I’ve been in the middle of moving into a new old house, of which you’ll probably hear a lot about here since I’ll be blogging about being green at home. It’s been a slow move with the intent of giving myself time to purge all the unneeded clutter in my home. But the urge to purge often means you end up just tossing a lot of that unwanted stuff in the trash.

I’ve been trying my darndest not to send anything extra to the landfill during this move. It’s required some thinking outside the moving box, so I wanted to share with you some of the tips I’ve discovered.

My aunt had the brilliant idea during her last move across town to buy a couple of large Rubbermaid storage bins to use as moving boxes. She’d fill up a load, take them to the new place, unload the stuff and then fill up another load. She keeps the boxes in her attic and let me borrow them for my last move. I bought a few of my own this time around. The movers loved them because the slid easily around on the carpet unlike cardboard boxes. My roomie and I have been using them in the past few days as a bin to hold all the items we plan on selling in our upcoming yard sale and as an extra large recycling bin. I’ll use the rest as storage for the stuff I don’t want to get rid of after the purge.

Speaking of recycling, Real Simple has a great A-to-Z guide on recycling. Did you know that in many places wire hangars, metal umbrella frames, metal eyeglasses and keys can all be recycled as scrap metal? Earth911also has lots of great recycling tips and can help you find a recycling center near you.

I’m sure most of you have heard of Craigslist and Freecycle, but I just want to reiterate how useful they are in trying to get things you no longer want into hands of people who do want it.

And of course, there’s always the option of donating to local thrift stores, many of which will take a variety of household goods off your hands. Or you can do the yard sale thing, which I know a lot of people avoid because of how much work they seem to be. The key is to MAKE them fun. My roomie and I plan on making it a cocktail party with mimosas and Bloody Marys for our friends who want to join us with their for-sale items. What’s not fun about having a few cocktails and making some money too? 

What are your tips for keeping household items out of the landfill?