New Year’s Refresh & Reset

By: Lexie Kasper, ODC Network

The start of a new year is a perfect time to refresh your space, but knowing what items to donate (and where) or how to throw oversized or electronic items away can be hard. Read on to consider some areas of your home you can declutter, and all of the local options available for the things you no longer want or need. 

Step 1: Designate areas where you can create piles of items to sell, donate, recycle, or discard. As you go through items, you have to decide what to do with everything, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed and lose steam. Creating sorted piles and then addressing each pile separately makes it easier to manage. 

Step 2: Go through your space room by room. When decluttering clothes, consider how often you wear each item and whether it makes you feel good. When dealing with toys, consider the age the toy is meant for and how often it’s used. When dealing with personal items like makeup and lotion, pull unopened, expired, and partially used items out of the cupboard. When decluttering your pantry or kitchen cupboards, pull out any items you don’t want or that are expired. Don’t forget about going through collections of holiday decorations, outdoor gear, or other items that are out of sight for most of the year.

Step 3: Take out the garbage and recycling piles. Try to recycle as much as possible, but some items really have reached the end of their lives. For clothes that have been worn down to scraps, expired food and makeup, and toys that are so broken they’re unrecognizable, dispose of them. For the rest, review what is accepted in curbside recycling in the City of Holland by visiting the Recycle Holland website. If you have large items or items not accepted curbside (like appliances, furniture, or construction debris), you can request a disposal coupon through Project Pride. For hazardous waste, oil, tires, concrete, medications, etc, you can search for disposal sites through the Recycle Holland Location Finder or Ottawa County’s Environmental Sustainability Centers. For many electronics and strings of old lights, you can count on the annual Home Energy Expo to provide recycling opportunities every November.

Step 4: Give away the donation pile. Donating items is a great way to give items a second life when they still work and have value, but you have no financial investment in them. Buy Nothing groups on Facebook are a great way to reach people directly, but there are also many local donation centers. For toys, clothes, and decor, consider the Harbor Humane Resale Store, Ditto Resale, Community Action House Resale Store, and Goodwill. If you have new, unused kids’ clothes (especially winter gear), consider donating them to KODA 4 Kids. In addition, numerous local religious organizations accept donations for community members in need. 

Step 5: Resell quality items. If you have items in good condition and you have a financial investment in them (like a $300 gadget that doesn’t work as you thought, but it’s outside the return window and could be helpful to someone else), those are perfect for resale. Facebook Marketplace and garage sales as the most common ways that residents resell these items, but you could also consider a swap. Setting up an item swap with a group of friends, coworkers, club members, etc, is a great way to send along items you don’t use while obtaining items of a comparable value. You can even set themes or categories to swap within, like electronics, craft supplies, outdoor gear, or cookware. 

 Completing a comprehensive refresh can do so much more for you than just clean out clutter. It can help people use the forgotten items they have instead of buying more, and it can help direct people in more intentional purchasing. If you think you have no work pants, you may go through your wardrobe and discover you really only need one pair to round out your work attire. Knowing you don’t need to purchase a large quantity can help you focus on quality. You could make a more sustainable, long-lasting, local choice for that pair of pants instead of contributing to fast-fashion waste. Lastly, when a community has normalized open channels for donation and reselling, you’re helping shape its culture to uphold the ideas of “reduce, reuse, recycle, and repair,” which aid local sustainability and interpersonal connection. Both of those sound like great priorities for 2026!

Lexie Kasper is the Conservation Outreach Coordinator for the ODC Network.