Going Minimalist in the New Year? Here Are Some Tips
New Year’s resolutions can be hard to keep, but if your goal is to start living a minimalist life, it’s definitely possible to follow through. Below are some tips in this beginners guide to minimalism that will help you ease yourself into a minimalist lifestyle and make it maintainable in the New Year.
Consider What You Really Need
Before you fully start into your minimalism journey, consider what you really, actually need in your life. Minimalism is not just about the physical things you own, though — it’s also about the mental and spiritual clutter and distractions. What things in your life actually serve to make you better? What things make you happy? Make a list of all of the things in your life that you really want or need, like more time with loved ones, a less cluttered home, or more financial stability. Once you’ve figured out what you really need, you can start to think about the things that you want to keep in your life and what you want to go. It’s like creating your own beginners guide to minimalism; it will guide you through all of your other stages of minimalism.
For example, let’s say you have a bicycle that sits in your garage that you never use. Every time you look at the bike, you think “wow, I really need to use my bike more,” but you never actually get around to riding it. What is that bike doing to make your life better? Realistically, nothing. Although you may think that you’ll miss it, you probably won’t. If you get rid of it, what’s the worst thing that will happen? You’ll suddenly have the urge to go for a bike ride? In that case, you could look into bicycle rentals, but realistically you won’t need that bike again. Letting go of it will feel good — the hardest part is just actually doing it.
Deep Clean
Once you’ve created your list of priorities in your life, you can start to declutter and deep clean your home and your life as a whole. It’s probably a good idea to start small when it comes to decluttering — if you try to start too big, it can become overwhelming, leading to you abandoning your minimalist ambitions as a whole. Any beginners guide to minimalism should encourage you to start slow, and ours is no different. If you try to start too ambitiously, you’re probably setting yourself up for failure, and one small failure can often spiral out of control and end up totally derailing your minimalist journey.
You should try to start with one room or area in your house that you deep clean and then keep clean. For example, if you start by keeping your dining table clear by making sure that no clutter, like mail, ends up sitting on it. Once you’re good at keeping that table clean, you can move on to any other cluttered areas in the room, and then onto another room. Eventually, you’ll be able to keep your entire house uncluttered. If you want to start by cleaning your entire house using a cleaning company, it can be a great way to approach the issue. You won’t be overwhelmed with cleaning since you’re delegating the bulk of the tasks to other people who are professional cleaners.
When you’re cleaning and decluttering a room or an area, you should look for ways to really deep clean it as well. The real goal of minimalism is to make your life run as smoothly as it possibly can, which can be helped by things like making sure that everything in your home is working as well as it possibly can. For example, when you’re in your bathroom decluttering and cleaning and you notice that your tub or shower drain isn’t going as easily as it should, instead of ignoring it until it gets worse, you should take care of it. If you do a drain cleaning, you can do less work now to make your life run smoothly instead of being minorly inconvenienced for a while, only to have to put in more time and effort to clean the drain once it’s no longer ignorable.
Make Necessary Home Repairs
As mentioned above, something that you may miss if you go off of your own assumptions of what minimalism is about and not what any good beginners guide to minimalism will tell you is that you want to make your life as smooth as possible. You want to minimize distractions, unnecessary clutter, unnecessary stress, and any other issues that you have the power to control. In your home, this means keeping up on your home maintenance and making sure to do all the repairs that you need to in order to get your house running in its optimal state.
For example, if you have a glass-fronted cabinet in your dining room that has had a crack in it for years, and it’s made it an inconvenience to store anything in the cabinet, it’s a good idea to fix it. Although you may think it’s okay to be slightly inconvenience, think about how much time it wastes over the course of time if you have to dedicate just a little bit of extra time every time you have to open the cabinet. Glass repairs can be very quick and easy, and a one time fix will benefit you for years to come. That’s what minimalism is all about — keeping the things that truly hold value and use to you and taking good care of those things instead of continuously replacing things that you only half care for and only half want.
Keep What You Love
When you’re going through the decluttering process, there’s no need to get rid of anything that you really, truly, and deeply love, even if it takes up a lot of space. If there were one definitive beginners guide to minimalism, it would tell you as much. Minimizing your life means cutting through all of the things that don’t really matter and ensuring that what you do keep is not only useful and meaningful to you, but also helps you achieve the lifestyle and goals that you want to. When you’re going through your belongings to clean and declutter, anything that you feel fits these categories should definitely be kept.
