The minimalist lifestyle can be simplified into 3 words, “Less is more.”
When you live minimally, you strive to only use things that serve a purpose. It’s about living simply and having only what you need to go about your daily life.
With the hustle and bustle of today’s society, everyone is constantly on-the-go. Often, we don’t realize how much our lives are cluttered with stress from things, relationships, work, or just life.
Taking the first steps to declutter your life is a big move, but you might need a game plan to make these habits stick. Keep reading if you’re considering some decluttering this season or want to learn how to practice a minimalist lifestyle.
How To Become A Minimalist
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Declutter Your Schedule
We lead busy lives. Often times, as the saying goes, we bite off more than we can chew.
Time clutter is the steady accumulation of extra commitments, events, errands, projects and to-do’s that we take on, but don’t actually have the time to fit it in. Whether you have a hard time saying no to family and friends or are a workaholic, you are the only person who can control their schedule and start living a minimalist lifestyle.
Tips On How To Be Less Busy
- Make “No” your default answer: We often want to say yes to everything not to let people down. Focus on you, and only say yes to things that you have the time for.
- Accept fewer meetings at work: Yes, we agree most meetings could’ve been just an email, try to focus on the important meetings, and if you can, say no to others.
- Block out time to do nothing: Everyone needs a little alone time to just veg out. It helps people recalibrate, leading to more productivity later on.
- Stay off social media/news: Social media can give you the guise that your life stinks and everyone else’s is perfect. The news can be depressing. Cut this out to stay happy.
Over time, you’ll find that by minimizing your appointments you can lead the productive, uncluttered life you want to want live, rather than always pleasing those around you.
⏰ Clutter causes you to procrastinate. When you are overwhelmed, everything gets delayed and pushed to the last minute which is a huge time suck. Expert tips on how to declutter your home ❯
Eliminate Digital Clutter
In 2024, most of society has gone digital. Conference meetings and job interviews are now on Zoom, and people are online now more than ever.
Sure, there may be less paper clutter, but our digital lives can also become cluttered. Between documents, images, emails, to-do lists and more, there’s a lot to organize. The truth is, your digital environment is either producing clarity or complexity. Here are tips for how to start living a minimalist lifestyle digitally by cutting down on all of your digital clutter.
How To Organize Your Digital Life
- Turn off notifications: Not only will this help limit distractions, but you can rest easy knowing you won’t hear the constant ding from your phone or tablet while working.
- Organize projects: Whether it’s a work project or personal one, keep everything organized in files, with either a Google Drive or on your desktop.
- Use a password manager: Don’t get locked out of important accounts. Keep everything in one place with a password manager on your phone.
- Offload photos to iCloud: Photos take up a lot of space, offloading them to to iCloud or an external drive frees up room for other things you need.
How To Deal With Physical Clutter
When dealing with physical clutter, learning how to go minimalist starts with what you surround yourself with in your living space.
People living the minimalist lifestyle reduce the number of possessions they have in their life by focusing on the reasons why they own them.
A great example comes with organizing your closet. Sure, everyone loves to look good, but do you really need 20 different pairs of shoes?
Minimalist decluttering in any corner of your home starts with paring down to the essential items. No, you don’t need to go naturalist and live in the woods like Henry David Thoreau, but you also don’t want to be a hoarder, which can lead to serious damage to relationships.
To live like a minimalist means focusing on an abundance mindset over a scarcity mindset. Appreciate what you have that cover your needs, rather than pursue the desire for more.
So, how do we tackle physical clutter with a minimalist mindset? Managing both inbound and outbound possessions is great way to keep everything organized so you’re not overwhelmed.
How To Create A Minimalist Home
In a nutshell, the basis of the minimalist lifestyle is quality over quantity. In terms of physical clutter, this starts by evaluating your shopping habits. If you find yourself constantly needing to buy new furniture, wall decor, or upgrading your appliances, try and take a step back.
