquidity tools to support stock buyback “at the proper time.”
That comes after People’s Bank of China in October announced a program aiming to inject around 800 billion yuan into the stock market, including a relending program for financial firms to borrow from the PBOC to acquire shares.
Thursday’s news helped buoy benchmark indexes in mainland China, with insurance stocks leading the gains. The Shanghai Composite Index was up 1.0% at the midday break, extending opening gains. Among insurers, Ping An Insurance advanced 3.1% and China Pacific Insurance added 3.0%.
Kai Wang, Asia equity market strategist at Morningstar, thinks the latest moves could encourage investment in some of China’s bigger listed companies.
“Funds could end up increasing positions towards less volatile, larger domestic companies. This could end up benefiting some of the large-cap names we cover such as [Kweichow] Moutai or high-dividend stocks,” Wang said.
Shares in Moutai, China’s most valuable liquor brand, were last trading flat.
The moves build on past efforts to inject more liquidity into the market and encourage investment flows.
Earlier this month, the country’s securities regulator said it will work with PBOC to enhance the effectiveness of monetary policy tools and strengthen market-stabilization mechanisms. That followed a slew of other measures introduced last year, including the relaxation of investment restrictions to draw in more foreign participation in the A-share market.
So far, the measures have had some positive effects on equities, but analysts say more stimulus is needed to revive investor confidence in the economy.
Prior enthusiasm for support measures has hardly been enduring, with confidence easily shaken by weak economic data or disappointment over a lack of details on stimulus pledges. It remains to be seen how long the latest market cheer will last.
Mainland markets will be closed for the Lunar New Year holiday from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
