Moving out of halls or uni housing is bound to be stressful and often comes with the difficult task of choosing what to throw out/keep. As much as we’d ideally love to keep everything as perfect memorabilia of our uni days this is often soooo impractical. It’s time to be ruthless and declutter that room in style.
Have A Method
Having a method is the best way to stop yourself from getting overwhelmed by the task at hand. Packing up and moving everything can be super stressful but by working through everything room by room or section by section you can start to break down the tasks. Start by working your way through your food cupboard and then methodically move onto your cutlery drawer. This certainly is more manageable then getting everything but the kitchen sink out onto the floor.
Categorise Your Items
Once you’ve found a section to focus on you’ll want to categorise your items into three piles; keep, bin and give away. Be rather strict with yourself with this one and don’t allow yourself to create a ‘maybe’ pile as this will only stop you from throwing out things. Ask yourself, do you need it? This may be easier to do with certain things than others; you probably don’t need to keep that banana peel on the kitchen sideboard but you definitely do need to keep those study guides!
Keep Things Minimal
The chances are you’ve probably collated a large amount of notebooks and coffee cups over the year. All of those spontaneous little purchases here and there can take up a lot of space in the long run (and uni students don’t get a lot of space) so it’s important to keep things like this to a minimum. How many mugs do you need? Do you really need five pairs of the same jeans in different colours? Would you actually like to see the bottom of your desk again without having to move a bunch of things every time you want to use it?
Instead of placing your items into multiple shopping bags filled to the brim (which will only make transporting things to your new uni house 10 times harder) think about condensing everything you need to move into a couple of large suitcases instead. This will help give your arms a rest and help you wheel your belongings across the city rather than having to make multiple trips back and forth with an unnecessary amount of bags.
Give Away The Things You Don’t Need
Uni students don’t have a load of money to throw around on buying essentials every year which is why you’ll often see lots of posts online advertising free items for collection from student housing and equally as many people wanting to take them. If you no longer need some of your items, consider giving them away to fellow students who will make use of them or perhaps put them up for sale online if you could do with an extra bit of cash in your pocket.