A Minimalist Blog
What Is Minimalism?
Minimalism is a lifestyle and design movement that emphasises simplicity, functionality, and a focus on the essentials. It involves reducing clutter and possessions to a minimum and prioritising quality over quantity. Here are a few key points to consider when discussing minimalism in a blog post:
Benefits of minimalism:
There are many potential benefits to adopting a minimalist lifestyle. These can include improved mental clarity and focus, reduced stress and anxiety, and a sense of freedom and liberation from excess possessions. Minimalism can also help save money by reducing the need for unnecessary purchases and storage solutions.
How to get started:
If you're interested in exploring minimalism, there are a few key steps you can take to get started. First, consider your values and priorities. What is most important to you in life? By focusing on what really matters to you, you can begin to declutter and simplify your life. Next, start small and focus on one area of your life at a time. This could be your closet, your kitchen, or your home office. Go through your possessions and ask yourself if each item brings value or joy to your life. If not, consider donating or getting rid of it.
The role of design:
Minimalism isn't just about reducing possessions – it's also about creating a functional and aesthetically pleasing environment. Consider incorporating design principles like simplicity, function, and clarity into your space to create a calming and organised atmosphere.
The importance of balance:
While minimalism can bring many benefits, it's important to find a balance that works for you. This may mean having a few sentimental items or indulging in the occasional luxury. It's about finding a balance that allows you to live a fulfilling life while also simplifying and decluttering where possible.
Overall, minimalism is a lifestyle choice that can bring many benefits, including improved mental clarity and focus, reduced stress and anxiety, and a sense of freedom and liberation from excess possessions. By focusing on what matters most to you and incorporating design principles like simplicity and function, you can create a minimalist lifestyle that works for you.
Do We Really Need All Of This Stuff?
No, we don’t.
That’s a fairly simple answer but it took me years to realise it.
The Realisation
I finally came to the conclusion in 2015 on a family holiday. It was one the best holidays I’ve ever been on but not because it was full of lavish luxuries or products – it was just a normal reasonably priced holiday in the UK. All I had with me for a week was a few changes of clothes, toiletries, a phone and a laptop (which I only used once). I realised that it was such a good holiday because I was with the people I wanted to be with but without any stress or worries relating to objects, work or money.
When I came back to reality (back home and back to work) I wondered – why do we have all of this stress and unhappiness day in day out? I managed to pinpoint most of my stress down to four points; Maintaining/Buying Stuff, Work, Money and bad Relationships. Soon enough I realised that these are all directly related to each other and create a vicious circle of stress in my life. In a nutshell – I bought excessive stuff that I didn’t need which cost me money forcing me to work harder and the longer I worked the poorer my relationships became with the people I cared about.
The Research
So I took to Google (obviously), realising that most of this stress and unhappiness stemmed from having/buying too much stuff I simply searched, ‘Do We Really Need All Of This Stuff?’. I was amazed at the response. I found a movement called minimalism and loads of people doing it. Minimalism consists of simplifying your life in all aspects in order to live a more meaningful and happier life with less stress. How each person goes about this however is completely up to them, there are no defined rules it’s just whatever works for you.
I read that people would live with just a 100 things, some wouldn’t have a permanent home and simply just travel with what they had, others were able to leave their jobs and peruse what they were passionate about. Most of these didn’t fit with how I wanted to live, as unfortunately I still need a job to pay the bills and I still needed a place to live but I saw opportunity in the minimalist model to simplify my life.
This is what I did…
The Solution To Excess Stuff
I had an excessive amount of stuff, and I kept buying more stuff in an attempt to make me happier! But it didn’t make me happier it just made things worse as the stuff would end up owning me. For example, I had two laptops – why did I need two? I spent hours fixing them both when they went wrong, they both consumed power, they we’re both valuable so theft or damage was always a worry.
So what if I just got rid of this excess stuff?
I started by clearing out all of the stuff that I didn’t need in my life – including one of the laptops. All of this stuff was taking up room, it was more to clean, more to power and more to maintain. So I packed up what I didn’t need and traded what I could for cash, then the rest went to charity shops. I only kept what I really needed and I don’t miss anything.
Now it takes less than half the time to clean the house, I made over £250 from the trade ins, saved money from the energy bill, reduced stress and gained satisfaction that my unwanted stuff has contributed to helping people in need via donating it to charity.
The Solution To Excess Digital Stuff
Stuff doesn’t always have to pile up physically, in today’s 24/7 digital world it can pile up digitally too. I took a step back and asked myself where all of my time was going in the day and I soon realised that reading marketing emails and browsing social media sites were consuming much more than I thought – around 2 hours a day!
I took action straight away, I started to go through every marketing email in my trash and unsubscribe to the list I had once subscribed for, either by buying something or signing up to a website. Over a period of 4 weeks I managed to get my unwanted emails down from 20-30 per day to less than 5 a day. This has saved me so much time reading and deleting emails that were of no value or worth to me.
As for Social Media, my approach was fairly simple – I just stopped using it. I realised that I never get anything useful out of reading endless status updates or watching a video of a cat playing the drums (or something along those lines). If I really wanted to connect with people then I’d just privately message them and ask them how their day was or… just go and see them! This type of interaction was much more meaningful and improved my relationships.
There’s also the problem with excess files stored digitally, as storage is now so cheap it’s easy to get carried away and load up your hard drive with just-in-case items. However 90% of the time you probably don’t need them and if it’s something you’ve downloaded from the internet then you can most likely do the same to get it back. I went through all of my files, deleted what I didn’t need and organised and backed up what I did need.
The Road To Minimalism Continues…
It’s been 10 months now since I had my first realisation and I’m still paring down my items and simplifying my life one small step at a time. For me it wasn’t something I could do overnight, I couldn’t just put a stop to my life and turn it upside down. I’ve progressively simplified my life and with each step I feel a little less stressed and a little more meaningful.
As my life becomes decluttered I can finally see what’s really important.
The Solution To Stress At Work
The Solution To Stress At Work
As you probably know by now, I’m a minimalist but I still work a full time job to keep food on the table and pay the bills which are unavoidable. However work often causes stress for most people and it would be great to just pack it all in however for most of us that isn’t an option but there are ways to reduce stress at work.
Enjoy Your Work
One of the biggest ways to reduce stress at work is to find something you enjoy doing! That’s one of the reasons I set up UK Minimalist, I wanted to become my own boss and I wanted to do work that I enjoyed. This may not be an easy option as it’s sometimes difficult to find a job that pays well in the profession that you enjoy the most but it’s certainly effective at reducing stress. As a compromise, look into setting up a business relating to the thing you enjoy the most whilst you’re working full time. Then one day it may become sustainable to pack in the 9-5 grind for your more enjoyable work whether that’s painting, singing, coding or blogging.
Reduce Dependency
You can also reduce the dependency on work, if you work long hours to fund an expensive car, phone, streaming and media contracts then you can cut these costs in order to live within a lower salary need. If you can reduce your spends then you can reduce your working hours and dependency on that particularity high paid job which you may despise.
Tackling Tasks
Tackle tasks as and when you get them. As humans we usually put off larger tasks that scare us which in-turn adds unnecessary stress as the deadline looms over us becoming shorter with every minute that passes by. I’ve found that the best approach is to just tackle the task there and then and often it’s not as bad as it first seemed. The task is done and the stress has gone.
Don’t Multitask (That includes email)
Multitasking isn’t as productive as it sounds, when multitasking your mind isn’t fully focused on anything meaning it’ll take you longer to finish a task and usually to a lesser standard than single tasking. Multitasking confuses the brain and can increase stress as you begin to feel overwhelmed with the various tasks at hand. I find this is usually triggered by email or my phone, just as I’m deep in concentration on a task an email will pop up which I try to read at the same time as working. This method never works and only knocks my concentration off the task causing frustration. The best thing to do is close down your email, mute your phone and have set times when you turn them back on to read them – effectively treating this as a single task.
Talk To People
You have to go work, you know that. So why not make it more enjoyable? It’s surprising how uplifting it can be to just talk to someone for a few minutes. Whether it’s someone you work directly with or someone you’ve never talked to before, general small talk is underestimated. It can lift both yourself and the person you’re talking to which makes you more productive, well known, and improves your communication skills both personally and professionally. Try and stick to more positive subjects such as interests, hobbies and holidays rather than defaulting to how bad the weather is today.
Take Some Time Out
Finally, take some time out when you can. In the UK we are growing into a workaholic culture where people spend more time at work and less time with family & friends. You have holidays by law so make use of them in meaningful ways, you don’t have to jet off to the canary islands to get away. Just planning some quality family time or time for yourself can be a great reliever of stress as it resets your perspective of a work-life balance.
Don’t Buy Stuff You Can’t Afford
Don’t buy stuff you can’t afford and make what you have last! It really is that simple to lead an easier, less stressful life.
Many people believe that buying things gives them freedom, but buying things on finance and with debt, because you can’t afford the outright price, is a massive mistake that financially enslaves you. As soon as you sign that contract you have to make those monthly payments which is reliant on you maintaining your job at your current salary. A slight blip in employment or a salary reduction could significantly put your finances astray causing serious stress problems.
For example I have a 12 year old car and I’m happy with it. I keep it maintained, which costs me hardly anything and it keeps on running. It’s not flash, modern or fast but it does what I need it to do. I could probably go out and sign up to a 3 year £300 per month lease for a new car but it wouldn’t make me any happier, it would only make things worse with the additional financial strain.
If you think about it… We all get in our cars and drive as fast as we can back and forth to locations, we don’t actually want to be in the car. When was the last time you chose to just go and sit in your car? We want to be out of the car so quickly because the things we really want to see, the things we really want to do are usually experiences – like seeing family or friends, going to an event or a new place, a brand new car won’t change those things.
The trick is to buy the things that you can afford and once you own them outright look after them to ensure they last. As long as they continue to serve their purpose then their adding value to your life that you intended but at a low cost so you can concentrate on the more important things in life.