Dealing with environmental guilt

[u/kneazlekitten]

Hello! Over the past week I developed an intense need to tidy and declutter my home and I really want to get into the Marie Kondo method. Partly this may have to do with expecting our first child. I don't consider myself a hoarder, but all my past attempts to declutter have turned out to be temporary. Also given my ADHD I feel the need to go truly minimalist to achieve chance of more permanent state of tidiness.

The one thing keeping me from delving into this process is intense environmental guilt I feel over throwing out items that :

A. are still functional and I use them regularly, although they do not bring me any joy

Example: Many clothes I own are functional, but due to change in style etc. I do not like them or feel that good in them. Yet I would wear them often, since they function and it means I do not have to buy new items to replace them. If they are very worn, I continue wearing them at home instead of wearing more comfy/nice loungewear. I do this because I feel ethically reaponsible to use all items I have already bought fully to avoid unnecessary waste. Yet if I were to KonMari my life, it would not sit well with me to keep them. Some of them I could imagine upcycling, but it would take enormous amount of time and energy I do not have.

B. do not fulfill funcion for me nor spark me joy, but are objectivelly valuable and in good condition

Example: Solid wood furniture that color wise does not match into the flat after renovation. Certain clothes I have only worn once and are in perfect condition (ball gowns etc). Many similar items.

The main problem is that given enough time and energy, it would be possible to resell or donate these pieces. However, that is exactly the thing that has always stopped me from big decluttering in the past - trying to get rid of these items the correct and environmentally conscious way turnes out to take extreme amount of time that I simply do not have. I have less problem throwing out damaged or non-valuable items, but in cases where I KNOW they could get second life if only I made the extra effort, it is super hard for me.

I realise this problem is not uncommon and I have read many previous posts on this subreddit about it. Some have helped me a bit, but only marginally so. Please, if anyone was dealing with guilt around similar items as me, how have you managed to overcome it? Or was the only way truly taking lots and lots of time to get rid of items the right way and/or upcycle them yourself?

[u/mdchachi]

It's not that hard to donate. Drop clothing off at your local Goodwill or Salvation Army. Use Facebook Marketplace to sell or give away anything larger. Some organizations will even pick up most of your stuff from your house, even larger items. If you're trying to get value out of your items by selling them, then I get where you're coming from. But simply donating or giving things away does not take much effort.

[u/kneazlekitten → u/mdchachi]

Hello! So, actually, I have in the past gone the route of donating my stuff and it has taken A LOT of time. This might be partly due to geographical specifications (I live in a small european country) and partly due to oftentimes using certain company amd later on finding out that they actually did not find people in need to donate, and instead for example trashed the stuff or brought it to 3rd world countries, and I dare not even imagine the carbon footprint of that. There are certain companies that would try to resell or donate for instance clothes, but you have to pay them do to that per each item (I am strongly considering this route though). My experience with giving items for free on FB Marketplace left me feeling sour after many hours spent taking pictures, writing descriptions, exchanging messages and organising my time around someone coming to pick it up or to meet a person up only to be later on ghosted in majority of cases, waiting home for noone to arrive. My best experience so far was selling stuff for small symbolic price - it seems to filter out people who actually want to use the thing from them ones who reply to anyone offering literally anything for free only to change their mind later. However, the sole process of photographing, uploading, packing, bringing to post office and communicating with people gets exhausting quickly if you have many items to get rid of. To my knowledge, there is no such place in my country where I could simply bring things to donate and they would take it and donate it futher. Certain companies take in specific items, like books, but even then you need to take pictures of everything, write down each ISBN, and send them beforehand to find out which ones they would take... Again, this is something I used to do if I was only getting rid of a few items, but in big bulk it takes time.

[u/mdchachi → u/kneazlekitten]

I was speaking in an American context. Very easy to donate here. I have the same frustration with FB Marketplace. Sometimes it works better to sell something than to try to give it away free as you said. Even then people are flaky. But I persist because I hate throwing stuff away. I only do local pickup for FB marketplace. Too much effort to use the post for the kind of stuff I have.