With kids off to school or young men and women off to college, it can be a trying time for parents. It might mean your child is just beginning school while for others it means your child is leaving home to stay in a dormitory.
With the child out of the house, even if it’
s just during the day, it also means you finally have time to tackle that project they could never seem to complete. Cleaning their rooms. This is an ideal time to go through and not only get rid of any trash they might have accumulated under their bed or in their closet, but also things they no longer use.
Have A System When Cleaning Their Room
Maybe in the beginning the plan is just to take a trash bag and fill it with anything that is obviously trash. Do this for one day and get everything that is meant to be thrown out. Then after this, start to take a strategic approach, as you may be looking at a job that takes a few hours.
Move the bed out and clear out everything here, from trash to laundry to school work from the previous year. Some things you might not know if they need so pile that up somewhere out of the way. Then vacuum the floor. Do the same with other furnishings in the room.
With the bed back in place, you might want to take a look at the mattress. Is it time to get them a new one? Especially if the old one is lumpy or stained or has tears. Or maybe it’s time to upsize their mattress from a twin size to a queen or king. It makes it nicer for retuning students if they know they’ll be getting a better night’s sleep.
Also, check out other furniture in the room. Does the desk chair no longer support them or is that night stand scratched up so bad it’s become an eyesore? Then maybe it’s time to replace some of the items.
The closet is the next step. As you clear the floor space here, and the shelves, you might have an additional job. To decide if some of these clothes no longer fit or are out of date. If they’re ruined, pitch them. If not, set them into another pile, one that could be donated.
This pile might get higher as you go through their dresser. Often a reason a child simply tosses their clothes into a corner is because their dresser is filled with items they no longer wear. Maybe it’s their old baseball uniform or their softball jersey. Or its filled with apparel from their old school, which they’re not likely to wear if they’re off to college.
Does the child have bookcases or a desk? Go through them and get rid of the old school folders or the text books from classes they took two years ago.
Electronics are another matter. You might find their old laptop or an early version of Xbox, they’ve since moved on from. Or old cell phones. With some of these items you might not just be able to toss them in the trash.
By the time you’re done you’ll have a lot more space that they’ll soon fill up once they return home. Still you’ve made the room livable again even if the victory is short lived.
If you have more than one child, then it’s time to begin the whole process all over again.
Make Cleaning Their Room Part of A Fall Cleanup
Once you’ve completed cleaning out your child’s room or rooms, you may find yourself with a number of trash bags and a few piles of clothes to donate. And maybe even an old mattress. Since you have all that to get hauled away, why not add to it. The fall is always a good time to go through the home to find items that are junk or unused. Winter is only a few months away, so why not have extra living space while your cooped up inside.
Go through the attic, the basement, the garage, and other rooms to look for things to get rid of. You might now want to do a deep dive into each room, but there are likely things you’ve set aside because they didn’t work and you intended to get rid of them later. Now is that time. Maybe you don’t even want to take them out now, but make a list so when you are ready to get ready of things you’ll know what goes.
Get Professional Help to Haul Things Away
Whether you’ve just cleaned out one room or cleaned out a number of rooms, you might have more than you can just set out on the curb for the next pickup. Why not hire a junk removal company to stop by at your convenience to haul it away?
When they arrive, you could also get rid of the items you want to donate. Most junk removal companies take a green approach to getting rid of trash. They’re automatically looking for any items that have use or that can be recycled so they only take the barest minimum to the landfill.
Another benefit is that you can just leave everything where it is and they can haul it away. So if you have items in a bedroom, other stuff in the attic, and maybe even more in the basement you just let them know where to find it. Go off your list and point out what needs to go.
If you live in the Washington DC area, Northern Virginia or either Prince George and Montgomery Counties in Maryland then contact Nova Junk. Let us do the heavy lifting so that you can enjoy your time with your family, particularly the student. Call us today at (571) 432-8162