Living With Less Discover The Joy of Less And Simplify Your Life 3072162256, 1535404477

Table of contents :
Introduction
What is Minimalism?
Thinking Differently About Stuff You Don't Need
De-cluttering the Living Room
De-cluttering the bathroom
De-cluttering the bedroom
De-cluttering the kitchen
De-cluttering the Garage
Minimalism and Clothes
Minimalism & Technology
Top 10 Tips for Minimalism
Conclusion

Citation preview

Living With Less

Discover the Joy of Less and Simplify Your Life Jessica Forrest

Table of Contents Introduction What is Minimalism? Thinking Differently About Stuff You Don't Need De-cluttering the Living Room De-cluttering the bathroom De-cluttering the bedroom De-cluttering the kitchen De-cluttering the Garage Minimalism and Clothes Minimalism & Technology Top 10 Tips for Minimalism Conclusion

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Introduction Minimalism is a movement that is gaining popularity throughout the west. In an era gripped by materialism and consumerism, minimalism argues that we can learn to be happier by owning less, not more. Minimalists advocate that you should de-clutter your life, removing unnecessary possessions, to give you the physical and emotional space you need to focus on the aspects of your life that bring you joy. In this guide you will learn everything about minimalism. In the first chapter we will explore the philosophy and perspective of minimalism in greater depth, discovering where minimalism came from and why you should start to de-clutter. The second chapter will tutor you in the various ways you can train yourself to think differently about the items around you don't need, explaining the various pitfalls and misconceptions that lead us to hoard items in the first place and how to overcome them. The next chapters will take you through the process of de-cluttering your house one-room at a time, with specific and handy tips for the living room, bathroom, bedroom, kitchen & garage. Next we will cover the topics of minimalism & clothes, exploring the way that our identity and confidence becomes dependent on our clothes and how to part with our beloved garments. The next chapter will deal with our obsession with technology and the virtual world, especially the internet, computer gaming and social media. Finally the last chapter will wrap things up, discussing the top 10 tips to consider on your minimalist journey. Let's get going!

What is Minimalism? At the heart of western society there is an undercurrent of un-fulfillment. Every day we wake up, eat, wash, go to our jobs, come home, and make dinner and then go back to sleep. At some point along our lives we lost that sense of wonder and direction that we possessed when we were younger. We go through the motions of our lives without being connected or immersed in what we are doing. As a result a myriad of different perspectives and philosophies have arisen by different thinkers in order to tell us what we are doing wrong and how we should fix it. Some of us tell us that we should travel and that our life is lackluster unless we are climbing mountains and constantly seeking new exotic challenges. Other views talk about the importance of success and aiming higher, climbing the business world and all of the hurdles it presents. Minimalists look at the problem in a different way. The problem with our modern lifestyle is not that something is missing, it is the opposite; that we have far too much. We have so much stuff that we lose track of the few things that are important. We hoard clutter – both physically and emotionally – until the things that make us happy are buried under everything else. As a result our lives lack that vitality and spark that makes life truly worth living. On the same vein, for minimalists, the way to reignite your life and reclaim your happiness is not found on foreign shores or in achievements in the business world, it is realizing what in your life already makes you happy and changing your life to revolve around that. Although minimalism is undoubtedly a movement and an idea with deep spiritual notions, don't make the mistake of thinking that all minimalists are hermits, monks or deeply religious. Minimalists are generally indistinguishable from anyone else in a crowd; they are people you know,

people at your workplace and people with ordinary lives. All that is required to be a minimalist is a simple change in your perspective. To be precise, minimalists wage a peaceful war against clutter of all sorts. Regardless of whether we consider ourselves especially materialistic or not, an average person in the western world will grow to own a staggering amount of possessions throughout their lives. From books, to games, to computers, laptops, phones, clothes, cars, dishes, cutlery, Christmas decorations, cleaning equipment, furniture, novelties, and food, the amount of sheer 'stuff' a person collects is overwhelming. Yet, underneath all these items a truth remains dormant and forgotten; most of these items are not necessary and very few contribute to your happiness in any meaningful way. Take a moment and ask yourself how many items in your life that you need and how many items actually give you genuine pleasure and contentment. Look at your bookshelves, stocked with hundreds of different books. How many have you actually read all the way through? How many do you actually require for constant use? Can you really say that any of these books change your life for the better? Would you notice if one of these books went missing? Minimalists have asked themselves these types of questions and more regarding every possession they own. Moreover minimalists have realized that in an honest and practical sense that most of their possessions are either completely unnecessary or do not make them happier – so they get rid of them. In addition to the realization that the majority of their possessions do not actively contribute to their happiness, minimalists also recognize that keeping unnecessary items actually makes their life more difficult and unhappier. A bookshelf full of unread books is an eyesore – it's a waste of space that could be left open, making your house feeling spacious and uplifting. It's also a chore in the sense that these books must be dusted and cleaned

occasionally and must be organized and carefully arranged. If you do actually require a book for a specific reason it's not a simple task of just grabbing that book from where you made room for it. Instead you must rummage and search through your amateur library, wasting time and energy in the process. If you ever need to move or change the position of your furniture than moving that bookshelf is a huge challenge just by itself. Of course these hassles are not a big problem by themselves, at least not in the case of a single bookshelf. However, when you have an entire household stuffed to the brim of these pointless possessions these small efforts and hassles multiply exponentially. Simple tasks become difficult and so much of your life becomes dedicated and locked down just to looking after, maintaining and managing your possessions. It becomes taxing and draining and redirects your time away from quality time with your friends and family as well as pursuing your passions. Every item is an item that must be cleaned or moved out the way when you are vacuuming or dusting. They must be organized in complicated patterns just to make room for their presence and if you fail to constantly keep up, these items won't fit neatly in your cupboards and rooms. They get in your way when you are trying to find something you need, often finding that gadget or equipment is buried in the attic or behind a dozen other boxes with a bunch of junk in them – it's exhausting. Therefore minimalists recognize that everything they don't frequently use or absolutely need is clutter and lowers the quality of their lives. By discarding, selling or gifting these items away, they give themselves more freedom, time and space to focus on what they actually want to do. Although minimalists mostly concern themselves with unnecessary items, minimalists can also look at their responsibilities, duties and chores, eliminating unnecessary burdens from their life. Minimalists change their lives to make room and time for their activities they love; this might involve

changing jobs or career, making a determined effort to manage their money and debt to give them financial control over their time. Minimalists aren't locked into their 9-5 office job because they need money for the loan they took out for their car and they don't chain themselves down with large mortgages that dictate their life for the next 20 years. Likewise minimalists don't go to un-enjoyable social gatherings out of obligation or constantly bow down to what other people expect of them. Instead they go to gatherings if they make them happy and forge their own path. This guide will mostly focus on the physical aspect of minimalism but please bear in mind the other ways in which minimalism can change your life. Finally, minimalism also relates to an artistic movement that arose in the 1960's. In the previous decades, art had focused on being flamboyant, decorative and detailed, so much so that certain artists felt overloaded. These artists started to focus on what they felt were the essential and most important aspects of any particular piece of art – the lines, the shapes, the colors and the ideas. As a result minimalist art and minimalist inspired decoration have an easily distinguishable stripped-down and bare aesthetic. In a sense by removing excess detail and visual stimulation, the remaining sections become more important and more purposeful. Instead of your eyes being bombarded by different intricacies, you can instead direction your attention to the individual components in the art, or even the piece in entirety. There is a simple pleasure in being absorbed in a piece of art, allowing your attention to deepen and sink into the piece. Minimalist art lead to minimalist design, which is popular for many individuals with busy and stressful lives, to help them relax, and be more productive. If your environment is serene and calm, it helps you become serene and calm by extension. This doesn't mean that your decor is devoid of any decoration or ornaments, just that they are well-considered and sparse. A colorful vase can bring life to an otherwise empty room and a piece of artwork can energize a blank wall.

