Save Money While Decluttering

We are currently on the path to becoming debt-free and working on minimizing our belongings in preparation for long-term family travel with our three children. When I first started to go through our belongings I noted that we had an excess of many things. We are also working towards becoming debt-free so simply throwing things out or giving things away that we would eventually use felt like a waste. This left me in a weird spot and I just sat those items aside to deal with later.

After starting the Pantry Challenge, I began to look into other areas of our home in the same manner. I started to go through things before I bought anything. I used to buy craft items, beauty supplies, and cleaning products on a whim. We often bought things that were very similar or identical to things that we already owned. After I began to go through everything, I realized that we had a major excess of certain items.

I would like to start this by stating that we didn’t have an intentional stockpile of goods. We just had a habit of overbuying and things would get shoved to the back of closets and cabinets. We have a linen closet that was hiding most of the bath and beauty products that we had inadvertently acquired. It was always so full that you could never find what you were looking for. I didn’t expect to find as much stuff as I did. We had over 20 bottles of lotion and tubes of hand creams. We had loads of bars of soap. We had extra bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. Our back-up items had their own back-up items for things like toothpaste and toothbrushes.

We have a large closet in our laundry room that we used for board games, toys, cleaning supply overflow, kitchen overflow, and art/craft supplies. We had an entire plastic shoebox sized bin of crayons once we consolidated all of the boxes. We had about 80 pencils and even more pens. We had enough cleaning supplies to last us six months or more. This was a complete waste of space.

We decided to gather all of our nail polish into one area. Ivy and I both had decent sized collections.  We had many colors that were almost identical. We found additional bottles in the linen closet. Isabella had a few bottles. We were shocked to find that we had more than 150 bottles of nail polish in the house. If we painted our nails twice a week for the next year and a half, we still would have loads left.

Now, we check to see if we already have an item before buying it. I set up bins and boxes for different types of things so that we could find what we need easier. We have a bin for bath products. Instead of keeping our nail polish separately in our rooms, we consolidated them into two containers that are in the linen closet so that we can find the color we want and stop buying extras. I have decided that keeping more than one back-up for each item is unnecessary even in a family of our size. Now, I will add those items to my shopping list when we open the last one. We put a full spending freeze on nail polish, lotion, and hair products because we had so many of those items.

When it was back-to-school time, we “shopped” for supplies at home first. I have vowed not to buy any more kits or art supplies for us to use at home until we use up what we already have. I plan the girl’s quiet activities and rainy/cold day projects based on what we have on hand. Octavia is now home with me during the week so I need to find her stuff to do. She is only two and is quite entertained with a couple of markers and a coloring page. The girls did receive some things for Christmas that we added to the collection. They really do enjoy art, crafts, and science experiments so I know most of this will be used up by summer. We are just getting into our bad weather season. January to May is full of snow and rain in the Cincinnati area. A craft or science kit can be a real sanity saver during snow days or seemingly endless days of rain.

This whole experience has been quite eye-opening. It’s amazing how much stuff we had managed to obtain over the years. By making an effort to use up items before buying new, we are reducing the number of items in our home and saving money to be used on more important things. I was a little embarrassed by the amount of money that we had spent on these items over the years so that they could just sit in our closets unused. What do you have a ridiculous amount of? Have you done something like this? Tell me about it below.