We are rapidly entering an era where people realize the luxury of simplicity. In our world today, many people no longer equate wealth to owning the most expensive or luxurious materials.
Wealth is now less affiliated with stuffing the home with expensive things we necessarily do not have to own, all in the name of grandeur.
Today, the concept of minimalism is becoming more and more accepted by many people worldwide.
In this article, I will guide you through the paths of minimalism and show you how to be a minimalist.
But before all that, let’s start at the beginning.
Who Is A Minimalist?
A minimalist is simply an individual who is content to own fewer properties or doesn’t fancy living a life full of unnecessary things.
While a minimalist can mostly afford to get whatever they need, they simply don’t have any interest in owning them.
Instead, they believe in living a life of moderation and simplicity. A minimalist does not stuff the house with unnecessary items but items needed for smooth operations.
A minimalist is not interested in flashy cars, expensive jewelry, or heavily cluttered closets. Instead, they simply get the things they need and not the things they want.
Below, I have listed and highlighted ten essential tips on how to be a minimalist:
1. Set Priorities
In learning how to be a minimalist, you must set priorities. Know the things you need and those you don’t. You must be able to differentiate between your wants and your needs.
For example, you may need a wristwatch because you want to keep up with time. However, you don’t need to purchase an expensive wristwatch to know the time.
So, you can prioritize purchasing a decent wristwatch that is not expensive but effective over buying a costly wristwatch.
Since you don’t need it for aesthetic purposes, any functioning wristwatch will do just fine. Setting such a priority is essential in understanding how to be a minimalist.
2. Be Shrewd With Spending
Being a minimalist does not make you poor or stingy. On the contrary, a minimalist shows shrewdness in spending.
Although they may have the financial capacity to spend money on certain items, they avoid doing so because they understand the importance of saving money.
When you spend a lot of money on the things you do not need, you will lack money to buy the stuff you need. You must have heard about celebrities who were millionaires in their prime but turned out to be broke and bankrupt later.
For most of them, it was because they couldn’t minimize how they spent their money. Perhaps they felt they would make more money, so they didn’t save much.
3. Evaluate Your Assets
Learning how to be a minimalist requires evaluating your assets and assessing whether you need most of the things you own.
If you realize that most things you own aren’t necessary, you must reconsider your financial lifestyle and change.
For example, some wealthy people own many cars — they don’t even drive some of them all year. Others buy jewelry and expensive gadgets that they barely even use.
So having a good look at your assets can hint at how much you spend on irrelevant stuff. Before understanding minimalism, I dreamed of building the biggest mansions and owning the largest yacht.
I thought showing off wealth was the best way to display success. I was so obsessed with flashy things that I began to save money to buy myself a car.
Of course, I needed to own a car at that point in my life. I was getting tired of jumping from one bus to another on my way to work each day. I knew buying a car would reduce the stress.
However, I wasn’t setting my sights on getting an affordable car that would do the job of taking me back and forth to work. Instead, I wanted a classic car — like the ones my bosses drove.
Although I had just gotten a job fresh off college, I tried to drive the best cars to work. I looked at the wage gap between those that drove that car and that put things into perspective.
If I hadn’t made a critical evaluation of my assets, I would have bought that car. It would have caused a severe dent in my finances while saving little or no money. Today, that single decision still plays an instrumental role in my life.
4. Review The Things You Spend Time On
The things you do with your time can tell whether you are a minimalist or not. While it is great to have fun, it is also important to be modest about how much fun you have.
Do you prefer hanging out with friends all evening to staying at home with your families? Would you instead go to an eatery than visit the gym? These choices determine whether you’re living a minimalist lifestyle or not.
5. Set Limits
In understanding how to be a minimalist, you must learn how to set limits. First, you must always have that point where you cannot go past — whether financially or otherwise.
For example, every month, you have a budget of $300 to spend on miscellaneous things. Once you spend up to that amount within a month, you must not consider spending more — of course, except there’s an emergency.
Setting limits on spending money can make you a minimalist over time.
6. Avoid Situations That Lead To Overspending
Sometimes, you may not be able to predict the manner you spend money. You may have had your budget all planned out and have a projection of how much you want to spend.
However, we may be required to spend more due to unforeseen circumstances. Of course, we cannot avoid this in some cases, but it could be avoidable in other cases.
In understanding how to be a minimalist, you need to avoid situations that may require you to spend too much. For example, you have planned to spend a particular weekend indoors, but your friends have other ideas.
They ask you to meet up with them at a bar or lounge. However, in cases where you want to live a minimalist lifestyle and do not want to spend too much, you can politely decline the offer and stay at home.
Declining such offers shouldn’t be so difficult. You can simply tell Rose that you have plans to be indoors to complete a few tasks at home for the weekend. If your friends are understanding enough, they’ll let you be.
