10 Reasons to Become a Minimalist Right Now

10 Reasons to Become a Minimalist Right Now

Minimalism is a popular concept that advocates for minimizing distractions in your life so that you can have time for the things that are most important to you. If you’re not sure whether or not minimalism is going to work in your life, this article will talk about a few reasons to become a minimalist and start leading a more minimalist lifestyle.

1. Save Up For Travel

If you’re interested in travel, you have probably had to stop and reconsider because of the price of your trip. One of the reasons to become a minimalist is that when you start leading a minimalist lifestyle, you’ll naturally stop spending money on smaller, unimportant items. This means that instead of spending money on another thing you don’t really need, you can save up for a van rental for that road trip up the coast or for those flights across the globe. When you’re focused on not wasting your money on things that don’t matter, you’ll have more money to put towards the things that do matter, like traveling to get new experiences and see different cultures.

reasons to become a minimalist

2. Less Time Spent Cleaning

The more things that you have, the more time and effort it will take to fully organize them and do the required upkeep. That’s why one of the reasons to become a minimalist is that you’ll spend less time cleaning and tidying. If you have more things, it takes more time to get to cleaning all of them and keeping them in order. Time is one of the most precious resources that we have, and it’s also one of the ones that we cannot get back once lost. Investing time into house cleaning instead of into time with friends or family can make life less happy.

If your home storage has become overcrowded and you find yourself having to reorganize it every few months in order to make everything fit, it’s probably a good idea to look into minimizing what you own. Realistically, you don’t need all of the things that you’re holding onto. It’s natural to form emotional and sentimental attachments to items, but that doesn’t mean you have to hold onto everything you’ve ever owned. There are great resources out there for decluttering during the minimalism process, and many of them will have tips to help you go at your own pace so you won’t get overwhelmed.

3. Bigger Emergency Fund

Financial stability goes far past being able to consistently pay your bills and save up for trips. Being prepared in case of an emergency is also very important when it comes to making sure that any sort of emergency doesn’t result in debt for you and your family, and is one of the great reasons to become a minimalist. That could mean being prepared for any sort of animal health care that your pet may need — most people don’t have health insurance for their pets, but vet bills can get expensive, especially if your pet needs any sort of surgery or medication. When you’re spending less on objects that just clutter up your home, you can be saving up for important emergency funds.

If you have children, that’s all the more reasons to become a minimalist. You can use the money you’re saving to put into an emergency fund or even a savings fund for their college. Childrens dental health care, for example, can be very expensive, and dental insurance may not cover everything. Making sure that you have the money if your child needs to have emergency dental work can mean not going into debt over an issue that you could’ve saved up for. In addition, if you already have some sort of medical debt, you can put more money towards paying it down so the amount doesn’t continue accruing interest.

reasons to become a minimalist

4. Less Visual Clutter

This reason ties into the idea of spending less time cleaning. When you’re spending a large portion of your time cleaning things, that usually means that there will be a lot of time when things are not perfectly clean and in order. Whether you’re living in a pint-sized rental or a large home, things can become cluttered and that can cause stress. When you look around your home, you should feel relaxed and happy, not stressed out by the fact that there’s clutter and things you need to clean up everywhere you look.

Although getting rid of things can feel overwhelming at first, in reality, it can make everything feel less overwhelming by the time you’ve decluttered a space. You don’t have to declutter your entire home all at once to make a huge difference. Some people recommend letting go of one item every day — over time, you’ll be letting go of a lot of things that you don’t need. Once you’ve stayed with that practice for long enough, you’ll be able to have less visual clutter in your home or rental.

5. Spend Money on Experiences, Not Things

Although it may be fun to buy things, once they end up sitting around your home you may realize you never needed them in the first place. The opposite is usually true when it comes to experiences, which is why it’s one of the main reasons to become a minimalist. When you spend your money and time on creating unique experiences in your life, you are able to have a more rich life without cluttering up your home.