Naturally few minimalists have any decorative credentials or minimalist art knowledge, but nonetheless modern minimalist philosophy and the minimalist art movement converge in how they view your home. There's just something undeniably spirit-lifting about walking into a room that is open and free of clutter – it's a room you want to be in. Naturally, for many people, making a shift to minimalism is incredibly difficult. Our entire lives have been surrounded and molded by the clutter around us. Many people feel almost as if their possessions are their identity or feel lonely and vulnerable without a house full of junk. Nonetheless although it might be strange, awkward and challenging at first learning how to let go of your possessions and take the plunge is how you reconnect to your happiness.

Thinking Differently About Stuff You Don't Need Of course, talk is easy! It's one thing to say that you agree with minimalism and that you want to part with your possessions, it's another thing to actually do about it. How do you jump over that rift between thought and action? The most important way to kick-start yourself into action is to think about why we accumulate clutter in the first place and the habits that lead to clutter. After all, if clutter makes us so unhappy and leads to us being unhappy, why do we have clutter in the first place? The answer is due to various misconceptions we hold about the items around us. Even if we are not explicitly aware of the fact – or even if we actively disagree with it – we often believe, to some degree, that items make us happy. We buy a new dress or shirt because we think it looks nice and for some reason we think that owning it will make our lives better. Or perhaps it's the newest released game that we've been looking forward to, a shinier car, a bigger TV, a new sofa (and so on ad infinitum). Yet we never challenge this belief, at least not at the time of purchasing the item itself. Therefore the biggest single change you can make is to change your spending habits – every time you buy something, consider whether or not it makes you happy in a long-term, genuine sense. Buying stuff might give you a temporary high – it might even make your life better for a week, or even a month. Yet nonetheless, over time, the sparkle fades. As the item progress from new and shiny to familiar and mundane, we lose interest, as if it were a child getting bored of a toy. Then that item simply becomes clutter – or a wasted investment – making our lives just a tiny little bit less calm, open and free. This perspective isn't just believed by minimalists – it, to some extent, is supported by the findings of psychology. Psychologists have established a theory of happiness which suggests that every person has a 'baseline' level

of happiness, which whilst people might vary from temporarily, both upwards and downwards, which they return to eventually. The biggest finding to support this is research on lottery winners, who upon hitting the jackpot are ecstatic, yet after a mere six months are no happier than they were before their fortune. Even despite the fact that their standard of living dramatically increased, none of their new possessions, not even their Ferrari's, actually made them happier. Once things settled and the possessions they bought with their new riches became normal to them, they no longer appreciated them in a genuine sense. The baseline theory of happiness, on first glance, seems depressing. After all, it argues that our happiness is mostly fixed and that little changes our levels of happiness deep down. Nonetheless both psychologists and other commentators have realized that there is a potential solution – experiences. Experiences can lead to feelings of happiness and there are always new experiences and avenues that you can explore. On the same vein, minimalists make a shift from items to experiences for both practical and spiritual reasons. Doing something new – rock climbing, archery, travel, painting, exploring (and so on) is invigorating. It pushes your brain to think and work differently and causes you to interact with new people, develop new skills and see things from a new perspective. Depending on the experience it can lead to even greater possibilities – meeting your spouse, changing your career, realizing that you want to live and move elsewhere. These experiences can give your life a kick and get away from the baseline level of happiness, but in a more sustainable way. If you’re constantly doing something new, then you never get bored and tired of the same old lifestyle. Furthermore it also ensures that you don't compile and gather clutter. Another reason why we tend to gather items is due to sentimentality. We hoard items from our childhood due to nostalgia and struggle to part with items owned by loves ones due to grief and loss. We might even keep items due to the ideas they represent – those clothes that you hope to fit into one

day represent your goal of losing weight or those travel books represent your hopes of traveling around the world and so on. However, even if we associate these ideas and feelings with a bunch of items, our emotions and thoughts are still separate and distinct. You can honor and remember someone who you have lost without ownership of their possessions and you can relive your childhood through more than just keeping your old mementos. Of course, minimalists don't argue that you must let go of everything sentimental – minimalists are humans too and they have deep feelings and attachments to certain items too. Minimalists do however argue that you must be somewhat reasonable and feasible about your sentimentality; keep your wedding photos rather than your wedding dress, keep family videos rather than every drawing your child ever produced. Sentimentality can also be less intense. It can be hard to part with items not just because they have strong feelings associated with them but also because they've just been with you for so long. It, to some extent, just feels 'right' to keep something if you've had it for decades, even if you don't use it or need it. Realize the illogical nature of this kind of attachment – you'll soon forget about these items once you have let them go (and you'll be better off for it!). Likewise sometimes it can be hard to part with an item because it was a gift. For some of us getting rid of gifts feels like a betrayal or being rude, even we don't like the gift or don't use it. It’s almost ridiculous to think that almost everyone has this type of 'gift' clutter in their homes because they are ashamed of getting rid of a gift, even though the person who gave you the present in the first place undoubtedly has gift clutter of their own. Generally speaking, most people will forget about the gifts they give you or won't care if you part with a gift, especially if you have had the gift for a long period of time. Likewise the fact that you got rid of a gift will rarely come up in conversation – most of the time, no-one apart from you has to know.

Even in the rare scenario where a missing gift comes up in conversation, just be honest and sincere about why you got rid of it – say that you needed the space and that you were getting rid of a large part of your possessions too. Most people will understand and for the few people that do not, perhaps your conversation might lead them to buy better gifts in the future! On the same vein you can be proactive and raise attention to your friends and family members about how for birthdays, Christmas and special events you would rather either have a gift-experience, a temporary gift or even nothing at all. Not all gifts have to be permanent; being taken out to a meal, riding a helicopter or being paid to have lessons in a new skill or even just being purchased foodstuff and luxury toiletries can all make great gifts that don't build up clutter. You can tactfully make people aware that you now appreciate and favor these types of gifts without sounding demanding. The other type of sentimentality that we often suffer from is the feeling that we might need a particular item someday. Nearly every item does have a use and so it can be easy to justify hoarding items because you need to 'wait' for the right time to use them. For some circumstances this is true – we keep emergency medical supplies, car repair kits and power tools not because we need them on a week-by-week basis, but because they are useful and important. However for most of these items, the truth is that it simply isn't worth clinging onto an object just because you might need it some indeterminate date far off in the future. It's more probable that you won't need the item and that you are just wasting space. Furthermore, even if you do need an item in the future, you can deal with that problem then and there. You can borrow from friends or family, rent or if necessary, purchase a new item. Often people find that they keep items for several years, only when they need to use it, their preferences have changed and that they no longer like the item or would rather just buy a new one (this is especially true for rarely used clothes such as cocktail dresses). Another reason why we buy more than we need is advertising. The psychology of advertising is complex, nuanced and far more insidious than

you think. Most people think that they are not influenced by advertising, at least if they don't explicitly and consciously make a link between buying an item and an advert persuading them to. However, generally speaking, people are chronically poor at introspection and have bad (if not outright wrong) explanations of their own behavior. During an average day you are bombarded with adverts constantly throughout your day; they are not only on your T.V, but on the internet, your games and apps, your emails and messages. Adverts are on billboards and bus stations, on the train and get posted as pamphlets through your door. These adverts don't just try and make you buy things – they attempt to influence and alter your beliefs. If you see an adverts dozens, if not hundreds of times and it consistently portrays that buying an item will make you happier, more attractive and successful your mind notices this pattern. You might not be aware of the fact, but adverts influence your thinking with great finesse and can significantly influence your purchasing habits. Unfortunately there is only so much you can do about adverts in the modern world. You can detox yourself from digital mediums such as the TV and the internet where adverts will be especially common, but you will still see a lot of adverts in your day-to-day life, especially if you live in an urban area. The best solution is to just try to be mindful of the adverts as you see them and recognize the ways in which they are attempting to be manipulative. Many adverts, for example, choose particular accents as these accents give the impression that the speaker is more trustworthy and likeable. Other adverts use celebrities or people who are unreasonably attractive people to get you to like your product by association. Certain adverts are emotionally manipulative and will use sadness or nostalgia to win you over, whilst others will use repetition and show you repeats of the same advert during a single advert break to teach your brain a particular message. There are many, many more ways that adverts try to trick and beguile you and covering the topic in depth is far beyond the scope of this guide.