7. Avoid Multitasking
Let me remind you that a minimalist is an individual who does things in straightforward ways.
A minimalist is also one who lives a life of maximum simplicity. That said, minimalism and multitasking are mutually exclusive.
As a minimalist, you have to avoid all forms of multitasking and do things in simple ways. Doing two or more items simultaneously can be incredibly burdensome and confusing.
Of course, when you become confused, you may likely become disorganized or disoriented. So, knowing how to be a minimalist requires you to avoid multitasking.
8. Start Small
While it is okay to look at things from a great perspective and have big dreams, you must know that life is a process, and you have to take things step by step.
That is, in whatever you do, you should learn how to start small and grow over time. Starting small will not only make the process less complicated, but it will also make it easier for you to succeed.
When you analyze the life of some of the wealthiest people in the world — whether they are minimalists or not — you will discover they all started small.
For example, Jeff Bezos, the second richest man globally and the founder of Amazon, reportedly started his company in a store not bigger than a garage. Mark Zuckerberg also did not own a big establishment when he launched Facebook.
If these billionaires understand the importance of starting small and growing with time — taking simple steps along the way — you should too.
9. Set Achievable Goals And Objectives
Understanding how to be a minimalist is one thing; practicing minimalism is another. Hence it is imperative to set achievable goals while practicing minimalism.
Therefore, one of the things you must do is become focused on achieving your goals and objectives.
For example, once you decide on the kind of budget planning you must do, make sure you stick to it. Then, by the end of the month, ensure that you achieve your aim.
When I started practicing minimalism, I was ready to show commitment. One of the first things I did was declutter. I sold and gave out a lot of items I had but didn’t need.
I made my living room look spacious and straightforward. I gave out the clothes and shoes I didn’t need and sold most of my expensive jewelry.
I got significant sums from selling those items and began to save up. Then I created a monthly budget plan and had an idea of how much I would spend each month.
I also knew what I would spend my money on every month. At the end of the first month, my budget planning was successful, and I saved almost twice as much as I had been saving.
When I realized how great it felt to save enough money and live a simple lifestyle, I set my mind to saving more and setting goals that would enhance my minimalist lifestyle. It is safe to say that I consistently achieved all the goals and objectives I set.
10. Be Cautious Of The Friends You Keep
In learning how to be a minimalist, you must be cautious of the kind of friends you keep. It will be much more challenging to practice a minimalist lifestyle while your friends are spendthrifts.
Hence it would be best to make friends with those who share the same life philosophy and are willing to support your growth.
Create a strong relationship with friends and family members who can help you live a minimalist lifestyle. Make sure they are instrumental in helping you through the journey of minimalism.
Your friends should be the driving force behind some of your minimalist decisions. If you are ever going to believe that you can become a minimalist, the influence of your friends will play a huge role.
If you keep the right friends, you will master the art of controlling your urges and become a wiser spender over time.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you cannot make friends who are not minimalists but always draw inspiration from those who are.
How To Become A Minimalist At Home
The concept of minimalism spreads across different aspects of life. These include financial, economic, social, cultural, academic, and others. You can practice how to be a minimalist in almost every aspect of your life.
One of the most common ways to practice a minimalist lifestyle is at home. The easiest step for minimalism in the house is decluttering the home.
I have touched on the topic of decluttering in the article simple guide to decluttering your home and you can read it here.
However, there is more to minimalism than decluttering. So without further ado, below are some tips on how to be a minimalist at home:
1. Begin Your Minimalist Journey With One Room
This is perhaps an essential part of learning how to be a minimalist at home. Sometimes, people who want to make their homes look as simple as possible often make the mistake of trying to change everything at once.
But, of course, it is almost impossible to do so since you are not Harry Potter with magical wands. The ideal way to start the journey is with a single room — preferably your bedroom.
You can make other rooms look as simple as possible as you continue the process. Trying to make sure you keep your bedroom very tidy and simple will give you a hint of how you should declutter your living room.
It is always a good idea to start with the rooms that a barely accessible to visitors. This is to ensure you don’t make the mistake of giving your living room an unpleasant look because you want to keep things minimal.
2. Focus On The Visible Parts Of The Room
At this point, you now have room to practice your minimalist lifestyle. The next most important thing is to begin the minimalist process in the visible parts of the room.
For example, the frames hung on the walls, the materials on the floor, the furniture in the room, etc. By doing that, you will have an idea of how you want things to be.
In addition, you will be able to see how much progress you are making if you start with the visible parts of the room.
3. Do Away With All The Unnecessary Items
This is where your minimalist journey really begins. At this stage, you must have been able to figure out all the essential items in your room as well as the ones you don’t need.
At this point, you may ask yourself a few questions about those materials in your room. Do you need them? What could go wrong if I remove them? Are they adding any value to me? Will I feel the urge to put them back when I remove them?