📚 In Their Words : “Have the courage to build your life around what is really important to you.” – Joshua Becker, The Minimalist Home
Over-purchasing items for your home will eventually just make you have to declutter your space later on, and if it’s too overwhelming, even hire a junk removal service.
Have too much junk to live minimally? BOOK A PICKUP ❯
At this point, you may have been shopping for your home like this for years and have fallen into a habit. Here’s a quick rundown and some tips on how to be a minimalist at home.
Minimalist Decluttering Tips To Help You Love What You Have
- Purchase less, love every item more: Find joy in simple things. Maybe your old couch came from your grandparents. Find meaning in what you have, and embrace it.
- Follow the 1-in, 1-out rule: Turn it into a challenge for yourself. For every item you buy for your home, you have to either donate, sell or recycle a different item.
- Digitize movies and books: If your bookcase or entertainment is overflowing with books and movies, keep it simple and convert them to your digital DVD library or with a Kindle.
- Consider reusable items: Using reusable items like straws, coffee cups and filters, diapers and more to cut down on the amount of trash you create.
- Give everything a place: Once you’re getting the hang of decluttering, organize your storage spaces so everything has a spot, leaving you with less of a mess.
Tackling Financial Clutter
Whether we like it or not, money is a big part of our lives. When finances aren’t in order, it can affect our moods, especially when personal and important documents are scattered around.
Thinking like a minimalist with your finances starts with budgeting, but it doesn’t end there. Budgeting can be intimidating, but it’s better to start than let your financial problems grow.
Here are some tips to develop minimalist habits to help create a minimalist wallet.
Simplify Your Finances
- Save money to buy time: Buying time means using your money to take care of things that you’d normally do on your own. This is anything from mowing the lawn to junk removal.
- Cancel unused subscriptions: Subscription models are being used by just about every business now. Take a moment to decide what you need vs. what you’re wasting money on.
- Automate bills, savings and investments: Setting up autopay for bills, savings and investments you want is a great way to have peace of mind without financial clutter.
- Tackle debt in a minimalist way: Debt is clutter on multiple levels. Purchases end up in your home and on your credit card statement. Solve the root cause of your debt.
- Follow the 50% needs, 30% wants and 20% savings method: This budgeting technique ensures you’ll be saving money every month, and it puts emphasis on things you need.
Caring For Relationship Clutter
You may often think of clutter as physical things we can see, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But believe it or not, we have a lot of clutter in our personal lives, and it comes in different forms.
Relationship clutter can be anything, or anyone that is providing negative energy in your life. It can be simple, such as a friend who takes advantage of you, or more serious, like verbal use in a romantic relationship, which can be particularly damaging.
So, how do you get rid of relationship clutter? Part of the minimalism journey is taking care of yourself and your well being, and that starts with your emotional space.
Taking Care Of Your Emotional Space
- Spend less time with people who steal your energy: Distance from relationships that are emotionally draining. You don’t need to cut ties completely, but look out for yourself.
- Spend more time with people who give you energy: Focus on relationships that are supportive and uplifting. If you feel good being around someone, hold on to that.
- Introverted? Block out time to be alone: If you find that you’re happiest when you’re in complete solitude, schedule your day to give you ample time to relax by yourself.
Reducing clutter in relationships is all about protecting your emotional space. The people we surround ourselves will influence everything from our actions, moods to mindsets.
Reduce Clutter and Simplify Your Life
Living minimally is all about simplifying your life. Life is already hard enough on its own, why make it harder?
The best thing to do after you start to practice minimalist habits, decluttering and organizing is to research donation pickups or recycling options for your items. If you find that this task is difficult and you need a little help to get you started, there is a solution.
At LoadUp, we focus on eco-friendly and sustainable measures to get rid of items. Our team not only helps you live minimally with on-demand junk removal services, but we also practice what we preach! LoadUp will haul off that old couch or refrigerator you no longer need to help you learn how to go minimalist today.
But after that, it’s up to you to decide how you’ll live “less is more” aka the minimalist lifestyle!
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