When I was doing work on sweatshop issues, I used to host “clothing swap” parties. Everyone brings over those clothes that you just don’t ever wear for one reason or another and folks get to choose what they’d like. What ever is left over can be donated to a shelter or thrift store (I like to donate to the Sunset Free Clinic Thrift Shoppe).

I know in San Diego, some folks will drive loads of unclaimed clothes from lost and founds, etc to poor towns in Mexico to distribute.

I work at a smallish tech company, and we’ve set up an unused and out of the way corner of our office as a place to dump things (mainly older electronics, videogames that have gone unplayed, etc.) that you don’t want but someone else might. Our IT department also uses this as a way to clear out decommissioned hardware. We try to limit it to stuff that someone might actually have a use for (no broken CRTs, for example).

Personally, it’s been a great way for me to clean out boxes and boxes of old videogame controllers, extra usb cables, and random computer parts without the hassle of ebaying it or the guilt of throwing it in the trash. Your old crummy PC could be your coworker’s shiny new kubuntu box for his home studio (though you may wanna pull those hard drives out before tossing them on the pile).

I bring all stuff I don’t need to my parents house, they have a big house and they don’t mind it. Benefits are: - I declutter my house - nephews will get lots of stuff to sort out at summer season - I visit my parents more often (probably it’s one of the reasons why they don’t mind me doing it :)

I organized a huge community yard sale, and raised nearly $4000 to help furnish houses for Katrina victims. My bosses let me use their parking lot for the sale, and their back room to store the stuff people donated before the sale. It was a huge amount of work, but a lot of people decluttered, and a worthy cause benefited. (Of course some people bought other peoples clutter, so maybe…) Declutter, and good Karma! ;-)

Where I live the local Arc chapter (www.thearc.org) will pick up stuff at no charge. If you’re on their list, they’ll give you a call every month or so to see if you have anything for them to pick up. Then you just set your stuff outside your door on the pickup day and they’ll haul it away. There may be groups in other areas that offer similar services. While its not good if you need stuff out the door right now, its a great service to help keep the clutter from piling up again, and it requires little work on your part.

I just donated a bunch of stuff to the Children’s Clothing Exchange here in Boston:

“Even at a used-clothing outlet, the cost of clothing a family of four can be devastating for transitioning families. And the vast majority of homeless families are single-parent families — primarily mothers with small or grade-school children.

At the Children’s Clothing Exchange, they trade for what they need — an eight-year old’s winter coat for a ten-year old’s summer outfit. Good quality for good quality. We take toys, too. If you don’t have good clothes, you can trade your time, volunteering. Shopping at the Children’s Clothing Exchange

Some are surprised that our barter system works with transitioning people at all. But we’re never surprised at how much a person who’s had so little is willing to give back. It’s simple: the participants fill each other’s needs, year after year.”

Boston’s is here: http://www.solutionsatwork.org/Services/ChildrensClothing.html

There might be a program like this in your city!

In the time honored tradition of patchwork quilting, I make art from clutter. What might become clutter in other households — old clothing and linens, paper ephemera, bits of wrapping paper and ribbon, broken beads and chine — is sorted, stacked, stashed in my mostly neat studio (Ah, the key to it no longer remaining clutter) and then used to make art. The trick is to have enough space and boxes or drawers to keep it sorted enough to be usable. This is reuse with a higher calling — throwing clutter away is just moving it from private to public problem sometimes.

My issue with clutter, is planning for a proper afterlife for the crap. I can let go of crap, but getting it a new home is my problem. Ok this might sound weird, but its sorta how I feel. Who wants to adopt my crap if I don’t want it? Noone? ok fine, I’ll hold on to it. Makes me miserable.

Can you find more places that accept crap, and explain the steps one goes through in contacting, arranging the pick up, or scheduling a drop off of stuff like old outdated furniture, obsolete tech items, clothes and old books.

We like to use something we call the “free garage sale”: there’s one bookshelf in our house that is not great for storing books because of its location, so the top four shelves are a constant display of stuff we’re getting rid of (not junk, but things we think other people would like). Yeah, it violates the Get It Out NOW thing, but it’s kind of handy: every time we have a party we fill the area up and then the guests clear it out, so it’s not as constant and horrific as it might be.

Needless to say, this only works because we’ve got the clutter thing down to a more manageable level. (Our method of choice for bulk removal was the combination 15-yd Dumpster and packed-car charity run. Much of our “clutter” was construction debris.)

Those who said 1800GOTJUNK was ‘reasonable’ - can you give a ballpark figure for your job? Their website says they can’t estimate without coming out and I just need an order of magnitude.