Nonetheless simply being aware that some to a certain degree adverts are manipulative by nature and keeping this fact in your mind every time you see an advert can help inoculate you against their effects. We also buy items to help us cope with our insecurities and failures. We buy nice clothes because we don't like our appearance and we buy large T.V's and spend money on cable subscriptions so that we can distract ourselves from our own lives. We might even buy items such as cars and lavish cash on our property to compete with our neighbors or impress our family. Of course there is nothing wrong with having any of these things if they do indeed make you happy. The problem is that all too often we buy them due to external pressures or as coping mechanisms rather than because they are what we really want. The solution here is to be what you want to be and do what you want to do – it's that simple. Finally, the last and perhaps truest reason why we buy clutter and excess is because we are more selfish and less mature than we perceive us to be. Psychology has revealed that people regard themselves highly, even without evidence or reason. For an example one famous finding is the vast majority of people rate themselves 'above average' in regards to factors such as intelligence, attractiveness or competence, even though it is statistically impossible for everyone to be average. This exaggeration and ignorance to our own nature extends to our own perception of greed, materialism and impulse control. Few people would label themselves as purely hedonistic materialists, admitting they seek pleasure and happiness in items, yet many more people act this way. Likewise, even though society is advanced and civilized all of us have a simple and crude nature too. We overeat because it tastes nice, we like collecting things because of some base impulse. Humans also have a remarkable potential for cognitive dissonance – the ability to hold two conflicting opinions or views at the same time. It's entirely possible to agree with the ideas of only buying and keeping only

what makes you happy and what you need, but at the same time want and desire more stuff. It's just part of being human. There isn't a neat or easy solution to this problem in our own nature. Instead you will need to constantly work and remind yourself of why you want to make a minimalist change, which in essence, is reinterpreting things in terms of whether or not they make you happy. You can start this change in your thought processes by devoting time to thinking about what makes you happy. Minimalism is just a tool to be used on the quest for happiness – if you don't know what makes you happy then even if you get rid of your unnecessary possessions you might not feel happier. Ask yourself: What do I enjoy doing? What makes me happy? What is important to me? What do I need? What do I want to do with my life? The answers to these questions don't have to be grandiose – in fact; the answers are likely to be mundane. It's often the case that what is truly important to you is already present in some form; friends, family, your career or those hobbies you find rewarding. Not everyone has a calling to be best in their chosen domain or to find a cure for cancer. The important aspect of these questions is not what your answer is, but simply that you have an answer at all and that answer is strongly felt. However, it's OK to be unsure too – sometimes your answer is found in doing and trying different possibilities than just thinking about them. However keep these questions in mind as you explore what you want from life.

Once you have clear answers to these questions, it becomes easier to let go of your items as it's obvious that they aren't part of your answer.

De-cluttering the Living Room The living room is the room where you and your family will probably spend most of your time, so it can be great to tackle this space first. From a purely aesthetic point of view there are a couple of ways you can de-clutter your living room, such as having your TV, consoles and any other stationary devices neatly held in a cabinet. This ensures that you can close this cabinet and keep these objects out of eyesight, giving the room a more open and spacious feel. Likewise having a designated space for remotes and small objects so they are not always seen is also recommended. Books, games, DVD's and other objects kept in the living room should also be kept in draws or furniture where they are not immediately visible. If you do undergo all these changes you should be able to walk into your living room and not immediately sense or be overwhelmed by clutter and the presence of objects. Nonetheless these types of changes don't really follow the spirit of minimalism. They might make you feel a little better, but they are not working towards to breaking your addiction with stuff. You can start by simply getting rid of smaller objects in your living room – the clock on the mantelpiece, the set of glass ornaments, multiple photos, vases, rugs, pillows and so on. You don't need to get rid of everything, but try just taking just a few of these objects away and seeing how you feel. See if you can cope with three cushions instead of five or drop down to a single family photo rather than several. Also get rid of any paper-stuff, stationary, important documents and office gear you might be keeping in your living room. Preferably these items should be kept in a separate office room, or at a home-office desk. At the very least they should be organized and kept in a chest of draws specifically devoted to important documents. Obviously you cannot rid yourself of all your important documents, but can make a determined effort

to file and filter these documents appropriately, tackling them the moment you receive them rather than when you feel like it. Pieces of paper such as bank documents or contracts shouldn't just be kept idle in your living room draw. You might also be surprised at how many pieces of paper you can get rid off – bank statements for example, should be accessible through an online bank account resulting in less need to keep them in person. The biggest changes are getting rid of any unnecessary furniture and appliances. A sofa and a lounge chair might be necessary so that everyone has enough space to sit, but many living rooms end up home to sprawling furniture sets that are outright excessive. Be rigorous and thorough in determining what you actually need. An ultra-minimalist living room might have only a sofa and a coffee table in order to give people a space to sit and be together, forgoing the usual TV and bookshelf. Although it is a huge shift against your inbuilt habits, you can survive and even thrive without a television! Especially in the modern era where most shows and series can be accessed through the internet through a portable device such as a laptop or tablet there is little need to actually have a television sitting in your room. For those who do get rid of their flat screen, getting rid of the T.V is often regarded as one of the most liberating changes you can make. It encourages you to think about what you do in your spare time rather than drop yourself in front of your T.V and stay in a vegetative state for an entire evening. The key here is balance – of course, not all T.V is bad – but you should only be watching shows you are actively interested and engaged in, rather than filtering through what is currently 'on' because you lack the energy to do something more constructive. In regards to a bookshelf that you might have in your living room, the trick is dealing with the books themselves. There isn't anything inherently wrong with having a bookshelf but most people fall into the trap of having several in numerous different places in their house; one in the living room, another

in the dining room, one in the hallway, one in every bedroom and even books stored in the attic. We simply don't need that many books. Tackle a shelf at a time, going through every book on that shelf and purging anything that you either don't re-read regularly or use for reference purposes. As you progress with your minimalist habits you should make an effort to halt your book-buying ways. Favor borrowing books from a library or from friends and family members – you will often find you discover books that suit your tastes if they are recommended by someone you know. Alternatively try to buy and use more eBooks. Kindle or eBook software on your laptop or phone can easily replace an entire bookshelf and you can take these books with you wherever you go. It can be hard to get used to the different feel of the digital medium and many people long for paper in their hands, but in the end, eBooks are more practical and less clutter producing, so it's worth at least a try.

De-cluttering the bathroom The bathroom is used daily by everyone is your household, multiple times, yet it is often smaller and with less storage than the other communal areas in your home. As a result it is incredibly easy for this room to get clogged with everyone's unique cleaning and grooming tools, from razor blades to cotton pads, several bottles for shampoo and conditioner, soap, razor blades, flannels, towels and so on. One way to cut down on grooming clutter is simply to be more organized and efficient. Not everyone in your household needs their own unique shower gels – a gender neutral good quality shower gel should serve everyone. Likewise ensure for shared items – such as cotton pads or toothpaste – that everyone in the household is using one supply rather than having their own. For grooming items that are unique, such as a shaving blade for the man of the household, or male/female deodorant, try to ensure that everyone has their own toiletry bag that they either take with them into the bathroom or have a draw or cupboard for them to store it within in the bathroom itself. Although this habit can feel a little awkward to enact at first, once it becomes a habit it makes life much easier as no-one is accused of using or borrowing anyone else's stuff and it's easy to keep track of what you have and what you don't, making it easier to construct shopping lists and pack for travel. Likewise not having a dozen bottles scattered around the bath and the surfaces is much nicer for everyone to walk into. In terms of your personal use of grooming products, try to strip down and limit yourself to the products that you need, rather than just the products that you want. In truth, you can probably make do with just soap / shower gel, deodorant, toothpaste, a toothbrush and a male/female razor blade. Everything else is unnecessary and probably falls under the category of glamor and beauty rather than hygiene or necessity. If you have a hard time determining what you need rather than what you simply want, think about

