The Minimalist Home - Joshua Becker | Summarized Books

The Minimalist Home : A Room By Room Guide To A Decluttered And Defocused Life

Living Meaningfully

There is a saying that goes thus: “there is no place like home.” It is our lives headquarter. The most important part of a home is the people within it, their relationships, how they spend their time in it, and the dreams they nurture.

But it’s also true that a house and its contents can affect the family’s quality of life either positively or negatively. And so, transforming the place can transform the people living in it. One thing that resonates with everyone is that the home is considered a place of comfort, safety, acceptance, and belongings.

It inspires longing within us, and we yearn to make our homes better places than they have been before, both for ourselves and the other members of our household.

“In our overcrowded homes today, most possessions are not truly “belongings.” They are only distracting us from the things that do belong."

Minimalism is the intentional promotion of things we most value and the removal of anything that distracts us from them. It is an approach to owning less that you can take regardless of the style of your home. It’s not about making an artistic statement or glorifying emptiness. Instead, it’s about transforming your home so that you can transform your life. It is not about taking something away from you; it’s about giving something to you.

Minimizing is optimizing — reducing the number of your possessions until you get to the best possible level for you and your family. Minimalism isn’t just about living with less; it is about living meaningfully.

The benefits of a minimalist home?

• A minimized home is a better place to come home to. Without all the clutter, you’ll find your home more relaxing and less stressful. With fewer things competing for your attention, you’ll appreciate more and make better use of what you have. You’ll be able to focus more on the people and activities in the home that bring you joy. It will be a place you anticipate returning to at the end of every day or relaxing in for a weekend.

• A minimized home is a better place to go out of. After you minimize, you’ll be spending less on repairs and maintenance, spending less time and energy cleaning, organizing, and taking care of your possessions, you’ll have more time and energy. With these extra resources, you’ll be better prepared to go out into the world, whether it’s for a day’s work, an evening’s entertainment, or a life-changing adventure.

Easier to Harder Approach

“A home that is filled with only the things you love and use will be a home that you love to use.”

A minimized home is a home that is a joy to enter and an inspiring place to leave but how comforting your home will be and why you need it to be a great launching pad back into the wider world is up to you.

It is important to be clear on your goals or whatever reasons for doing a minimalism home makeover. Because there will be times ahead when the path is rocky and steep, and you may feel discouraged and want to quit. In those moments, it will be important to remind yourself of your motivations for owning less.

Alongside the members of your family, you’ll get the full benefits of living with less if you minimize every room in your home. But that raises the question of what order you should follow when attacking the rooms in your home. It’s your home; you can minimize your rooms in whatever sequence you like.

But if you want to give yourself the best chance of home minimizing success, then follow the easier to harder approach. You start with rooms that are comparatively easy to minimize and then move on to harder ones.

“It feels better to do stuff than to have stuff #minimalisthome”

Working in the easier rooms builds up your skill level and confidence in minimizing as you go. And since the easier rooms also tend to be the most lived-in rooms, you and your family get to experience a lot of benefits from your work quickly. You minimize each space entirely before going on to the next. And you don’t stop until you’re done with the entire house.

As you move from room to room decluttering your home, you’ll have to decide what to keep and what to discard. It will come down to this simple question: Do I need this?

So, when you ask, do I need this? You’re asking, does this help me achieve my purpose or hinder me in that pursuit? This is a robust framework that will allow you to make decisions about what to keep and what to remove. If you do need it, you should keep it. If you don’t need it, then discard it. “Never organize what you can discard.”

If you’re honest about the relative weights of the benefits you get from your possessions and the burdens they place on you — you’ll decide that many of your possessions aren’t worth holding on to.

The Living Took And The Family Room

It is a great feeling that would motivate one in his/her day to day activities to create a good atmosphere in the rooms and all around the house. This is going to be an important victory providing one with confidence and motivation going forward. The easier to harder approach should be used to make meaningful use of the spaces in your home.

