what to do with all that stuff (after you purge).

when youre on a full-scale whole-house de-cluttering mission, sometimes the clearing out is the easy part, and the hard part is figuring out exactly where all that junk you cleaned out should go. i mean, this can be difficult enough when you have a few bags of things, but when you have multiple car loads of stuff going out the quantity alone is enough to make it pretty overwhelming. and the stuff adds up fast. 
over the past year or so, from our one bedroom apartment weve taken at least six full car loads of stuff to goodwill, and thats not accounting for any of the stuff that weve sold, given away, or trashed. after all this, i like to think of myself as a sort of expert in the art of getting rid of things, so ive put together a (hopefully) helpful list of where all that stuff can go and what exactly should go where: 
1. the trash. this should be the most obvious one, where anything broken, unusable, perishable, or, you know, just trash, should go. 
2. family and friends. anything that either a. actually belongs to someone else (im really bad at remembering to give back things that i borrow...), or b. is something that you know somebody else would really enjoy/be able to use, should definitely be set aside to be given to that person the next time you see them. 
3. for sale. bigger things (like furniture and appliances), nicer things (like collectables and higher end clothes), and more specialized things (like crafting or sports equipment) tend to be fairly easy to sell, given that you have the time and patience. this is great because you not only get to get rid of all that stuff, but you also get to make some money. and no, you dont have to have a yard sale, there are totally ways around that. 
4. specific donations. if your purge happens to turn up a large quantity of something that a particular charity may be looking for (for instance, after cleaning out my dresser i found a HUGE stash of old prescription glasses), then its definitely a good idea to get those things where they can best be used. 
5. general donations. everything else, provided that its not broken/still useful (clothes, toys, decor miscellaneous household stuff) can be dropped off at the local goodwill/salvation army/whatever thrift store to hopefully find a home with somebody else. 
i recommend sorting things into these categories as you clear things out (for example, for most of our purge i had bins for trash, stuff to sell, and stuff to donate around the house), so as to avoid sorting everything twice, but if you find that it gets in the way of your cleaning, then my all means, clean then sort. 
whats your favorite way of getting rid of stuff? let me know in the comments!