How to Become a Minimalist

Minimalist room

Becoming a minimalist can help you reduce stress. Imagine living in your home with much less clutter and mess. Your home would be easier to clean and take less time to clean. You only need the essentials in your home in order to live comfortably. Becoming a minimalist is not about giving up things that you need. It's about keeping only the essentials, and not keeping anything you do not need. It can be quite liberating to become a minimalist. You will also save a lot of money, because you won't be spending your hard earned cash on unnecessary items. Many minimalists live in a smaller home and that will help you spend less on your rent or mortgage payments. Becoming a minimalist can help you save space, time and money. Read on to learn how to become a minimialist.

Things You'll Need

• Boxes

Instructions

1. Take a look around. Your home is filled with items that you do not need. The foundation of becoming a minimalist is to get rid of all of that clutter and mess. You must let go of the stuff you don't need. Think about what you need to survive--shelter, water and food. You also need clothing, furniture, and anything else that you actually make great use of on a regular basis.

2. Begin with your closet. Many people allow clothing to pile up in their closets and it can get increasingly worse when nothing is done about it. One person should be able to live off of at least ten outfits total. Choose this many and get rid of the clothing that doesn't fit you, or that you no longer wear. Ten days worth of outfits is plenty for one person. Get rid of any shoes that no longer fit or that you don't wear anymore. Bring your unneeded clothing to your local charity.

3. Consolidate furniture. Your furniture in each room should serve a specific purpose. If you have any furniture that you don't use, get rid of it. The less furniture you have, the better. You don't need to be less comfortable. You just need the furniture that you will use. Simple furniture is the best.

4. Think about survival. When you are going room to room and checking out your belongings, just ask yourself if you could live without the item. If you say yes, then you can get rid of it. Don't allow yourself to get too literal: keep comfort and the essentials. Sure, you can technically survive without a bed, but you don't have to.

5. Check floors. The more of a floor you can see, the better. There should be no clutter on your floors. If there is, get rid of it. You should not store anything on the floors of your home. You need to remove your belongings from the floors and find a place for it, or get rid of it.

6. Consider the walls. Minimalists do not have many things hanging on their walls. Take a look around each room's walls to see what you have hanging on the walls. Why do you have these items hanging up? You only need a couple of pieces of artwork if you really want something hanging up.

7. Make use of cabinets and drawers. We often allow things we don't need to take up space in our cabinets and drawers.Get rid of everything you don't need and add things to your cabinets and drawers to keep items out of sight. You should have bookshelves or bookcases for all of your books, and cabinets or drawers for all of your media items such as DVDs.

8. Focus on the windows. Windows in a home do not need much. You can simply have blinds and that's it. Curtains are not necessary. You could even go without any window treatments at all. You should also remove any clutter on your windows.

9. Consider no patterns. Check your furniture, walls, clothing and more. Solid colors are always better than patterns. They are more pleasing to the eye and have less clutter.

10. Know there is a place for everything. Everything needs to have its own place to be all of the time. If you aren't sure where something goes, give it a home. Make sure it returns to this spot when cleaning.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep your comfort level, but don't use this as an excuse to keep clutter.

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish