Minimalism for Beginners

 Although there is a vast plethora of applications to minimalism, there are a few simple ways to become a minimalist which apply to most people's lifestyles. In terms of living space, working space, and time organization, a large part of the complexity caused through everyday events manifests from the various adjustments mindlessly made through our habits. Here are a few tips to become more of a minimalist: 

Take Inventory

In order to fully understand what is necessary to declutter, you first have to learn the contents with which you hope to organize and then minimize. For example, if you find that you have too much of a certain piece of clothing, you will find it possible to readjust your wardrobe to meet your desired capacity. 

In another example, if your office desk is cluttered, it might make sense to look at all of your possessions in this section, so that each piece can either be discarded or mindfully place in a logical location.

Start with Small Tasks

Rather than cleaning the entire house, which might take days depending on your situation, you can easily budget 20-30 minutes to properly clean up a room or even part of a room, and then form the habit of this process, taking place in a new section of the house every day. As this habit solidifies, the house will become more organized and each item will be closely reviewed, allowing you to determine what is truly necessary to have.

Keep Track of Spending

Are you finding yourself buying possessions on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, that you don't end up needing in retrospect? If so, it would serve a huge benefit to keep track of each transaction so that as time goes on, you learn how to reevaluate whether you are buying something out of habit or necessity. In the long term, a simple bookkeeping process can work wonders to organize one's spending and their associated possessions.

Use Higher Quality Items in a Lesser Quantity

If the complexity in your life is a result of having too much stuff, perhaps if you evaluate all the things that you consistently use, you can gradually replace those duplicates with a singular version of higher quality, and sell or give away the cheaper goods as time goes on. For example, if you find that you have too many jackets, you would significantly reduce your wardrobe size by selling/donating the jackets and buying one or two more expensive jackets that are composed of a higher quality.

Discard Broken Things

If you have a possession which is unusable due to its condition, space can easily be cleared by donating or throwing away this item. Even if you were eventually going to get around to repairing the item, it would save you a disproportionate amount of energy and space to remove that object from your mind. This is especially true if you are already faced with the problem of having a disorganized and overly-complex space.

Categorize Your Possessions

By categorizing a set of possessions, you will then be able to see which items are near duplicates to each other, and then you can easily identify what you don't need.