the bathroom items that you would take with you on a small journey, such as a weekend trip. You could probably survive and thrive with just those items in your day-to-day life too. Of course stripping back to bare minimum can be painful for many people, but try to get rid of one or two of your excess grooming products, especially the ones that you are not truly using or getting any value from, such as skin care products you have lying around but do not use on a regular basis. You need to be disciplined here, especially for products that are old. Grooming and beauty products have a shelf-life after which their chemical formulas begin to de-nature and break down, drastically limiting their effectiveness. With food we can tell by sight, taste and smell when something has gone 'bad', but for grooming or beauty products often the only way to tell is to look at the label. Alternatively, for some products there might be a slight discoloration in the product itself if it is too old. Regardless if you have anti-acne cream or moisturizer that is a year or older, it's probably only good for the bin. Grooming and beauty products can be considerably expensive, especially if we have dozen of products. It can be difficult to throw away these items because it can feel like you are throwing away hundreds of dollars, but realize that this perspective is flawed – you've already wasted this money by buying stuff that you didn't really need, want or use. Now realize that the only thing you can do is get rid of these products and stop them from taunting you. In terms of towels and flannels you can avoid clutter by ensuring that you have a good space for these items to dry between uses and therefore don't end up using a new towel or flannel because the old ones are wet (rather than dirty / unhygienic). If your bathroom doesn't have ventilation or moisture solutions it can be hard for towels and flannels to dry within the bathroom itself, even if they are hung over a radiator. Try to find a separate room or space for them to

dry, or have everyone bring their own towels from their bedrooms when they use the bathrooms. Avoid storing health care items in the bathroom. Your bathroom should only be for items that you use daily or numerous times per week. Items such as cough medicine, pain killers, and bandages and so on are rarely used and get in the way of your interactions with other items. Ideally store these health care items in another box or space in another room such as next to the draw where you store other necessary, but rarely used items, such as batteries, matches, candles and flashlights. This helps ensure that all your useful items that you don't use everyday are located in the same place and that you know where to go if there's something you are looking for. On the same vein, it's actually best to avoid keeping pills, supplements and other medications in the bathroom for storage reasons. These items should be stored in a cool dry place, whereas the bathroom is moist and warm which can interfere with their efficacy.

De-cluttering the bedroom The bedroom is the room in the house that most closely reflects your mood and state of mind. It is where you awake in the mornings, so if you arise to clutter and disarray it can start your day on the wrong foot. Likewise it can be hard to relax and fall asleep if the state of your bedroom is on your psyche. Moreover out of all the rooms in the house, the bedroom is mostly under the control of you (and your partner). The living room, bathroom and other communal rooms can become cluttered against your will due to kids, teenagers and guests, but the bedroom is your domain. It doesn't need to be cluttered unless you let it. The first stage to de-cluttering your bedroom is to change how you perceive that space. The bedroom should be a place solely for sleep, sex and relaxation. The more you use the bedroom for other purposes, the more items and clutter you will bring in with you. A T.V, DVD player, bedroom computer, games console, books and games can easily sneak into your bedroom and make it a secondary recreational space, but this is a bad habit. Above and beyond clutter, using your bedroom for these other purposes alters your ability to relax and be comfortable in that room. If you limit yourself to sleep, sex and relaxation your mind will eventually be conditioned to relax and be at ease whenever enter the room. Psychological research has well-documented that this improves sleeping patterns and makes it easier to fall asleep. It's also, to a degree, anti-social and weakens communal spirit. You shouldn't need a private room for entertainment and recreation. Of course there's nothing inherently wrong with a little solitude every now and then, but there is something inherently unfulfilling about a household of people who ignore each other and keep to their bedrooms. The way to avoid this is to ensure that the lounge and dining room are spaces where everyone can be and not dominated by one particular activity.

If possible it can help to have one room downstairs for more active and loud activities – console and computer games, T.V, movies and talking whilst a quieter room for books, study and work. If you have two designated rooms for these in your house then there should be no need to use your bedroom for these purposes and all these associated items should stay out of it. On a similar vein, avoid having too much furniture in your room. Chairs, desks, wardrobes, shelves, bed stand can easily overwhelm a room. In truth, you only need a bed and a single wardrobe. Everything else is just extra that can benefit your room, but also drag it down. There are a few methods to get rid of your extra pieces of furniture. If you have a chair in your room that you might use for a little reading or just sitting and relaxing, consider replacing with a comfortable, large sitting cushion. The cushion can be moved out of vision when it isn't being used or rest on your bed whereas the chair will always be in sight. A bed stand is typically used for an evening book, an alarm, a glass of water and a desk lamp. It’s possible to get rid of your desk lamp for a more declutter friendly alternative, such as remote controlled lights that you turn off with a click or a clap. Alternatively there are lights that can be stuck to the wall and turned on or off with a touch. There are also small lights that you can attach to the cover of your book to give you ample light to read if you must read in bed. Your book can simply be placed on the floor or gently tucked under your bed. As for a glass of water, you can bring a bottle of water up for the evening instead, which can be safely sealed and placed on the floor or tucked under the bed too, with no risk of leaking. Your alarm, which in this era will most likely be your mobile, can simply be placed on your wardrobe or in the pocket of your clothes instead of right next to your desk. This is also a great way to properly rouse yourself in the morning, forcing you to get up from your bed and discouraging you from using the snooze button. A dresser is one of the easiest furniture candidates to remove. Dressers cover a lot of space and are usually very large but they only provide a

relatively small amount of storage. Later in this guide we will talk in more depth about being minimalistic with your clothes, but suffice to say that if you do not have an excess of clothes, you shouldn't need a dresser and a wardrobe (or multiple wardrobes). Likewise you don't really need a mirror in your bedroom either because you will usually have at least one, if not multiple mirrors, around the house. If you decide that you must have a mirror, there are usually better options than just having a full length mirror just standing somewhere in the room. For example you can have a wardrobe with a full length mirror on the inside of one of the doors or a wardrobe with mirrors attached to the outside of the doors. Of course the intent isn't to rid you of all furniture – there is nothing inherently wrong with having a dresser, mirror or bed stand. The problem is that when combined all these items build up and reduce your space, ultimately producing a sense of claustrophobia and burden. If you find yourself lost and struggling to decide what to get rid of, always go back to the basic underlying question in minimalism – 'does this item make me happy or improve my wellbeing?’ If the answer is no, 'not really' or I 'don't know (which is almost the same as saying no) then it's probably time to get rid of it. It can also be useful just to shift the furniture in your room around and move pieces of furniture to new locations. This not only helps the room feel newer and fresher but it also helps you appreciate how much space each item actually requires. Furthermore moving your furniture to a different location helps break habits and makes you more mindful of how and when you are using furniture and items. As a result it becomes clearer and obvious when something isn't necessary. Once you have settled on your furniture arrangement it's time to grow through your drawers and wardrobes themselves. Remove anything from your bedroom that doesn't 'belong' in that room, such as any trash or rubbish

that has found its way into storage, beauty and grooming products, games, books and so on. You don't necessarily need to discard these items if you don't want to, but they should be stored in the designated room and space for them, rather than cluttering up your bedroom. For any items you deem belong in your bedroom draws, consider using draw dividers to provide better storage. This helps avoid a situation where your draws feel like they have too much 'stuff' in them, even if you've decided everything is necessary. Remember to repeat your minimalist de-cluttering. On your first purge, you might struggle to recognize what items you actually need or use, but the more you purge and strip down, the more you realize just how little you actually need and want. Also, come prepared when you decide to purge your bedroom (or any room). Ensure you have some garbage bags, boxes for temporary storage, duck tape, scissors and smaller boxes for organization. It's easy to procrastinate, stall or quit if you don't have the items you need for your purge, so tackle this problem in advance. After you have done your bedroom purge you will need to change your habits to keep your bedroom de-cluttered. For example, dealing with dry laundry immediately, instead of just dumping it into your room to deal with some indeterminate time in the future. Likewise for clothes that you are not putting into the wash but are done with wearing for the day should be put away immediately. Finally, avoiding item 'creep' where objects start finding their way into their bedroom almost by accident – when you realize something doesn't belong in your room, deal with it immediately! The reason why clutter tends to feel so daunting and hard to deal with is because we let it build up over a period of time and become a problem instead of being proactive.