For example, if you love fresh seafood, you can spend money on going to a local fish market and purchasing good quality seafood instead of going with cheaper options you might find at your usual grocery store. Since you’re spending less on things for yourself, you’ll be able to have a small luxury like more costly seafood without having to worry about breaking the bank. In the same train of thought, if there’s a steak restaurant that you’ve wanted to try for some time, but you could never justify the cost, you can save money through a minimalist lifestyle and finally be able to go.

reasons to become a minimalist

6. Save Up For New Home Improvements

If you’ve been looking into making improvements to your home or even into buying a home in the future, minimalism can help. Living with less doesn’t necessarily have to mean spending less money, but if you have a specific savings goal, it can. If you’re in the home buying process, saving up enough for a down payment can be very overwhelming. It’s recommended that you save up approximately 20% of the cost of the home you want to buy to get a good rate on your mortgage and to avoid paying extra mortgage insurance, so it makes sense to go with having less while you save up. Minimalism focuses on cutting things out of your life that don’t mean anything to you, which means that you’ll be able to save money on the things that won’t really improve your life. In turn, one of the reasons to become a minimalist is that you can save up for things that matter. Having a specific goal, like saving for a specific home improvement or a home, can make things more manageable.

7. It Can Help With Stress

Although you may not think one of the reasons to become a minimalist is stress management, it can be very helpful in making your life feel calmer and more at peace. One of the most important parts of minimalism is figuring out what really matters to you and what doesn’t. When you figure out that what really matters to you, it becomes easier to let go of the smaller sources of stress that don’t really matter. For example, if you realize that what really matters to you is your close friends and family’s opinions of you, who cares if you trip on the street and a random person laughs at you? It may not feel great at the moment, but you may be able to laugh at yourself instead of fixating on the moment for days afterward. Focusing your life on the things that really matter can help you find more joy in the day to day instead of being stressed about things that, in the long run, don’t really matter.

reasons to become a minimalist

8. More Time With Friends and Family

When you cut things that don’t matter out of your life, you have time for the things that do really matter to you, like time with friends and family. Being able to spend quality time with the people you care about is much more important than spending time organizing things you don’t need or dedicating time to other endeavors that don’t serve you to make your life better. When you start clearing away the distractions in your life, you have the chance to see what exactly it is that those distractions have been taking you away from — the people and things that really matter.

9. You’re Helping the Environment

When you have things that are just clutter, the odds are at some point you’ll have to get rid of them. This can be done in a sustainable way if you donate them or give them away to be reused, but oftentimes these things end up just becoming waste. If you’re not trying to exist with less, you’re probably ending up with more and more unneeded things that eventually become waste. Once you’re more intentional with the physical things that you bring into your life, you’ll naturally stop having to get rid of as many things. When you move, for example, you won’t have to spend half of your time packing and half of your time sorting through what you’re getting rid of. Instead, you’ll just be able to pack up things knowing that everything you have is something that you need.

If you’re getting rid of some of your possessions during the decluttering and minimizing process, make sure that you’re looking into the most eco-friendly option, especially if eco-friendliness is one of your reasons to become a minimalist. That may mean that you donate clothing to a local charity or shelter, home goods to a collection center, or even selling the items that are in good shape so they can go to a place where they’ll definitely be used. If you can avoid it, try not to just throw things out. If they are unsalvagable or completely unusable, find out if any part of it is able to be used in an upcycling project or sent to a recycling center.

10. Develop Your Personal Style

If you have a tendency of buying clothing because they’re trendy, but you can never quite figure out what your personal style is, that can be one of the many reasons to become a minimalist. When you start to get rid of the clothes that you realize don’t really fit right or aren’t what you’re reaching for, it becomes easier to find clothing that you actually like and that you will wear for years to come and not just for the next few months until it goes out of style.

If this is one of your goals when it comes to minimalism, pay attention to what pieces of clothing you find yourself reaching for routinely. Maybe there’s a turtleneck that you wear every week when it’s cold out or a pair of jeans that you wear any time the occasion is right for it. Think about what makes you want to wear those things. Do they make you feel good about yourself? Do you like the color or pattern? How can you get more pieces like that into your wardrobe? If you find yourself not reaching for certain pieces for months at a time, it’s probably safe to say that those aren’t really your style.

When you’re considering buying a new piece of clothing, try to think of at least three different ways you could wear it. If you can only think of one very specific occasion on which you would wear it, the odds are it isn’t going to be the best choice to add to your wardrobe. The more that you develop your style, the easier it will be to buy pieces of clothing that you’ll actually wear and not just brush past while you’re getting dressed.

Minimalism can be helpful in many different ways. Whatever your personal reasons to become a minimalist are, it’s a good idea to keep that in mind as you begin your minimalism journey so that you can always come back to it when things get hard.

Why did you become a minimalist? Let us know in the comments below!

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