These questions are fundamental and help you understand the items you should retain. Remember, the aim is for your room to be as simple as possible without losing its aesthetical appearance.
4. Add Only Meaningful And Valuable Items
Decorating your home with a lot of fancy items is not unusual. Most people do this. However, practicing how to be a minimalist at home means you must learn to add only the valuable items or materials that have meaning to you.
For example, you can keep a wall clock because it tells you the time or leave that beautiful portrait on the wall because you love art.
However, you may not want to add a big wallpaper of your favorite rock stars or have stickers of your favorite sports stars scattered on the wall.
Instead, you can have a single wallpaper with different pictures of your favorite stars on your wall — this makes things simpler.
Additionally, having only meaningful or valuable items in your room will command visitors’ attention more than placing irrelevant flashy items all over.
5. Clean Your Room As Often As Possible
A decluttered room always has more space. As a result, it is more likely to be exposed to specks of dirt. To avoid an untidy room, you must clean your room as often as possible.
Keeping your room as simple as possible is one means of practicing how to be a minimalist. Another means is ensuring that you keep your room tidy always. An untidy room says a lot about the owner’s way of life.
6. Fight The Urge To Buy More
As an individual learning how to be a minimalist, you will likely experience intense urges to buy more items for your home, especially those you don’t need.
You must always be ready to fight off the urge. Constantly remind yourself that you are content with your things, and there is no need to get more stuff.
How To Be A Minimalist In 30 Days
In truth, minimalism can be a lifetime process. As things change, so will your minimalist lifestyle. However, you can become a minimalist in 30 days by following these essential tips:
1. Clean Up Your Closet
Your closet can contain a lot of worn-out stuff like clothes and shoes. Instead of leaving the things you no longer need, you can remove them and either give them out or throw them away.
One of the most ideal ways to declutter your closest is by setting up a system of removing an old cloth or shoe when you buy a new one.
2. Turn Off Your Gadgets While Working
This is perhaps the most effective means of concentrating while removing items you no longer need in your room. Notifications from your phone can get you distracted.
You may even spend the whole day on your phone rather than carrying out minimalist activities.
3. Don’t Spare Your Digital Space
Decluttering items is not limited to physical things alone. You can go digital too. Delete those unwanted photos, videos, files, etc, on your phone or computer to create more space and enable the phone or computer to operate optimally.
If necessary, you can carry out antiviral checks occasionally to ensure that your gadgets are free from cyber bugs and viruses.
4. Prepare Yourself For The Day
When you wake up every morning, make sure you are well-prepared to face your daily challenges. Then, you can create a routine task when you wake up.
You can decide to exercise, practice meditation, read a book or article, plan your day, and keep yourself mentally alert by taking a hot cup of coffee.
5. Avoid Multitasking
Many people do not realize that multitasking reduces speed, efficiency, and productivity. It is always advisable to carry out tasks one after the other. Do not multitask, especially when doing complex work.
It slows you down and makes you get tired quickly. Instead, focus on each task — one at a time — and before you say jack, you have completed all the tasks!
6. Use The Most Important Hours Of Your Day To Do Important Things
Every day, you must have a to-do list that ranks the important tasks you must accomplish for the day. Before doing the less important ones, make sure you have completed the most important ones.
That way you can be confident that you spent the most important hours of the day doing important things.
Then, you can use your leisure periods or the less productive hours to access social media or do other less important things.
7. Don’t Pile Up Your Laundry
In learning how to be a minimalist, it is best to do one load of laundry daily. Some people may wash their clothes today, iron them the next day, and fold them the day after. This can be overwhelming and tiring.
To avoid going through this process, make sure you do all these things on the same day. For example, you can wash in the morning, iron in the afternoon, and fold in the evening before you go to bed.
8. Declutter Your Library
If you have so many books piled up in your library, you may want to declutter. You can give out the ones you have read and dispose of those no longer in good condition.
9. Learn A New Skill
Learning a new skill can be highly beneficial in understanding minimalism. Find something that excites you and piques your curiosity. There are a lot of opportunities to learn a new skill these days — both online and offline.
10. Create A Donation Box
You can add the items you no longer need to the donation box. You can ask other people to add theirs too.
Then, whenever the container is filled up, you can donate the items and return the box to its position until it gets filled up again.
Conclusion
Minimalism requires a lot of discipline now more than ever because tons of businesses offer products you may not need. If you are not careful enough, you may be tempted to get that product placed somewhere in your home.
I have highlighted most of the essential tips for living a minimalist lifestyle. That said, you must realize that your journey only begins from here. There are more hurdles to surpass.
But if you remember why you started and focus on what you aim to achieve with minimalism, it will be a walk in the park before you know it.
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