09/01/2026 General News
Alongside the usual pledges to lose weight, exercise more and cut down on the wine, one of the more common new year’s resolutions is to declutter the house, writes Tim Blyth.
There are many good reasons to undertake this task: research shows that decluttering can reduce stress, improve mood and create a healthier environment, leading to greater clarity, better productivity and even higher quality sleep. Studies show that it can clear mental space, helping you to focus and reducing anxiety.
For most people, though, the desire to get rid of ‘stuff’ is more about creating space in our ever-more cluttered homes, and there is no better time to undertake this than January. Not only does the festive season see yet another deluge of extra possessions coming our way under the Christmas tree, but the new year is when many of us resolve to get a grip and sort our lives out – and the catharsis of decluttering is a good place to start.
Often, this process has involved chucking out things we either no longer need, or never really used in the first place. But an increasing sense of not wanting to waste the earth’s precious resources, coupled with a cost-of-living crisis which is making us think twice about squandering our own assets, means that more and more people are looking for another way to dispose of their surplus possessions.
This explains the growing desire to give things a ‘second life’ – in other words to ensure that they are recycled and re-used rather than just jettisoned into landfill. Which is why increasing numbers of people are turning to the auction room to find that new life for the things they no longer need.
The auction trade is the oldest recycling business in the world, as well as preserving our heritage for future generations. By encouraging reuse and upcycling, it reduces landfill, reduces wasteful energy spent on manufacturing unnecessary new items, and thus reduces carbon emissions. Salerooms like Keys are in fact some of the largest recycling centres around.
Of course, in times of economic stress, there is another reason for choosing this route as well. Pick the right auctioneer and you can maximise the financial return on your decluttering, too.
Perhaps the most satisfying occasions for auctioneers are when something which the vendor thinks of as mundane attracts frenzied bidding, and achieves a hammer price far beyond expectations – and you would be surprised just how often this happens.
Every antiques dealer and auctioneer will tell you the apocryphal story of the chap whose dog has been drinking for years out of a bowl which turns out to be Ming dynasty. But ridiculous as that urban myth sounds, it is very much rooted in reality.
Of course, not every decluttering exercise will unearth such gems. But the point is, if you don’t allow genuine experts to take a look, you will never know, and the chances of missing out are that much higher.
Spotting items of value requires a range of expertise, and realising the full value of those items on the open market is best undertaken by offering at auction with a professional auction house which can offer the items in the correct sale, to the right market.
That breadth of sale type is vital: regular ‘general’ sales are a great way of finding buyers for more mundane items, but if that is all that is available, you run the risk of letting more valuable possessions go for much less than their true value – which is where an auction house with a range of experts and offering different levels of sale which will appeal to different buyers come in.
When it comes to decluttering, too many people go for the easy option of booking a skip, or allowing house clearers to simply take everything away, without consulting experts about its true value. This could be an expensive mistake.