From home to home, the time required to minimize these rooms may vary significantly, but for most people, minimizing the living room and family room represents an accomplishable goal. If you begin here, you’ll score a win relatively quickly, and you’ll start building up your mental and emotional muscles for decluttering.

The living and family rooms are the most public places in your private home. Since these rooms are places used by the whole household, of course, you should also ask the members of your family what they would like to keep or get rid of in these rooms.

Talk out your minimizing strategies in these rooms together. Do the work of removing items together. Enjoy the benefits together. This is the perfect way to establish your minimalism home makeover as a family project, with buy-in and celebration all around.

If you live alone, you might want to ask a close friend to come over and give you some advice about what to hold on to or eliminate, from the perspective of someone who frequents your home as a guest. And besides, you might need help moving furniture. The space you open up will be more worthwhile to you than whatever you’re removing.

As you look around the living and family rooms, ask yourself, what culture you are establishing in these places? What are you communicating to family and friends? Two of the primary ways that those rooms speak to those who occupy them are with the items put on display and the photos or artwork on the wall.

There’s something special, almost sacred, about the primary gathering spaces in our homes: the living and family rooms. Are they inviting? Are they peaceful? Are they comfortable? Do they facilitate connections among people? Do they help you become the kind of people you want to be? If not, then minimizing can almost miraculously bring them back to the purposes for which they exist.

People in a minimized home appear more valuable than they do in a cluttered, overcrowded house. Somehow, they see each other better when not distracted by things. They are drawn to one another and are there for one another.

The nature of the living room and family room are revealing. Life is supposed to take place there. The family is supposed to be formed there. So, minimize the public-private spaces in your home, and watch how love wells up within them.

Bedrooms And Guest Rooms

To begin with, think about your purposes for the bedrooms in your home — just as you did for the living and family rooms. The master bedroom is probably mostly for rest and intimacy with your spouse, though you may also use it for such things as reading or study. If you have kids, they, too, need calming rooms to go back to for downtime, for play, to do homework, and to sleep at night.

Similarly, if you have a guest room, this is a place you can offer your overnight guests to relax in private and get a good night’s sleep while they’re away from home.

As you focus your attention on minimizing your bedrooms, look at the possessions, and ask yourself, do we need this item? Does it help the room accomplish one of its purposes by providing service, beauty, or meaning?

Remembering the purpose of your bedroom won’t automatically remove the clutter, but it will provide a framework for your decision-making process. As you attack your bedroom’s clutter, be thoughtful, be methodical, and be confident you’ll get it done. The following approach may help in decluttering your rooms:

Relocate Things That Don’t Belong Where They Are:
• Clear the Floors
• Clear Surfaces (dressers, nightstands, and any shelves)
• Decide How to Use Closets and Drawers
• Simplify Your Bed Linens
• Pare Down Your Decorations
• Get Rid of Furniture, If Possible
• Make the Best Use of Under-the-Bed Space

“One underappreciated benefit of minimalism is the ability to walk confidently through your bedroom with the lights off.”

Bathrooms And Laundry Rooms

The bathrooms and laundry room might not seem important, but since we use them so frequently for keeping our bodies and clothes clean, letting them stay cluttered would mean embracing aggravation and inefficiency every day.

Minimizing these spaces restores their ability to fulfill their intended purposes. And at least in the case of the bathroom, eliminating clutter can give you a feeling of peace that calms your spirits. You can enjoy the benefits of made-over bathrooms and laundry room in your home through minimizing. Keeping in mind the importance of the bathroom in our daily life; there are at least three benefits to a minimalist bathroom:
• It’s usually a relatively small space, and yet we spend a considerable amount of time there. Clutter in a small space only seems like more clutter.
• Bathrooms get dirty quickly – and not just dust, but grimy, sticky, gross stuff. A minimized bathroom is easier to clean, which makes using the room more enjoyable for everyone.
• Minimizing here means we remove some stress in the morning from getting ready to meet the world, and we create a space that helps us wind down and relax at the end of the day when we’re preparing for bedtime.

Your bathrooms have a more considerable significance to your family than their size would indicate, and you’ll be glad when you’ve transformed them through decluttering.