De-cluttering the kitchen Kitchen clutter is especially frustrating. When we cook and prepare food we need to shuffle around the kitchen and find different pieces of cutlery, cooking utensils, ingredients, sauces, condiments and so on. Therefore when the kitchen is cluttered and full of junk the task of making food becomes exponentially more difficult and stressful. As you might suspect the easiest way to de-clutter the kitchen is to change your habits and attitudes regarding food. It's important to plan your meals in advance, ensuring that you use all the ingredients and foodstuff that you buy; otherwise it's incredibly easy to gather hundreds of tins, jars, frozen goods, herbs, spices that just sit and gathering dust. Above and beyond simply planning your meals, ensuring that you buy flexible and diverse ingredients that can be used in a wide variety of meals is a good idea. Onions and chopped tomatoes for example, form the basis of a staggering amount of savory meals. Obscure or specialty ingredients, such as date flour or rose water tend to be useful for only specific meals and will linger in your cupboards for months and years before finally used or thrown away. Likewise it is also important to learn how to cook! Most of us have aspirations about cooking and eating healthily, but concede to eating junk and snacking due to the time and effort of that actual cooking requires. However cooking doesn't need to be hard and tasty simple meals can be made in 15-20 minutes – the myth that you need to be toiling away in the kitchen for hours every night is simply false. When we know how to cook and we have planned our meals in advance, then it becomes a simple matter of using ingredients we have available and you shouldn't require hundreds of different ingredients stuffing up your cupboards. As a result it also becomes easier to cut back on storage – whether it is a second fridge, separate freezer, or several cupboards instead of just a few.

Even if you can manage to change your habits from herein forth, you still need to work on the surplus of food you might have lying around in your kitchen. For tinned goods, consider donating to a food bank or a local charity; you can get rid of your excess and help others at the same time. Frozen food is trickier, but you can start by simply creating a log of all the frozen goods you have within your freezer. Once you have a list of what is available, you can make a concerted effort to stop buying duplicates and similar foods and start on working down what is already present. In terms of the smaller jars of condiments, spices and basic cooking ingredients, such as sugar or flour, sift through your supplies and find ingredients you can consolidate. If you have multiples of different jars of the same spices and herbs for example, try pouring these jars into one large jar and label it instead. You can do the same for flour, sugar, pasta, couscous and any pourable ingredient. There is more to the kitchen than food however! Most of us have a particularly bad habit of picking up unnecessary novelty appliances for our kitchen. Specialty coffee makers, chocolate foundations, smoothie blenders, ice cream makers, popcorn makers, deep fat fryers for chips and crisps, a bread oven, a slow cooker and so on. Generally speaking a popcorn maker is never going to be an item that genuinely contributes to your happiness and that chocolate fountain is probably something you haven't used more than once or twice! With that being said, think carefully. Not all appliances are bad – slow cookers for example are great for cooking batch meals for larger groups and making meals easier to prepare, but only if you actually use it! Take a moment to consider what you do and don't use rather than simply being single-minded – you can always get rid of more later on. When getting rid of novelty and small cooking appliances, see if any friends or family members are interested in these items as it is wasteful to simply throw these expensive items away. Likewise if these items are in good condition and all / most of their components are still present then you should be able to either sell these items second hand through websites such

as eBay or Craigslist or give them away to charities that run high street stores. You also need to go through your cutlery, cooking equipment and utensils. Shift through everything and get rid of excessive duplicates. You shouldn't need more than three saucepans and two skillets. Preferably one of these skillets should be a large iron skillet or a wok which is great for group meals, whilst a smaller skillet is great to sauté' food, fry eggs and smaller cooking tasks. Also purge extra plates, spoons, forks and knives. You don't need two dozen plates and almost uncountable amounts of cutlery. How often do you receive and cater for guests? If you regularly have friends and family members around then it is reasonable to have that amount of cutlery with just a few spares. You don't need to horde plates and cutlery for rare special occasions such as Christmas and birthdays – you can always just buy some disposable cutlery and plates for that occasion or ask some of your guests to bring some of their plates and cutlery too. This same principle also applies for similar equipment such as dishes and trays. Don't keep damaged, broken or faulty cooking equipment either. If you burned the base of a saucepan and you no longer use it, then it is just wasting space. If the non-stick layer on your skillet has been scratched away, then it is no longer as useful. Discard these items and just let them linger just for the sake of it. On a related note, the idea that you should invest in quality products rather than compromising for cheaper alternatives is especially true for kitchen equipment. A good set of kitchen knives will outlast you and a decent set of dishes, pans and trays will also last for decades, at least if you take care of them. Learn how to be gentle with cooking equipment and how to promote its longevity. Simple knife skills will help to prevent the edge of your knives from becoming dull, becoming chipped or the metal from rusting. Likewise learning how to patiently remove dried and tough food residue from your

dishes and pans, through soaking, effort, and the right cleaning products instead of scratching and clawing the surface. Similarly you will be able to appreciate a minimalist kitchen if you apply a little discipline and do you dishes immediately after a meal instead of delaying. If you wait a few hours that food and grease that would be easy to remove becomes difficult and you are more likely to damage your gear when cleaning. Moreover in a family house if your dishes are dirty after a meal then other people need more dishes to use if they want to make food later, encouraging you to own more plates and equipment. This logic also applies to your dishwasher. A dishwasher can easily become a form of storage, with dishes and cutlery lingering inside waiting for someone to put them away. If you deal with the chore immediately, it’s simply better and easier for everyone. If you want to go one step further, consider getting rid of your dishwasher altogether. When you develop the habit of washing your dishes immediately after use, a dishwasher becomes redundant and the minimalist perspective has no patience for redundant items! You can also get a good re-sale value on your dishwasher if it is in good quality and get rid of dishwasher cleaning tablets and products, saving you space elsewhere.

De-cluttering the Garage The garage tends to be our dumping ground for everything we don't want in the house, often leading to our garages becoming claustrophobic and almost impossible to navigate in, but also making it difficult to deal with. When de-cluttering your garage, consider enlisting some help from family or friends who can help you move heavy stuff around and prevent you from straining yourself. As the garage tends to accumulate possessions from everyone in your household, it’s also a good idea to make garage decluttering a family effort so that everyone has a say in what stays and what is thrown away. Start your de-cluttering garage purge by looking for any items that just belong in the trash or should have been discarded long ago. This includes tools and equipment that are broken, but for some reason you did not deal with earlier, toys, bikes and kid-related stuff that your children have outgrown and surplus decorating equipment. It can help to sort these items into three different categories; those which should go in the trash, those which you should donate and those which you want to keep. Items such as bikes and larger toys can actually be quite valuable, so it’s worth the effort of either trying to donate or re-sell these items as long as they are in good condition. Avoid the temptation to be lazy and not delve into boxed storage or any items that are neatly packed away. Instead open every box and container, filtering through the items on the inside, even if it means that you must repackage and re-seal these items in new boxes. Think carefully about how you want to use your garage. Of course for many people the garage is mainly used to store their vehicles, but if you have a patio or driveway, then you can park your cars and vans outside, opening up the space for another purpose.

Likewise if you have a basement or a loft/attic you should need a secondary storage space for all the possessions and stuff that doesn't belong in one of the household rooms. As a result if you can commit to purging away all the unnecessary items, you can re-purposes the garage for another use, such as a home gym/exercise space, a home office, a recreational / workshop space for you and your kids or even a kid-hideout where the children can go and play when the adults of the house are busy. Once you have addressed the items that obviously need to go, go back through everything that is left and see what else can be removed. We are often pretty bad at gathering duplicates of small, necessary items such as tools, household or car cleaning items and those little DIY items, such as window sealant, which we use partially and then just leave lurking around.

