Minimalist Home Guide – 9 Tips To Simplify Your Space
A minimalist home can make living in your space more joyful and peaceful. It also has the benefit of giving you an easier time whenever you move.
According to a statistic published in an NBC News article, the average home has 300,000 items in it. That’s an astonishing number to imagine.
The average size of households in 2020 was 2.53 people. Does a household that size really need that much stuff?
When comparing 2.53 and 300,000, it feels kind of insane. It feels like maybe it explains all of the stress and anxiety we can feel often in life.
We’re overflowed with the things we don’t value or need, and we’re lacking in what really makes us happy.
Minimalism can help start you on the pathway to achieving the kind of fulfilling life that you want to have.
As you start decluttering, you’ll be less burdened by the unnecessary items that take up space.
You’ll make more room for the items your passionate about, more time for the people you care about, and more moments enjoying the activities you love.
Creating a minimalist house doesn’t have to mean filling up your place with modern aesthetics that are black, white, and gray.
It also doesn’t mean living in a completely bare space. It just means organizing your home in a way that makes you feel good.
Here are nine tips for making your place more minimalist.
1. Start with your room
Our rooms tend to be the place we spend the most time in. Additionally, it can be an easier way to begin since other rooms that are larger could be more challenging.
When you successfully decluttered your room, you’ll feel more motivated to tackle the bigger spaces such as your living room and kitchen.
You can start on the floor of your room first and then work your way up. Clear away all of the small items on your surface that are taking up space.
Then you can start figuring out the furniture items in your room. Maybe you have a big desk or drawer that you hardly use.
Perhaps you want to minimize the size of your bed. Think about those things and make the choice you feel would make you happy.
Clear out other items that you rarely or no longer use. Examples of what you can remove include:
- Clothes you no longer wear
- Books you never read
- Papers that have piled up
Anything that’s not helping you have more peace of mind, consider giving it away or throwing it out.
Imagine how some of your extra pillows, covers, and sheets could help someone sleep well. Think of how other items you don’t use could be valued by someone else.
It can help inspire you to let go of those items you no longer use as much. As your room becomes more organized, you can also consider hanging up things that you really like.
2. Empty all your cabinets and drawers
As you move towards the kitchen, the living room, or the bathroom, there will be a lot of cabinets and drawers to go through.
Some of them will have stuff you probably haven’t used in years. It’s all these things piled up which inevitably gives you anxiety when you can’t find something you need or want.
Clearing out all the items will help you to begin sorting everything that’s just cluttering up your space.
As you remove duplicates, expired things, and other worn out stuff you don’t use, everything will be more organized.
You’ll be able to open a drawer or a cabinet and see exactly what you need whenever you want it. How much of a relief would that be?
3. Clear up your tables, counters, and desks
Anything in your home that you place things on top of it, start sorting out all of the items on them. Desks and countertops tend to get the worst of clutter.
After a long day of work, when we get home, we can feel too tired to put things in an organized place.
We toss random papers or other things we picked up on the counter. Over time it all starts to pile up and the mess begins to feel like a daunting task to clean.
We should make it a point to be sure everything we put down somewhere, we have plans to pick up again in the future.
Unless something you place on your desk, table, or counter is a decorative piece or has some kind of functional purpose, don’t leave it there.
It’ll help us to be less likely to let things build up to the point of becoming overwhelming.
Related: How to Start Decluttering When Overwhelmed by All of Your Stuff
4. Take things down from the walls
If you have a lot of things hanging on your walls, you can start take those things down as well.
You may have old posters, pictures, or decorations that you’ve had there for months or years.
This is the time to revaluate if those items still make you feel good whenever you look at them.
In some cases, like a picture of you and a former friend or partner, it may be time to let go.
It should be the case that everything we look at on our walls is something that calms us or makes us happy.
5. Personalize your space
As you have everything that’s excessive cleared out, you’ll finally get the room you need to make your home your own personal paradise.
As written earlier, being a minimalist isn’t about having as little as possible. Unless of course, you want to practice extreme minimalism.
But in general, simple living is about organizing our place and living a life that makes us both more peaceful and more joyful.
So naturally, it would of course be fine to fill up your space with more of the stuff that brings you peace and joy.
Everyone’s version of clutter is different. For one person, if they enjoy cooking, completely filling up their space with cooking supplies would make them happy.
For another person who doesn’t do much cooking at all, that would be clutter. They might prefer filling up their space with instruments, because they enjoy music.
In either case, because the items a person has an abundance of makes them happy, that reflects a lifestyle of minimalism that works for them.
You can take time to think about the stuff that makes you happy and create a version of a minimalist lifestyle that works for you.
6. Go smaller where you can
Particularly in western cultures like America, we’re so used to following the philosophy that bigger is better.
But in the case of your house or apartment, there are a lot of reasons why it isn’t always better. Among those reasons include:
- Bigger furniture is harder to move
- Bigger appliances take up space
- More time cleaning
I remember when I had a large shelf in my room at one time. It stored a lot of books that I hardly read.
Whenever something fell behind it, it’d be a little annoying to have to move it out of the way.
Once a smaller shelf was switched into my room, it felt like I had more space to breathe. It gave me a sense of calm and relaxation to have the extra space to walk around.
The same can be the case for you. Consider if you can make the desk, chairs, shelves, tables, drawers, beds, and other furniture smaller.
You might be surprised at home much of a difference it makes.
7. Choose quality
When deciding on what to add back into your newly minimalist space, with anything you buy, always choose quality.
As defined in the documentary, The Minimalists: Less Is Now, minimalism is the intentional use of resources we have. The better quality of resources you get, the longer you can intentionally use it.
That helps with not only maintaining long-term happiness, but also with saving you money as well.
8. Declutter at your own pace
Everyone has different levels of motivation when it comes to decluttering their home. Some people might want to have their room all fixed up in one day.
Other people might take weeks to get things exactly the way they want before they move on to other areas of their home.
The important thing is not to feel rushed into making things perfect tomorrow. We often have a tendency compare ourselves to others.
You may see your friend John or Jennifer moving at a faster pace than you are, and that’s okay.
As much as we tend to do it with everything in life, always remember that minimalism is not a competition.
It’s simply your personal journey to a more happy and fulfilling life.
9. Use as much color as you like
It’s important to emphasize again that you don’t have to stick with black, white, or gray when creating your simple space.
Even though that’s what you may see in most designs, you’re more than welcome to paint your walls bright yellow, red, or even pink.
Your minimalist space can be however you want it to look that will make you and anyone else in your household feel good.
Don’t feel the need to follow any style associated with minimalism that you find on Pinterest.
Benefits of a minimalist space
There are a variety of benefits to a minimalist space. One of the biggest among them is being able to have less stress.
There’s been research on clutter that’s gone around for a while which concluded mother’s stress levels go up in a messy environment.
While the same didn’t seem to be the case for men, it would certainly make everyone happier to have more of the things they like in their space.
Another benefit that was mentioned earlier is it becomes easier to find items we’re looking for. I can’t count how many times I was frustrated when I couldn’t immediately find something I wanted to use.
Overall, you’ll create a home environment that can work like a charger does for your phone. The peace, joy, and relaxation you feel can re-energize you for whenever you go back out in the world.
Stuff will become less of a central focus, and the important things like relationships and passions can become more prevalent.
If that all sounds inspiring to you, then you can start creating your minimalist place today. Here are some articles that can be useful to you in your journey:
10 Minimalist Tips for Decluttering in 2021 That Will Make It Easier