At the same time that you are making over your bathrooms; makeover your attitude toward cleanliness and beauty. How many of the items in our bathrooms are the result of external societal pressure urging us to conform? It is liberating to remove this thinking from our minds and those products from our bathrooms. Stick with simple, natural, and necessary instead.

“Be who you are, not who you wish to be.”

There’s no need to look at your bathroom as a workshop for remaking your outer appearance into an image you think others will approve of. An improved attitude can help you maintain the minimalism of your bathroom. If you’re more rational about cleanliness and beauty, you’ll be less tempted to over-accumulate and overuse personal cleaning and beauty supplies.

You can let go of society’s bias about what you must look like at the same time you let go of society’s idea of how much you must own. The bathroom and the laundry room may be humble, utilitarian spaces, but they can also be magnificent places.

If you’re taking the time to relax in a bubble bath periodically, you’re recognizing that life is not all about activity and achievement and that there are suitable times to de-stress and meditate. It’s better to have extra time on your hands and extra money in your pocket than extra stuff in your closet.

Heart Of The Home

In today's homes, the kitchen seems to be the place for spontaneous, informal gatherings. There we can talk together while keeping our hands busy in an atmosphere of warmth emanating from the oven rising steam, enticing odors, cheerful clinks and clatter, and the natural beauty of fruits and vegetables, all seasoned with the sauce of anticipation about the meal to come.

A dining area is where we sit down to share the food, and to share the time that it takes to eat the food, with others. Couples catch up with each other at the dinner table. Families review their days, take care of family “business,” and joke around the meal. At the table, guests may be welcomed in an even friendlier way than is possible in the living room.

There’s a kind of everyday ritual about eating together that is reassuring in its repetition. Holiday meals become domestic pageantry. These two rooms are difficult areas to minimize because they (the kitchen in particular) tend to collect all sorts of items that we’re going to have to sort through when we minimize. But you’ll find that uncluttering the kitchen and dining area in your home is so worth it because here you are uncluttering the heart of the home.

“Minimalism isn’t about removing things you love. It’s about removing the things that distract you from the things you love.”

Think about what you want your kitchen to accomplish for you. Is it to enable you to cook tasty, healthy meals for your family without a fuss? Is it to be easy to keep clean, so it offers you a sense of peace and doesn’t waste your time? Is it to serve as a comfortable space for family or friends to keep you company as you cook?.

Be clear on these goals, and use them to guide you as you declutter and minimize your kitchen. A minimalist kitchen tends to create a comfortable, intimate, peaceful eating area for your family and any guests you may have over from time to time.

Sitting down with others at a meal is a beautiful thing. After all, where else do we come face to face with a group of loved ones at close range like this and with time to talk? But we don’t need a lot of stuff to make the occasion memorable. Start thinking about how you will minimize your dining room possessions until space is doing what you want it to do.

You may not have all these spaces in your home. You might even have some spaces that are not mentioned here. But this list covers all the spaces most homes are likely to have, and for most people, this represents the easier-to-harder progression. Plan your minimizing schedule in this order.

Conclusion

Minimalism isn’t just for our benefit; it is also a practice that is kind to the environment and future generations.

Try this:

What to do with the things you remove?

1. Donate: the Salvation Army, Goodwill, and similar nonprofits will take your unwanted belongings and resell them at a low price to people who can’t afford new things. Or maybe you have a locally based nonprofit (homeless shelter, refugee resettlement program, battered women’s clinic, or whatever it may be) that accepts donations. You’ll feel good helping them out. And you’ll get a tax deduction too.

2. Sell: Garage sales and online sales are possibilities for some unwanted items that maintain value. Just have a realistic understanding of how long it might take to sell them and how much you might get for them so that you’re not disappointed. If you find yourself selling items for a fraction of their original cost, don’t get depressed because of it. Use the experience as a reminder of how it’s often better not to buy something in the first place.

3. Throw away or recycle: If something is no good to you anymore and nobody else is going to want it, then decide whether it goes in the trash bin or the recycling bin. Please recycle whenever you can.