Minimalism and Clothes If there is one aspect of modern life where almost everyone succumbs to clutter, it is our wardrobe and our clothing collection. Our obsession with clothes might exist for dozens of different reasons; our vanity and craving to look good, the obesity epidemic and the need for different sizes to accommodate yo-yo dieting or even just a love of spending and susceptibility for well-marketed bargains and price-cuts. Regardless of our motives, our wardrobes are sprawling gargantuan creatures that need to be tackled. However in spite of the desperate need to tackle our excess clothing, clothes is perhaps the hardest group of items to part with. The desire to look and feel-good is deep rooted and for most of us is expressed by what we wear. There is only so much we can alter about our looks and it is hard to change our weight and become more toned or muscular. By contrast, wearing a sleek outfit is easy and immediately rewarding. There are two ways we can deal with this mental blockage. The first is to realize that clothes are indeed only a small part of our attractiveness and that you don't need a large wardrobe to be well-dressed. Whilst there is a fixed aspect of our attractiveness, a large part of it consists of factors we can control. Being well groomed, with a good haircut, good teeth and body odor firmly under control is undeniably more important than having a snazzy pair of chinos. Likewise, a vibrant glow from regular exercise, being trim, and close to our ideal weight will make most people easy on the eyes. Finally, much of our attractiveness depends on the subtle ways we act; charisma, confidence, humor, wit and intelligence. The take-home point here is that although a good set of clothes might make you feel better about yourself, attractiveness is mostly about you rather than what you are wearing.

Of course, you can always take a different approach and learn to be less focused on looks, appearance and attractiveness. For many people it can be a great relief to 'let go' and stop worrying about all the little factors that you need to constantly need to judge and control to manage your appearance, including clothes. This doesn't mean that you need to walk around in pajamas and onesies or become completely virtuous and not think about your appearance at all. It does mean that sometimes you can settle with looking good, rather than looking great, or god forbid just looking 'OK'. This approach is perhaps the closest and truest to the underlying minimalist philosophy. Does your happiness really depend upon what you wear? Should your happiness be dictated by your garments? Even if you concede that your clothes do matter to you, at some level you might also be aware that if you attempted to change your habits, you could probably learn to be happier with less focus on clothing. The other approach is to realize that your style and fashion sense doesn't correlate with the amount of clothes you own. You can have a ridiculously large wardrobe, but this doesn't mean than any of these items are fashionable or suit you. Instead the opposite is true – a smaller wardrobe is often more focused and well-considered, containing only clothes that match your style. This principle is the underlying philosophy of the minimalist or capsule wardrobe trend that is becoming popular among the fashion world. A capsule wardrobe is a set of clothes and clothing accessories carefully considered and picked to wear for an entire season, with all other items sold, donated or stored away. The central caveat of the capsule wardrobe is that the number of items within should be incredibly limited, with many people attempting the challenge of no more than 30-40 items (discounting socks and underwear).

As a result of limiting themselves to such a small amount of clothes, the owner of a capsule wardrobe has to make calculated and careful choices about what to include. This translates to evaluating what types of clothes and what colors suit them, but also choosing clothes that can easily be mixed and matched with each other. Certain style of clothes, from denim jeans, to white t-shirts and blouses tend to match with a wide array of clothing. By sticking to these diverse pieces and selecting just a few unique, stand-out items of clothing, it's possible to make dozens if not hundreds of different clothing combinations from a small wardrobe. As a result, an owner of a capsule wardrobe always feels like they have something to wear, more so than a regular person who owns several times more clothes. Furthermore these diverse pieces also tend to have a timeless quality and don't ever truly pass out of fashion, meaning that you don't have to constantly update your wardrobe by buying new things every single year. A well designed capsule wardrobe should also have at least one choice for every likely occasion. This includes choices for formal occasions, work, and relaxation, clothes for warmth, sunny days and so on. The way this is achieved in having clothing choices that can be used for multiple occasions. The right style and cut of suit can double both for formal occasions and office wear for example, whereas a white smart dress shirt can be used from casual situations all the way up to special circumstances. A pea coat is warm enough to protect from cold days when button up, but light and open enough to be worn day-to-day too. With that being said, capsule wardrobes tend to be specifically made for a season of the year or a time period of about 3 months. Owing to this there are some situations that don't need to be considered (you don't need a coat to deal with snow in summer for example). However, you don't need to go as far as developing a capsule wardrobe, but you can certainly get rid of clothes that you do not use. A simple method to determine what clothes you do not really need is to take all your clothes of

their hangers and then re-hang these clothes so that the hangers all face the same direction. During the next month, any time you use an item of clothing, when you hang it back up, ensure the hanger faces the opposite direction. At the end of the month you can then look at your wardrobe and take out all the clothes whose hangers still face the original direction. Alternatively you can put your clothes temporarily in a box or storage and put this box where you cannot see it. If after a few weeks or month you realize that you haven't thought about or required that item over that month, then it's obvious that you don't really need that item (and that it doesn't contribute to your wellbeing in any way). The month test is just a recommendation but you can use a shorter period of time if you wish. A month is typically chosen to be long enough to demonstrate that you don't need an item, but if you are taking your minimalist habits to the next level you might want to restrict yourself to just a week or two. You can also just apply a common sense and get rid of items that are old, do not fit or are in poor condition. It can be tempting to keep clothes that we have grown too small for you because of the goal of one day losing weight and wearing these items once again. This is not necessarily a bad aspiration, but nonetheless these items don't need to linger in your wardrobe – box them away and return to them when you have reached your goal. It’s also worth pointing out that your taste in fashion and clothes will mostly change over time and therefore keeping clothes for some distant anticipated use is typically futile. Often people cling to rarely used items such as suits and cocktail dresses for years because they feel like they will eventually need them, only to realize that they no longer actually want to wear them when the time actually comes around.

Once you have got rid of obviously unneeded items, target duplicates and clothes which serve similar purposes. Even if all your jackets are in good condition and look fabulous, you don't need seven of them – you could easily make do with just one or two. This also goes with all your categories of clothes, go through and purge the excess. Many people find that this is a rewarding process whereby making explicit decision about what clothes they favor, the help realize what clothes they adore and what is expendable, defining their style in the process.

Minimalism & Technology With computers and digitization being a cornerstone of modern life it has become important to not only de-clutter your physical lives but also our addiction to the virtual world. In fact for most modern people technological clutter is arguably more important and more overwhelming than physical clutter. We tend not to think that our attachment to social media, such as Facebook or Instagram, or entertainment websites, such as YouTube or Reddit, as a type of materialism. Nonetheless we still develop a type of addiction to these websites and they easily consume our time and energy, distracting us from important aspects of our lives, making them a form of clutter. Most of us know that person who is constantly glued to their phone, constantly texting or browsing the internet – even when in the presence of other people or when they are out and about. Above and beyond the rudeness, there is a sense of tragedy when we think about these people who seemingly lack the ability to detach themselves from their phone – even for five minutes – and enjoy the world around them. This type of technological addiction is hard to tackle due to the critical role technology plays in our lives. We do in fact need mobiles to communicate and their newfound ability to access the internet and use apps can enhance our lives instead of detract. Likewise we need computers, laptops and tablets to work and for other functions, such as research and learning. Owing to this it's hard to simply go 'cold-turkey' and break away from these items altogether.

