Recycle it yourself

Selling your old stuff can be a hassle -- and it might not be worth anything -- so if you just want it out of the house, look into recycling.

Local council recycling sites
A good place to start is your local recycling site. You can find the nearest recycling centre using sites such as Recycle Now and Recycle More, or by calling up your local council.

Depending on the size of the centre, it will offer different solutions and only let you recycle certain items, so it's worth finding out what they'll take before you go.

Unlike selling an item, you won't need to clean it, but it's worth making sure you separate any parts that can be recycled separately, such as CDs, printer cartridges, power adaptors and anything else that has its own recycling section at the site.

If you're going to take loads of stuff, try to go at a less busy time -- Saturday mornings are very popular.

If you don't have a car, you can ring your council up and get them to collect old goods from your home -- under the WEEE directive, they have to offer this service -- but you might be charged.

Freecycle
If selling your old TV, mobile phone or MP3 player isn't practical, you can always recycle it in a more direct fashion by giving it away to someone else. Freecycle lets you do just that and it's very easy to use.

All you do is visit Freecycle.org, search for the nearest group to where you live and join it. Once you've joined, you can advertise practically anything on it, under the condition that it's completely free.

Make sure to list as much detail about the product as possible without going overboard. Be careful about how much personal information you put down and try to limit it to an email address or a phone number until you're certain someone is legitimately interested.

Once someone has replied to your post you can let them know where to collect the item from. You can arrange for someone to collect the item from your house or if you'd rather they don't know where you live, a busy and well-known public place will do.

Other sites worth checking out are Recycle.co.uk or vSkips.co.uk, which both offer similar services.