Yes, it takes just one step to transform your home into a minimalist living space. It’s huge actually and if you want to give it a go there are a lot of smaller steps to go through:
- Throw away everything you haven’t used in a year
- Get rid of paperwork/magazines
- Find a way to properly manage all the cable work
- “A place for everything and everything in it’s place”
- Stop yourself (and others!) from letting more stuff get into your home
- Get rid of anything with strong patterns (floral curtains….)
- …
- …
There are probably hundreds of tips you can find all over the net but in the end it comes down to my one step:
- Keep every surface clear
Be it your desk, a wall, the floor, a table… Assign one (an only one) space in your home here you can “dump” stuff and don’t ever dump anything anywhere else. Everything has it’s own place and should be in that place and nowhere else. The simplest of examples that comes to mind right now is dirty laundry and the hamper. Dirty socks somehow have this tendency to land on the floor. Make it easier on yourself and undress in the vicinity of the hamper, or put the hamper closer to where you undress. The floor is a very popular storage place for all kinds of stuff. Just imagine the average dorm room, everything is all over the place and more often than not you can’t see the floor. The same goes for desks: stacks of paper, piles of books, (half)empty cups, maybe even your phone charger.
Take a look around your home and see all the surfaces, now imagine how they would look without anything on them. See the minimalism? It’s right there under all the clutter, just waiting for you to uncover it.
Why would you want to create a minimalist living area? Again, there are huge benefits. For ease of reading (and just because I can’t say it any better myself) I’ve copied a bit of a blogpost on Zenhabits
Benefits of a Minimalist Home
I could probably go on for awhile about this, but let me just list a few key benefits:
- Less stressful. Clutter is a form of visual distraction, and everything in our vision pulls at our attention at least a little. The less clutter, the less visual stress we have. A minimalist home is calming.
- More appealing. Think about photos of homes that are cluttered, and photos of minimalist homes. The ones with almost nothing in them except some beautiful furniture, some nice artwork, and a very few pretty decorations, are the ones that appeal to most of us. You can make your home more appealing by making it more minimalist.
- Easier to clean. It’s hard to clean a whole bunch of objects, or to sweep or vacuum around a bunch of furniture. The more stuff you have, the more you have to keep clean, and the more complicated it is to clean around the stuff. Think about how easy it is to clean an empty room compared to one with 50 objects in it. That’s an extreme example, of course, as I wouldn’t recommend you have an empty room, but it’s just to illustrate the difference.
You don’t need modern furniture, a stainless kitchen and all those other fancy things to be a minimalist. It’s simply the byproduct of minimalist living: because minimalists don’t buy a lot of clutter they save huge amounts of money and can spend that on nice quality things. The few items they do buy tend to be highly functional and of a superior quality.
Go have some fun in your home, one room at a time clear all the surfaces and find a place for everything you want to keep. Good luck and above all, enjoy yourself and reward yourself at every step!
Hey ,
Your post comes in such a gr8 timing … I am about to move to a new apartment and hope so this post and the further series would help me a lot in organizing my apartment properly .
Lastly we tend to buy certain things just because its a idea of that time or month .. I think so we should restrain such buying …. no need to buy unless we need it badly ..
Thanks
Sudeep
oh this is so good — in theory.
I am a “stacker”. Things get piled and I have a fantastic memory for about how far down in what corner of the pile something is. BUT I do feel stress when I see the big picture of the room! So each pile unto itself is good for me, ALL the piles are too much together.
I am getting better, at least I see the clutter now. My husband particularly is thankful for that…. poor guy.
I go crazy when I see things piled up everywhere. Some people have little ornaments or decorations on every open space. My house is very simple. No pictures on the walls and everything is hidden. However, it is some work to keep it organized. My desk has no problem accumulating debris.
It is interesting to note that houses in Japan are normally overstuffed with old things. Japanese place huge importance on the walls around their house and their gardens, but almost none on the interior of the house. Kitchens in particular are usually a mess. They are not used to entertain like western style kitchens, so people do not maintain them very well.
Of course, there are the designer houses you see in the magazines, but I haven’t had the opportunity to visit any of those.
Thank you for posting this. I am moving now to a new place. It is my mother’s house and I’m just going to be a guest for a little while until I start a new life with my fiance. I have been moving towards minimalism for sometime now, but I do need to work on the small piles of clutter that build themselves up once in a while.
Overall – I think this type of lifestyle is something that will compliment me and my future husband. It will take some work initially, but when I imagine the freedom associated with it – I can only hear the angels singing! :)
I’ve added you on twitter so that I can keep up with other minimalist individuals.
Cheers,
Adrienne