However we can take steps to limit their impact and gradually wean ourselves away from their influence. For a start, try getting rid of some of your social media profiles. Many dedicated minimalists enjoy having no social media profiles whatsoever, as they find that the constant effort needed to maintain a social online presence draining. Furthermore there is a sense of peace and freedom that you can enjoy not needing to constantly be bothered by everyone on your friends list and that you can enjoy some of your time in peace without being connected to everyone you know. However you don't need to go this far, instead if you have multiple social media profiles try cutting yourself down to one that you use the most. Similarly, try purging people from your friends list and reducing the amount of content that you are subscribed too. One of the greatest problems with social media is that is joins us and connects us to other people on a purely superficial level. For many people the amount of friends they have on a service such as Facebook is staggering but the amount of friends they have in real life can be counted on one hand. There is something inherently awkward and false about this discrepancy – if you do not care enough about someone to keep contact with them outside of your social media, then clearly the connection you share is not something to be cherished. People you know from your school or college days who you haven't actually interacted with for years, friends of friends or even associates of associates all find our way on our friends list and they all clog our social media feed with information about their lives. We are bombarded with information about what they ate for lunch, where they went on Saturday and often their trite and melodramatic thoughts and feelings, that in truth we do not care about. Cutting these 'friends' from our friends list can be liberating and can allow your social media use to be more intimate and rewarding. Instead of welcoming the noise of everyone who you have ever known, keeping your

friends list just down to close friends and family can help you stay connected and interested in their lives. Furthermore as a result of this purge you will have less content to sift through on your social media profiles, resulting in less of an urge to fidget and check back into them constantly. On the same vein, die-subscribing from feeds and content that you are not really interested in can help you focus on the feeds that you do value. If you ever find yourself lost or struggling to make a choice about social media, just ask yourself does this website/person/subscription contribute to my happiness? If the answer is no, you know what to do. Our obsession with technology can also include games. The stereotypical gamer is a spotty, awkward pubescent male who is addicted to wasting his time on the latest MMO or FPS. However research has shown that the average gamer is actually in the 25-34 range and there is an increasingly proportion of female and elderly gamers too. Furthermore whilst 'hardcore' gaming still remains popular, especially amongst the young, most gaming is casual gaming on apps such as Farmville or Candy Crush, often associated with the middle-aged. As a result almost everyone who frequently uses a computer or a smart phone has some form of gaming that they frequently take part in, even if they do not label themselves a 'gamer'. Yet these types of computer games are often some of the least rewarding and most time wasting periods of our day. There is a whole field of research into the psychology of gaming and gamers, with game designers cleverly implementing features to get people addicted to their creations. From the stylization and color scheme, to a reward system and features that try to get you to play every day, every aspect of the modern game is tactfully crafted to cause people to develop an addiction to playing that game.

Of course most people would be offended at the notion that they are addicted, as addiction carries strong and powerful connotations of someone ruining or damaging their life, through drugs or alcohol. Yet, if you find yourself squandering your time playing a game and being aware of the fact, or realize that you often find yourself automatically playing the game whenever you have some spare time, it's likely that you have fallen for some of these addiction traps. Likewise if you find yourself thinking that you'll just play until the next level or until the next reward, then realize that these games are using the nature of your psyche against you – they are manipulating you into playing them, even if you are not aware of the fact. Naturally once you realize the negative impact of these games, it’s easy to either start cutting them or finding a better alternative. Simple mind puzzles, such as a Sudoku, can fill the spare minutes of your day that are usually directed towards these smaller games, but are less addictive and much more stimulating for your brain. Some minimalists go one step further and attempt to cut off the internet in their home altogether. This is partially due to productivity; the internet is full of strange, weird and interesting places that can endlessly consume your time and cause you to procrastinate. As we tend to go on the internet for legitimate reasons, but stay because we get distracted, we can often lose whole evenings to the web. For some people getting away from the internet altogether is the only solution. Of course this doesn't mean that minimalists perceive the internet as a bad thing, just dangerous in its time wasting potential. Likewise there is nothing wrong occasionally browsing Facebook or climbing down the YouTube rabbit hole, but we almost always get the balance wrong. Getting rid of the internet in your house doesn't mean that you have to go without internet altogether. Between your workplace and nearby locations that offer WiFi, such as libraries and cafes it’s perfectly possible to still

access the internet when you need it, especially if you do live in an urban location. Naturally some people find the prospect of getting rid of the internet altogether daunting, if not impossible. For some people it might be genuinely true that home-based internet is essential, but for most of us, it's actually just a convenience. You can survive without Netflix, Social Media, online gaming and procrastination activities. When you drop these various time wasters from your life, you'll start to realize just how much time you do currently spend on them and how enriching it is to have this time back. At the very least you can trial an internet-free home experience for a week just to see what it feels like. If you don't want to go as far as getting rid of your internet, consider planning your internet usage a bit more carefully. Writing down or mentally listing the tasks you want to do when you go on the internet and then limiting your internet usage to just a few times a week can ensure that when you do go on the web, you are more focused. By thinking about what you want to do in advance you make your internet usage more purposeful and meaningful, which in turn makes it more rewarding.

Top 10 Tips for Minimalism 1. Realize that minimalism is about your mindset It doesn't matter how harshly or thoroughly you purge your house of clutter, if you cannot change the way you view your possessions and items. Even if you get rid of everything you do not need you will find that new possessions begin creeping back into your life and clutter re-emerges if you cannot change the way you think. After all, as you should know by now, minimalism is more than just the urge for space, openness and tidiness in your home – it’s about re-ordering your life so that only important things remain. Even if you can accomplish the former without the latter, it will be a shallow victory. Therefore whenever you are de-cluttering, always bring yourself back to why you are doing this. Always ask yourself the fundamental question – what makes me happy? Your de-cluttering should be led by your answer to this question and your commitment to finding it, rather than the other way around. Likewise if you manage to truly change your mindset, you will find that you gradually de-clutter overtime anyway, as you will start to buy less and you will naturally start to remove and limit items you are no longer interested in. 2. De-clutter repeatedly De-cluttering is a process and a skill. The more you de-clutter and commit to minimalism, the more you will realize just how little you need. As a result, a month or two after de-cluttering you will often find yourself glancing around your home and realizing that you've still left a bunch of stuff that you don't need – demonstrating that it's time to de-clutter again. Likewise, learn how to tackle a single room or area at a time. De-cluttering the entire house is daunting and challenging and takes a few days to do

properly. De-cluttering a single room however can be done easily within an afternoon and is immediately rewarding. Even better, try doing a quick and rapid sweep around the house with a box and put anything unnecessary that catches your eye in the box. You can do this in 15 minutes, you don't need to dwell on difficult decisions or part with anything you don't want to right now and it has a tangible and instant impact. 3. Don't be afraid to try new things Throughout this guide, the concept of extreme minimalism or advanced minimalism has been mentioned numerous times – from people who avoid the internet and do not own a car, to people who dedicate themselves to owning less than 100 things and so on. Generally speaking, these minimalists push the boundaries and they are willing to try and experiment and explore the limits of what they need to make themselves happy and what they don't. As a society we are used to so many amenities and luxuries that we start to believe that we can't survive or thrive without them, even though this obviously isn't true. You don't truly know how going without the internet, relying on public transport or trying a capsule wardrobe will make you feel unless you try. It might be scary and uncomfortable to try something radically different from what you are used to, but if you never took any risks in life, you would never gain any rewards either. In the worst case scenario, these 'extreme' minimalist experiments might make you realize that you do rely upon a car, internet or a large wardrobe, which will make you appreciate and savor these possessions when you return to them. The likely outcome, however, is that you realize that none of these items do truly matter to you and you become happier as a result. Either way it's win – win.

Furthermore as you begin to use and rely less upon possessions, you should look for experiences to replace them with. From meeting to new people, to taking your family out somewhere you don't go, or jumping on a new opportunity, minimalists need to courage to try new things. 4. Come Prepared It’s easy for the de-cluttering process to stall if you don't start the process in an organized and prepared manner. Your motivation and discipline to decluttering can wane, especially as you start to depart from things which you are attached to. If you have a small reason to wait, such as a lack of bags and boxes to store things within, it can be very tempting to delay for a long time, or even quit altogether. Don't let this natural dip in your motivation prevent you from going through with the de-cluttering process and ensure that you have everything you need the moment you start to de-clutter. Useful equipment includes some black bags and cardboard boxes to pack stuff away, duck tape and sticky tape, scissors and simple cleaning equipment to deal with the dust and debris left behind. Also ensure that you have a good plan regarding how you will discard or donate your items before you start to de-clutter – it’s horrible to designate things to get rid of, only to find that there are no charities or dumping grounds that will accept them. 5. Change the Way You Live The real trick to living with less is to change the way you organize your life. You can live without a car, for example, if you wake 30 minutes earlier in the morning, giving you enough time to use public transport. You can deal with your documents and physical files easier if you have an input-output system about where things go. You can survive with fewer clothes if you can have good systems to do your laundry and to order your clothes in your wardrobe.

