How to Live Like a Minimalist

Edited by Logoht, Salty Solutions, Maluniu, Leila and 3 others

Living like a minimalist is different from having a minimalist home by a long shot. Being a minimalist is a lifestyle that changes a lot of our habits in daily basis.

Steps

1. Being a minimalist starts with the idea. You have to believe that you are a minimalist, that you are above material goods.

2.  Start with the little things. Ask yourself: Do I really need this?

3.  To motivate yourself think about the advantages. Cleaning is easier, when you don't have so much stuff laying around.

4.   Categorize. Memories, necessities, etc. This helps the process.

5.   After your living space - your home - has reached a minimum, think about what to do with all the extra stuff you are going to get rid of. You can sell them, or give them to the church or "flea market" so that someone else may enjoy them. You can also put an advert to a local paper that you give away furniture and stuff to students for free or so on.

6.   Minimalistic thinking is quite easy. The whole idea is that you have only the things you actually need. This doesn't mean that they can't be expensive or anything, mainly that there isn't much of the stuff.

7.   When you are cleaning and you come up with an item you just recognized, you don't need it. If you could live without it without even remembering that particular item, then you can also give it up.

8.   When shopping for clothes and stuff, always ask yourself, do you really need it? And how long are you going to actually use it? If it's just something you want because someone else has the same item, is it really worth it? If you don't use it for yourself but for others, so that others could see that you have this or that, is it really worth it?

9.   It will save you a lot of money, when you don't buy anything that you don't really need. You can save this money to buy better quality things and live a better quality life in general.

10.   Organize. Keep your stuff (minimal as it might be) in order. This makes it so that even if you don't have a lot of stuff, you will still always find your things very easily and without effort.

11.   Now that you don't have that much furniture and general stuff, think about a smaller apartment. What use is it to pay yourself sick for an apartment that is at its best only half full? You don't need that much space.

12.   What about clothes? When did you actually use that particular shirt? Are those shorts too small? Give up the clothes you don't wear and are torn, too small, too big, too whatever. You don't need them.

13.   Do you have stuff in a warehouse or somewhere else?`Sort it out, if they are there, you seriously don't need them, or you just didn't have enough space in your home to keep them all in there. Give up those items you don't use and need and move the rest to your new apartment.