Many people are choosing to, or wanting, to subscribe to a minimalist lifestyle, at least when it comes to their home. If you are not aware of what minimalism is, it is hailed as a tool which can assist in you decluttering your lifestyle – and this usually starts in the home. As the name would suggest, minimalists, encourage people to part from possessions which seemingly serve no purpose in your life. This, of course, is subjective and that is what is so great about it! You get to decide what you find necessary to keep in your home and what you believe is simply clutter when you look at it through different eyes, perhaps.
Minimalism can also apply to other parts of your life such as your diet, your physical objects, clothing and, what we are focussing on, your home.
If you are looking for ways to declutter your home and reduce the number of possessions present around your house, then we have a few ways to get you going.
Make a list
At first, decluttering can be very overwhelming so to make the process easier in the initial stages, make a list of all the things you know you need in your home. The easier method to this by is room-by-room. You should state even the most obvious things, like a bed in the bedroom or the fridge in the kitchen. It might be wise to go round each room a few times to see if anything else sticks out to you, maybe a painting that has semimetal value.
From here, you can also make a list of the things you really wouldn’t mind leaving behind in the world. Anything that doesn’t get written down on either list is an indicator that you could give or take those items and they should probably be gotten rid of.
Discard any duplicates
It is not uncommon for people to have more than one of the same item in their home. You could walk around the house with a box and fill it with any duplicates you find. If you have two of the same measuring jugs, put one in the box. More than one copy of a book or a DVD? In the box, it goes.
You can seal the box up and label it duplicates. Put it out of sight for at least a month. Come to the end of the month, if you haven’t needed anything from it or do not even remember what was in the box, you should consider donating the contents.
Cut down on clothing
One of the things that can clutter your house the most is clothing and shoes. Like with the first point, you could make a list or sort your clothes and shoes into designated piles; keep, sell/donate and discard.
If you are holding on to clothing item, try the ‘reverse hanger trick’. Here, the idea is that in order to identify items of clothing which should be sold or donated, you hang your clothes up with the hangers the reverse way around. When it comes to wearing the item, you put them back in with the hanger the correct way around. You should continue this for at least a six-month period but it can be as long as you like.
After this six-month period, you should be left with clothing hung up the right way and clothing hung up the wrong way – providing a clear picture of what you really wear. Clearly, there will be things like formal wear that may not have been turned around simply because you have not had an event to wear them too during the time period. These should be treated differently in this experiment.