If you’re trying to declutter your garage, and you realize that a lot of the things cluttering the space relate to the rose arbors that you maintain, you may think that the only option is to get rid of the rose arbors and everything associated with them. However, if you really, truly, love those arbors, there’s no need to get rid of any of the supplies. Instead, you’ll need to cut down on other things that may be cluttering your garage to give yourself the chance to create space for what really matters to you: supplies for your rose arbor. When it comes to either/or situations for things in your life, you may surprise yourself with what you choose to stay and what you decide to get rid of.
Reorganize to Highlight What You Keep
Once you’ve gotten rid of things that you don’t feel serve you in a certain space, it’s time for reorganization. When you’re reorganizing a room, you should make sure to prioritize highlighting whatever it is that you love the most in the room. Any beginners guide to minimalism should mention the fact that when you get rid of things you aren’t as attached to, that means you will be able to really show off what you love. This can be next to anything: granite counters, a special teapot, a certain piece of furniture, or even a home feature like a fireplace.
For example, if you’re cleaning out your bedroom, and you decide that the piece in your bedroom that you want to highlight is a large antique mirror you have, you can do that. You can place it in a place where you can view it from anywhere in the room, a place where it’s obviously on display when you enter the room, and somewhere where you know you’ll be able to see it all the time. If something is a statement piece, like a large mirror, you won’t need to place any other decor or furniture too close to it — you can give it some space to breathe. If you aren’t sure how to style something in a minimalist way that doesn’t just make a space look empty, you can look for examples of it online on sites like Pinterest.
Tips For Specific Rooms
When it comes to different rooms, you’ll be taking the same approach overall. However, you will need to do slightly different things when it comes to decluttering and minimizing your life in each room of your home. We have a full guide on decluttering your home during a remodel that talks about how to declutter each room of your home, so definitely take a look at that. Make sure that you’re paying attention to the specific products that you keep in a given room — for example, makeup and skincare products you keep in the bathroom or food that you keep in your kitchen. If something can expire, make sure to use it or donate it before it expires, and if you find it after it has expired, get rid of it. If it’s no longer working as well as it’s designed to, there’s no reason to keep it.
If you’re looking into a beginners guide to minimalism as a parent, you can still follow through on minimizing clutter in your home without having to take away toys or other things for your kids. Make sure that you stress the importance of prioritizing things that you need, and eventually, your kids will start mimickingyou. When it comes to your kids’ rooms, have them help you declutter if they’re old enough. If you have storage for all the things from when your kids were small but you aren’t planning on having more kids, it’s a good idea to give away or donate the supplies. Why have two baby cribs sat in your attic when someone else in your life could be making use of it? Although it’s natural to want to hold onto things that have sentimental value, like kids’ items, you should remember that you’ll still have the memories even if you no longer own the physical things that are in your memories.
Think About Storage
When you’re decluttering, there may be certain things that you do need to keep, but don’t need to keep accessible at all times. For example, seasonal items. You should be smart about the way that you store what you care about to make sure that it stays in the best possible shape despite not being within easy reach at all times. Instead of haphazardly packing things away for another season and shoving boxes in your attic or basement, pack things with care and make sure that they won’t be damaged by the environment they’re being stored in.
If you have a boat that you use every summer with your friends and family that brings you a lot of joy, you should definitely hold onto it during your decluttering cycle after your finish going through this beginners guide to minimalism. If you usually store it at home, but it takes up a lot of valuable space and makes your garage very cluttered in the cold months, you should consider renting a unit from a self storage company. You can rent a boat trailer if you don’t already have one and transport it to the unit. Many storage companies will have climate-controlled units, meaning that your boat will be in even better conditions than it was at your home.
What to Do With What You Don’t Want
When you’re getting rid of all the things you’ve decided that you don’t need, you should separate everything into two different categories– things you can donate and things you have to throw out. If you have a lot to throw out, you should consider getting a junk removal service to help you. The more that you can donate, though, the better — just because the values you laid out in your personal beginners guide to minimalism made you decide not to keep something doesn’t mean that it can’t be valuable to anyone else.
Making assumptions about minimalism without looking at a beginners guide to minimalism can lead to you mistaking decluttering with leading a minimalist life. Any good beginners guide to minimalism will stress that minimalism is about much more than the physical parts of decluttering — it’s also about making sure that everything in your life works cohesively to be smooth and minimize inconveniences.