7 Lessons from 1 Year as a Minimalist ✨ Minimalism and Decluttering

One day I realized I just couldn't keep on top of my home anymore. You know when you reach the point where getting dressed in the morning annoys you? How many items that don't fit or flatter can I honestly pull out between 7.52 and 7.55 am? You know when you scour through the filled cupboards to find your favorite mug? Or when you can't find your kid's sports shoes because they're stuffed in the understairs cupboard of doom? You reach a point when you say enough. So naturally I started to declutter. Did I know what I was doing? No. But did I at least have a plan? Also no. But somehow I ended up here. Here are the seven lessons I learned through my past year or so of implementing minimalism in my life. Lesson number one. I don't need to be extreme to feel the benefit. I'm not here to win any sort of minimalism contest. I don't want to be the most extreme, the one who has the least. Sometimes it feels like it's a bit of a competition between people, especially on YouTube. And even in the comments I noticed once you mention the word minimalism, some people will be like you still have too many items to be calling yourself a minimalist. Which is why I've noticed some people started calling themselves minimal-ish or minimalist-ish. Because of that, once you mention the word minimalism, some people will have this expectation that now you only own one fork, one plate, one cup and that's it. Whereas it's not the case, right? Minimalism is a spectrum. There's people who have a bit more because maybe it makes their life more convenient but they still apply minimalism concepts in their life. Some people do prefer to go more extreme and only own the very bare necessities. Is one of them wrong? No, everybody's different. But over the last year or so I have applied a lot more minimalism concepts into my life and I can see how it's benefited my life a lot, even if I'm not the most extreme. Even if maybe we still have more items than an extreme minimalist would and that's okay. It's just about finding the right balance of stuff for you. Done is better than perfect. I absolutely used to think that I needed to get it perfectly done. I needed to have just the perfect storage solutions for each corner of my house. Maybe I felt like I needed more storage space but the truth is you just have to get started. And it's not about having the perfectly aesthetic or the perfect looking home. It's just about making it more functional and that usually means getting rid of some stuff. Because the less that we have, the less time we spend trying to manage it or cleaning it or, you know, returning that item, organizing it, moving it from one place to another and the more time we will have for the things that actually matter to us. So no, you don't need to wait for that perfect storage solution. You just need to get started. Try to have less stuff just to stuff you truly need and use and that will make your life so much easier. Lesson number three is you can't do it all in one go. For a lot of us, myself included, having this big massive declutter done is just probably not realistic, is it? I'm a busy mom of two and so my decluttering has been done through small bits here and there because I just can't do a whole day of declutter around my kid. And so the way that I have been decluttering my house over the past year or so is just through small bits here and there. I would pick 15 minutes, 30 minutes, however much I had that day and I would just tackle one little drawer, one little cupboard in my kitchen, maybe just pull out all the mugs and go through them quickly. These kinds of tasks don't take too long but they will give you massive results in the long run. This is something I learned in the Atomic Habits book which is a brilliant book and it mentions how doing these very small actions over a long period of time will give you massive results. A lot of us underestimated the power of tiny actions, myself included. And so if we can get our home just one percent better every single day, in a year from now you probably won't recognize your home. It will be in a much better state, so much easier to keep clean and it will just be a calmer place to be in. Lesson number four I learned is that decluttering is not a one and done job. I mean we kind of wish it was, right? You just do this big declutter and then that's it, your house will just stay clean and tidy. But it's not really the case, is it? Especially since we bring a lot of stuff into our home every single week. Maybe our kids do, things from school, maybe things they got from a party, maybe you go to the shop and buy a few more clothes. It's just inevitable things will come into our house and so that's why decluttering is not something you're ever going to be like fully done with. But once you do the bigger declutter and you get your home into a much more manageable state, the declutter is just kind of part of your routine. It's just going to be little bits here and there just to try to spray on top of it but it's not going to be overwhelming. And one thing I will also say is that the first time I started to really declutter my home, I had to do it in layers. I had to do it multiple times. So I would go over an area, say I would do our TV unit, I would be happy with it for that moment and then in a few months time I was ready to go through it again because I would notice things that I was in a place where I could get rid of them. I was able to be more realistic with myself when it came to my wardrobe. Decluttering is more about building that habit. The more you exercise your decluttering muscle, the easier it's going to get, the more confident you will be in your decision making, what to keep, what to let go of. And it's just about practicing, right? Like any skill, you start small. It might not be great at first but the more you do it, the easier it gets and the better you will get at it. And it will just become something more effortless. Number five is the big one. Our stuff does not equal happiness. And it's probably contrary to every advertisement we see out there because we're often made to feel like when we buy this product we'll just get a bit happier, we'll solve a problem in our life. And I think there's a baseline we need to keep in mind here because we start our homes from zero a lot of times, right? You move into a place and there's nothing around you. You start to fill it with furniture, you fill it with some items that make your life easier, you buy plates and mugs. And so you add to that to create this baseline of happiness in your home, of convenience. So you reach this line where you have everything that you need, you have all the basics to function in your daily life. And then we often feel like we need to add more and more and more on top of that because the more we add, the happier we will be, the easier life will get. But the thing that happens is that the more we add, we actually just end up cluttering our homes. And so we're not making our lives more convenient, we're simply making them harder. And what we need to do is just get back to that baseline, right? Of the things that we need, the things that we love, the things that make us smile, that bring us joy. And get rid of the rest so that we can be at that baseline where it's easy to tidy our homes but we still have the things that bring convenience to our lives. The sixth lesson that I learned is that I'm most likely not going to Regretting decluttering an item is a fear that a lot of us have as we go through the decluttering process because what if I let go of this item and then two months from now I realize that I need it? But being on this minimalism journey, I honestly don't think I regret one item that I got rid of. I can't even remember most of them because it was stuff that wasn't truly bringing value to my life. And if you do end up realizing that you actually really needed that item that you got rid of, it's usually quite easy to replace anyway. And it's not going to be wasteful because it's not like you're going to go out and buy all of the items you decluttered again. If it's one item you missed, you can always repurchase it or borrow it from somebody or get it pre-loved. There are lots of options out there but most items are replaceable. And if you're not entirely sure about something, I always recommend that you decide later. Put things in a box, a storage bin, and put them out of sight and see if you miss them. If you are going back to look for them and if you don't, then that's a good sign that you can probably let go of that item. The next lesson I learned is that I actually didn't know this when I started decluttering, but I have been spending way less time cleaning, getting stressed about my kids creating messes, or just generally being stressed about housework. As a mom, this is probably a big thing we struggle with, don't we? With our house, with the state of it, keeping on top of it. And the less inventory we have to manage, the less stuff is in our homes. The easier it is to clean because if a surface is not filled with hundreds of items, it's very easy to dust away. If the floor is not covered in piles, it's very easy to hoover and mop. And that's what it's all about for me. I wanted to be more present with my kids. I didn't want to be constantly stressed by the toys out. And even if they get all of their toys out now, it's not really that big of a deal. We all know where everything goes back to its home, and its basket, and its spot, and we can all tidy together. And it's also much easier to tidy because of that. So yes, decluttering makes your life so much easier, like making it super easy to find your camera when you need to film a video, because you always put it back in the drawer if we lock it.