Donation Station & Printable Decluttering Signs

Make your own donation station with these printable signs. It’s easy to keep your clutter under control with a handy station setup for discarding and donating your clutter.

If you love organizing your home, you’ll want to check out this Home Organizing 101 guide!

We all know the basics of home organization are to keep what you need and get rid of what you don’t use. But knowing it and doing it are two very different things.

Setting up a donation station will make all the difference! You’ll go from thinking about donating stuff to actually getting it out the door. Plus, having one also makes it even easier for your family and kids to donate their stuff too. No more fighting with them to go through their things.

What’s a donation station?

A donation station is a single location in your home where you set up bins to help get unnecessary clutter out the door. This can be in your laundry room, garage, basement, or anywhere that’s convenient to grabbing the items and getting them out the door. Some people even set up a donation station in each bedroom, which removes any excuses people may have.

Each bin is labeled with one of the four following categories:

• Rehome
• Sell
• Donate
• Recycle

When you consider an item that you no longer use, need, or love, choose which bin is most appropriate. Then, continue adding items day by day into the bins until they are full. As soon as one fills up, take it out the door.

I’m a firm believer that clutter is still clutter until it LEAVES YOUR HOME. That last step can often be the hardest one, but that’s okay- we’ve got you covered!

Donation station labels

The secret to making a donation station that the family will actually use is to label the bins. Thankfully, I already did that for you! I created labels, so all you have to do is download them, print them out, and attach them to your bins or totes.

Simply print, cut apart, and attach to bags and boxes so you know where to put clutter once it’s sorted.

To get your labels, CLICK HERE and you’ll get a printable set sent right to your inbox!

Decluttering Supplies

What are the supplies you need in order to set up a donation station? I suggest getting all of these things together first in case you need them as you go:

• Bin or Caddy With A Handle – This is what you’ll use to hold all your cleaning and labeling supplies.
• Cleaning Spray – Use this to clean the area before you add the donation station.
• Paper Towels – This is optional; you can clean it with a dishcloth instead.
• Sharpie Marker – If you don’t want to print out the labels, make your own with a marker.
• Brother P-Touch Labelmaker – This makes printing and attaching the labels a breeze.
• 4 Plastic Bins or Totes – You need at least one tote for each label.

Decluttering tips

As you set up your donation station, you’ll find ways to streamline it and make it useful for your family.

Here are a few tips that might help you as you try to declutter your home.

Add boxes in each bedroom

This first tip eliminates any excuses your kids might have and makes it super-easy for them to participate.

For example, put an outgrown clothing box in every closet for kids to toss in clothing that no longer fits or that they won’t wear. This streamlines the decluttering process, keeps clean laundry from going on the floor, and will make it super easy to collect the discards each season to donate.

In fact, as soon as they say they don’t ever want to wear something again, put it immediately in the “donate” box. When you find socks with holes in them, throw them in the trash. Easy!

Declutter regularly

Go into your calendar and create a repeating task to “take donations to charity.” You’ll be more likely to drive there and get this stuff out of your house when it’s scheduled.

It’s way too easy to let the bins sit overflowing in the corner. Make a regular appointment to empty the bins so they stay as organized as possible.

Keep mini bins in the car

If you’re a parent, you probably know the pain of keeping your car organized. Set up a mini donation station in your trunk. When you find toys that kids don’t play with, put them in the donate box.

The other benefit of keeping a donation box in your car is that it makes it easier to take this stuff to the charity of your choice. It’s all in the box.

Have the Donation Station in an easy-to-reach place near a doorway

Whenever a box arrives from Amazon or other online shopping source, we turn it into a donation box and put it in our main ‘donation station’. The Donation Station is where we always put unused/ unloved items, so we can grab the box on the way out the door. Ours is in the garage, and I pass it every time I go to my car which makes it hard to ignore if full.

If I’m heading towards our favorite thrift store, I’ll walk through our home and gather up outgrown clothing from the kids boxes in their closets and add it to the donation pile. Then the donation boxes go in my car and I can easily drop them off at the thrift store.

Print your donation station labels today!

To get your own set of decluttering labels, click below.

Removing roadblocks and getting clutter out the door are two of the MOST important steps when clearing your home of unwanted items. These free printable decluttering labels will make that process a cinch, so you’re one step closer to a cleaner, less cluttered home.

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