Iâm trying to ignore the norâeaster thatâs bringing gusts of wind, snow, and rain outside my window. Itâs March! Spring is coming! Right?! Thawing temperatures (that Iâm sure will be arriving next week) always bring the desire to spend as much time outdoors as possible. Itâs as if our cabin fever has finally broke and weâre energized and raring to go.
I get the itch to clean and organize our space every spring â purging the house of worn out and unused items means less time spent inside doing household tasks and more time spent outside playing catch. Our familyâs favorite way to clean out is with the help of two effortless services: Give Back Box and ThredUp. Both companies are centered around the idea of reducing waste, reusing, and recycling and offer a quick and easy way to give unwanted stuff new life and keep it out of landfills. And both are easy to use with just a little help from the post office and your home printer.
Give Back Box was founded in 2012 by Monika Wiela. As a shoe designer with her own online store, Ms. Wiela was moved by a homeless person she saw holding a sign that said he needed shoes. By the time she returned with a pair of shoes for the man, he had disappeared. From that experience, an idea was born to put to use the empty boxes in her warehouse and help others in need: Give Back Box.
The process is simple: fill an empty box with household items in good condition that you no longer have a need for. Print a prepaid shipping label from givebackbox.com, affix it to the box, and ship from your local USPS or UPS location. Your donation will be routed to a nearby participating charity organization. (We live in Brooklyn, and all of our Give Back Boxes have been addressed to a Goodwill in Astoria, NY.) In a matter of minutes you have purged unneeded items from your home, kept them out of a landfill by donating them, and helped support a local charity! Win, win, win.
ThredUp is a similar service for donating or reselling gently used clothing. Founded in 2009, ThredUp has grown to become the worldâs largest online market for buying and selling secondhand clothes. The goals of the company are to make secondhand clothing accessible, offer affordable style, and promote sustainability by reusing and recycling clothing.
Using ThredUp to recycle or resell used clothing is effortless. Just order a Clean Out Kit (a large bag with prepaid shipping label), fill with your pre-loved clothes, and drop off at the appropriate shipping partner facility. Your bag will be processed per your selection (as a donation or to be sold as secondhand). Clothes that are not accepted for resale on thredup.com are recycled or passed on to another third party seller. No landfills involved.
Services like Give Back Box and ThredUp take some of the hassle out of organizing and cleaning out your home. Rather than tossing your unwanted items in the garbage, they can be passed on to someone else, repurposed, or recycled in a simple process that takes only a few minutes of time.
Give-away boxes have become a household name and permanent fixture in our family; we always have a box in the entryway designated as our donation box.
When the box is full, we print a label from givebackbox.com and drop it off at the post office a few blocks away. Itâs an easy way to keep our home free of unused items and something the whole family can take part in.
Less stuff to organize and put away means more time spent outdoors as the weather gets warmer, and thereâs no arguing with that!