I personally wouldn’t call myself a minimalist, but I certainly do love and follow some of the ideas and principles that minimalists adhere to. And here in this post, I want to share 10 minimalist habits everyone should adopt.
‘Minimalism’ is on the trend right now. I don’t think there’s anyone at this age who hasn’t heard the word ‘minimalist’. But should we really be a minimalist?
I’d say yes, we must all be minimalists or at least try to be minimalist in at least some ways in how we live our lives.
Minimalism shouldn’t only be for those aspiring to be a minimalist.
If you read my blogs often, you must be knowing that I am all about intentional, mindful, and simple living, and minimalism too is just that.
Minimalism is simply a conscious choice to create a lifestyle with minimal things in our life, but which has the highest impact in creating happiness and joy in our lives.
Why minimalism
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Here a minimalist shares 21 benefits of becoming a minimalist
Personally, I believe that becoming a minimalist will help us have more time, more freedom and more money in our life.
It can also help us in these other ways:
- less time being stressed because of the physical clutter
- Less time looking out for things
- Less time cleaning
- Less stress and overwhelm
- Less people pleasing and overall,
- Less work
Some people are natural minimalists. They are happy with less, like one of my friends Nirupama and also my boyfriend. I am amazed by how they are in terms of their needs and how they buy things for themselves.
Whereas some of us have to intentionally build minimalist habits around our life so that our life can have more quality and depth instead of being shallow and only just full of quantity.
This year I want to be a little more intentional with my purchases, my needs and my habits and actually use the word ‘minimalism’ in my intentions.
So here are 10 minimalist habits I believe we all should start adopting in our lives this year.
10 minimalist habits everyone should adopt
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1. Be more intentional
Minimalism is all about bringing more intention into our lives and particularly around our wants, our purchases and our habits.
In this way, minimalism is also being mindful of our desires and our habit patterns.
Minimalists do this by asking ‘why’ behind their specific actions and desires and trying to get to the root of it, by also writing down their answers.
If you want to be more minimalist this year, write down your desires, your wants, and the things that are there in your shopping cart, and answer the question,
Why do I want to buy them?
Most of the time it is because we want to follow a trend, want to be looked at in some way, want to be perceived in some way and most of the time it’s just because we got swayed away at the moment.
But even before you do this, first set an intention on why you think you need minimalism in your life in the first place.
What will having more space create in your life? How do you think you will feel about bringing minimalism in your life?
2. Buy high quality
Purchase only high quality items this year.
Most of us think that we’re saving by buying cheaper items, but we end up buying more and then it costs the same.
I used to do this and would have a hard time giving money on expensive items.
I used to think I was wasting money, but actually, I was wasting more money by buying cheaper items more often.
Cheaper items also have no good feeling attached to them and often add to only clutter because we’ll only either use them very less or they’ll get torn, worn away, or destroyed very fast.
I read somewhere that the only time we feel good when we’re buying cheap products is when we buy them, whereas the only time we’ll feel bad when we buy expensive products, is when we buy them.
This year, buy less, but buy quality items which you know you will make use of and which make you feel good when you use them.
3. Declutter
Decluttering is at the heart of minimalism. You cannot hope to be a minimalist without getting rid of the excess that you have.
If you feel you have too many items in your room, or in your house, start by decluttering one space at a time.
This can be your wardrobe, table, kitchen, fridge, bags, etc.
Every day set a day for decluttering each space and do it one by one until you feel you have created more space in your life.
Make your home, and your room feel lighter and you will notice yourself feeling much lighter.
Here are the best decluttering tips by Marie Condo, the decluttering and organization expert and
Here are my own tips for organising your life this year.
P.S after you declutter it is essential that you get rid of the clutter and not keep it lying in your home again somewhere.
You can choose to do anything in order to get rid of it- sell, donate, give it to someone or anything.
4. Practice digital minimalism
In this day and age, we are in the digital space all the time and it is really important that we apply minimalism also to our digital habits.
But this is hard because we have come to the habit of mindlessly scrolling, checking emails every 5 minutes and going into social media every other minute.
We all have a love-hate relationship with our digital life, and digital minimalism is the answer to our problems.
Digital minimalism is about being mindful and intentional with the use of our technologies in the way that our usage aligns with our purpose and our values.
For example, if you want to become someone who reads more, or gives more time to your creativity, then you need to ask whether using your technology at a specific time, supports the vision and value you want to create.