An embarrassingly amount of our excess derives from sheer laziness – instead of doing our chores or developing ways to keep on track of things, we simply buy more stuff to compensate. Learning to deal with things the moment that they need to be done rather than 'later' and making an effort to actually tidy, organize things in the most effective way rather than the quickest will reduce the amount of stuff you feel you need in your life. 6. Only Take Cash Out With You If you find it hard to discipline your spending habits and therefore your accumulation of new stuff, you should start to bring cash with you when you go shopping instead of using your debit or credit card. If you take a limited amount of cash with you – only what you need for your intended purchase – then you will be unable to buy anything else along the way, preventing impulse buys. This also forces you to think about what you need in advance, helping you organize and plan your life better, which also helps you avoid clutter and unnecessary items too. On a similar vein it can be helpful to buy items online rather than going to a shopping mall. Seeing a bunch of stuff in window of a shopping mall raises the temptation to buy it, even if that's not why you are at the shopping mall or the high street in the first place. Buying items online however can be much more focused, allowing you to quickly jump between the items you intend to buy and buy nothing else. Between online purchases and taking only cash out with you, you should never need to put yourself in a position where impulse purchases in a shopping mall are possible. 7. Pay Attention to What You Are Doing Society has taught us that we need to be busy and productive. As a result we have the overwhelming urge to multi-task and rush through most of chores and activities that we do, failing to pay proper attention to them.

Likewise most of the stuff we do in life is actually pretty mundane – cleaning, washing, tidying, eating, walking, causing our attention to lapse simply because we are bored. To minimalists, however, this attention lapse has dire consequences. In practical terms it means that everything we do is less effective, because we are not doing it properly. We don't fold and hang our clothes properly in our wardrobe when we sort our laundry, making them difficult to find the next time round, or we don't put the effort into clearing the grime and dirt in the bathroom when we clean it, causing it to still feel grubby. These small lapses in concentration and effort result in a sense of things being unsatisfactory and tend to cause us more hassle in the long-term when we have to do things a second time, because they were not done correctly initially. However the real reason why paying attention is important is because it enriches our lives. Minimalists seek happiness – a true and rich happiness that doesn't rely on possessions. Yet it’s impossible to live a rich and fulfilling life if you are not paying attention. This need for attention and mindfulness applies for both the mundane aspects of our lives, but also the interesting parts too. It would be easy to pay attention and stay in the moment if we lived exotic lives full of rock climbing, bungee jumping and globe-trotting. However most of our life is spent doing ordinary things and if we fail to pay attention to these basic things, we tend to lose the ability to concentrate and pay attention in detail. Awareness of the present moment – or even just awareness in general – is a mental muscle and requires exercise and stimulation to work. If we fail to pay attention to the boring moments in our lives, our ability to pay attention to the interesting moments is diminished too.

Moreover there is value in the boring moments too – they do after all, make up a huge portion of our life. If we fail to pay attention every time we do a chore, go to work, eat or wash ourselves, then it seems as if we must spend most of our days not paying attention to anything at all. It’s no wonder then, that many people feel unhappy and unfulfilled. There are a few tricks you can use to help you keep paying attention during the moments of your day. Firstly, avoid multi-tasking. By doing only one thing at a time, you allow yourself to truly focus on that task rather than trying to split your attention too thinly. Also try doing activities slightly slower than normal. As touched upon previously, we have an inbuilt tendency to rush and speed around during our day when we don't need to. This is often the result of hidden stress, but it can also just become a habit. By going a little slower we give our mind a greater ability to actually process what is happening, but also enjoy the moment itself. This can help us relax, but also find fun, even in the 'boring' moments. Finally, try to spend some time everyday doing nothing and just being aware of what is going on in your mind and the sensations of your body. It can help to do this in the morning before you start your day, but if you have a spare few minutes; it can be a great way to find some calm during the working hours too. 8. Keep Minimalism to Yourself It's always tempting to tell other people about new things we are trying, especially if they are large and important to you. However, when people don't understand or appreciate your reasons for making a change, it can be incredibly de-motivating. Furthermore you'll find that in the future you have to explain and justify your progress, or the lack of, if you've had any setbacks. These types of social interactions make trying to be a minimalist much more stressful and

difficult and you'll often encounter people who find pleasure in passiveaggressively bringing your self-esteem down about your ideas. As a result, it's best to keep you new minimalist ideas to yourself, at least initially. Instead of telling people that you want to be a minimalist or declutter, just do it first. If and when people start to notice changes in your personality and mood and that you are calmer, happier and more peaceful, then you can start to talk about minimalism and how it has benefited you. People are much more likely to be open and interested in your ideas if they can see the results and benefits directly, instead of just hearing about them. After all, most of us have talked about goals we have – from losing weight to traveling – without ever working towards accomplishing them. As a result, people develop skepticism when we talk about what we want to do (a skepticism you might notice you also apply to others). Of course for close friends and people you know will be more interested in discussing ideas, feel free to talk about your interest in minimalism – just be wary with colleagues, associates and your less considerate friends. 9. Realize it might suck at first The great achievements in life take time and effort, which is why they are difficult. Living a minimalistic lifestyle is no different and it will often take a great deal of time for the benefits to truly shine through. In the meantime however, having a house that feels 'empty' or depriving yourself of your usual and unnecessary luxuries can feel pretty rough. In fact this is why minimalists might refer to our obsession with stuff as an addiction. Just as with any addiction, changing your ways is hard and you may have withdrawal symptoms, however in the long-term the benefits will be worth it. Be patient and motivated, being gentle with yourself if you do find yourself drawn back into consumerist and materialistic habits. To overcome the physical and emotional emptiness that sometimes comes as a result of abandoning a chunk of your possessions, try to take up new

experiences and new things instead of just going without the old items and possessions. After all, minimalism de-clutters in order to give you space and time to focus on the things that make you happy, not just to have you sitting bored in a house with little stuff. 10. Enjoy it! Never forget that minimalism is supposed to make your life better, not worse. That doesn't mean that you will enjoy every part of the process, but at the end of the day it should work to make you happier and content. Minimalism isn't a dogma or a strict code – it is a malleable and flexible philosophy that you should tailor to suit your needs. Whilst you can learn from the recommendations and suggestions from other minimalists, don't feel as if you must obey or follow every idea that other minimalists do. If trying to follow an aspect of minimalism is making your life truly difficult or miserable, abandon it! Some people choose to live with 100 items or less, some people don't. Some people find relief in going without a household internet connection, for others this is unthinkable. Some people employ a capsule wardrobe or go without a car; others think that this is impractical. Try different things, experiment but ultimately return to the changes that have made you happier, even if they are only small. It might be that in the future you might be more comfortable with going further, but even if you do not, there's nothing wrong with that either – perhaps minimalism just isn't for you.

Conclusion Although minimalism is considered a new movement, its roots are old. The wisdom that our happiness is not dependent on our possessions is an ancient one and an underlying theme in most spiritual and religious practices around the world. Likewise the importance minimalists place in happiness, joy, simple living and awareness of the present moment can be linked back to eastern philosophies such as Zen & Taoism. History aside, most of us are aware that our connection to possessions and stuff is superficial. Even as we buy new things we know, on some level, that these things do not genuinely make us happy. Items don't solve the problems in our lives and nor are they a source of joy – instead they just distract and redirect our attention away from what actually matters to us. The minimalist movement has just re-ignited these ideas alongside practical and pragmatic guidelines about how to de-clutter your home and break the bonds that bind you to your items and help you discover happiness.