In a way, digital minimalism is again coming back to our ‘why’ on our media usage and being okay with not being everywhere and getting rid of some apps that don’t add any value to our life.
Here is how to practice digital minimalism and clear digital clutter.
5. Get rid of impulse shopping
Stop being a victim of impulse shopping and especially fast fashion. When you see big discounts, be mindful of whether you’ll be needing them at all.
Get rid of the free stuff and if you get some freebies, really ask yourself if you’ll be using them at all.
Most often it’s just our greed that gets us to think that we will be using them, but then once we get home, it just adds there as clutter.
So minimalism is about being mindful in our shopping and becoming a conscious consumer.
Some other ways to get rid of impulse shopping are by
- Deleting the shopping apps which waste so much time and money
- Unsubscribing from emails, coupons and text messages
- Making a list of the things you need before going to buy
6. Create a minimalist budget
Minimalism directly impacts how we want to spend our money and is all about being mindful with our money habits and purchases.
So it helps to create and stick to a minimalist budget instead of frivolously spending our money and keeping no track of it.
Mostly creating a minimalist budget is about identifying our core financial values and what priorities we want to keep when it comes to spending money.
It is also about limiting our expenses and eliminating unnecessary expenses.
But sticking to a budget is hard. Here are some minimalist budget tips to help you on your simplified minimalism journey.
7. Reuse and up-cycle
Most of us are in the habit of wanting new things if we only want to get started with something and don’t want to use something for a long time.
When it comes to clothing, especially we women don’t want to repeat our clothes often.
But a small minimalist habit we can adopt is to be okay with re-using and being okay with repeating.
Also, it helps to buy things that can be reused again and say no to single-use items.
This way minimalism also helps in being sustainable. In fact, all these three go together- mindfulness, minimalism and sustainability.
You cannot be a minimalist without being mindful and you cannot be sustainable if you are not mindful and minimalist in some way.
So be a conscious consumer. Reuse items that you can and have fun up-cycling.
Here are some creative upcycling ideas
8. Know when to stop
I feel minimalism will help me lead a more balanced lifestyle.
For me, minimalism is not about some hard and fast rules and sacrificing all my desires, but maintaining a healthy balance and more about living a middle path.
And to live a middle path you must be aware that you are not going to the extremes of anything and having and doing something in a way that nurtures your values, purpose and joy.
So if you want to adopt some minimalism habits into your life, you need to know when to stop and recognise that you have enough or you’re doing enough of it.
For example,
- Knowing when to stop working
- Knowing when to say no
- Knowing you don’t need more of something
- Knowing you don’t have to have something just because it is on discount, on sale, or because everyone has it.
9. Make more space
Clutter creates stress and overwhelms us without our knowing. In order to bring more joy to life, which is the whole purpose of minimalism, you need to clear the clutter and create space for space.
That is why decluttering is central to minimalism because without clearing the clutter, you cannot make space.
Once you do a deep decluttering, it might feel that your home starts looking empty and you again have the urge of filling your home with things, but be mindful of it again and just be comfortable with the new space you have created.
But decluttering is not a one-time thing.
You need to keep making space happen in your life.
And this can be possible only by regular cleaning and having your space and surfaces neat and tidy.
I love having my home, spacious, neat and tidy. And in this post, I’ve written about why I enjoy cleaning my house and do not dread it.
This isn’t too hard. Just keep a specific time to clean the clutter and always keep things in their own place once you use them.
You might get bored or be impatient, but it actually just takes less than 2 minutes to keep things in their place after using them.
So this year, just see what creating more space in your life feels like in your life.
10. Be grateful
The consumer culture constantly tries to make us feel that we don’t have enough and makes us forget about being grateful.
It makes us feel that we don’t have the latest clothing, or the latest phone, and constantly makes us want to ‘click’ on it.
But adopting the minimalism habit is also about being mindful and being grateful for what we already have and recognising that we have happy and that we are thankful.
Minimalism will help you to seek to fill your life with more experiences and great feelings rather than just things.
It will help you to stop seeking validation from other people when it comes to your happiness and stop finding happiness in only the things that you buy.
Those are all momentary and don’t bring true happiness.
Of course, money is good and helps us enhance our life better, but let us enhance our life by not just things, but enhancing our life experiences even more.
So this was from me
The minimalist habits to adopt
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Feel free to comment below about what ways you want to apply minimalism in your life and what habits you are adopting.
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