6 Minimalist Hacks To Optimize Your Life

so let's face it we consume so many products whether it be for that new TV that you wanted to upgrade or maybe you wanted a bigger car or maybe those new shower curtains that you saw at the store that maybe perhaps you kind of liked the truth is we love buying items and so what I'm going to do today in this video is we're gonna discuss six minimalistic habits that you can implement in your life some hacks that you can use to not only save money it can be better for the environment it's going to be less clutter it's going to be easier to clean there's so many benefits to this but I don't think you want to miss out so let's go back to my apartment I'm going to show you guys around and show you some of these different things that I've implemented in my life that have really helped become more efficient so let's go do that now so in a world where we are so focused on materialistic goods I wanted to bring a video to you guys to show you some of the sort of minimalistic hacks that you can use in your life to not only simplify your life but to create a more efficient lifestyle and to optimize everything throughout your day so let's just get started with this video we don't want to beat around the bush here and I start with one of the first things that I think is really really interesting as sort of this this hack or this thing that I like to do in order to consume less materialistic items that I find myself just being in a happier position one of those actually really ties in well with sort of the holiday season here coming up and that is by buying experiences rather than paying for items and actual goods that people like to buy for each other so what I like to do here is if you're going to get somebody a gift for Christmas for their birthday for other holiday events I think it's a really interesting idea to gift somebody in experience so a great example of this is when I was younger my uncle would take me to a hockey game for a Christmas present I thought was a wonderful gift and not only do I find it to be more thoughtful but you know it's something that I actually end up remembering a lot longer than most kind of materialistic items such as let's say that somebody one of your relatives gives you an item that you don't really use very much but you really do appreciate the thought that they were thinking about you and that's kind of what matters the thought that matters right with a lot of gifts during Christmas and birthdays but over time maybe that item will sit on your desk for a couple years maybe it ends up in your closet and then eventually you forget where it came from and you throw it out 10 years later or it just piles up in your attic or in your basement somewhere maybe in your garage so giving the gift of experiences whether that be taking somebody to an amusement park taking somebody on a vacation taking somebody to a wine tasting tour or maybe some other type of interesting then I think is just a really cool idea to sort of cut back on the actual things that you have within your house now the next tip that I have for you guys is to consider going paperless now look we're coming into 2020 here and people are still getting bank statements in the mail they're still getting credit card bills in the mail they're still reading newspapers I used to do all of these just a few years ago and it wasn't until I really realized that look it's just not really necessary first of all it creates a lot more waste it's not good for the environment to have all of these different things coming in the mail all the time when you can simply just do it online so online banking versus getting those paper statements every month that's what I prefer to do and honestly when I was younger I used to read a lot of newspapers you know I guess not many kids did that but I literally like enjoyed reading a physical newspaper every day throughout high school I just mean other 80 year olds maybe you know eventually I realized that it's just creating a lot of waste and it does end up kind of cluttering your house as well but just having physical papers so consider doing everything online I mean I don't really consume anymore papers these days and I got this app that you know I really wish they were sponsoring this video but they're not nobody's sponsoring this video and it's called camScanner actually and what it does is you can just scan important documents so I'll do this for things that might come in the mail that I can't really just throw away I need to make sure they have them on file somewhere so I just use my phone to scan documents super simple works just as good as a scanner in my opinion and then you can either upload these documents to some type of cloud service or you can put them onto a hard drive what I would suggest doing though is make sure that you back these up so that you're not putting all of your important documents somewhere on the cloud and then you can forget your password to your account and you're totally screwed now there's obviously things you can't do that with like birth certificates or social security cards but when you look at most older people they have filing cabinets of papers and I just don't think that's necessary Millennials and Generation Z coming into this new era of paperless so consider doing that it's going to save you a lot of space and a lot of headache in my opinion now another thing that I like to do is I like to plan everything the night before or even the week before I actually start my day so what I mean by this is if you spend less time thinking during the day of about what you're gonna wear for that day I've seen people who will wake up and then they'll think what should I wear today do I have any clothing that matches do I have any clean clothes to wear and they'll spend 15 minutes thinking about it then another 15 minutes ironing a shirt that they found in their pile of clothing somewhere and it just kind of creates a slow start to a day so if you're really trying to optimize your day I would consider finding a way to kind of plan everything out the night before so not only should you be plenty out what you're gonna wear the next day I like to do this by just simplifying my wardrobe entirely by just having only really a few different options obviously a number of those clean clothing but then I just do laundry like every week or every other week about planning your meals this could even mean making some of your meals the night before for all your stuff in a crock-pot the night before making the sandwiches making you lunch the day before so that you're pretty much ready to go out the door when you wake up in the morning I also like to make a smoothie kind of put the main ingredients together the night before so that in the morning I just wake up blend it and I'm ready to go and I'm good to go and it's a lot faster for myself guys look number four here is to stop bargain hunting look Black Friday is coming up next week and it's one of my least favorite days of the year because so many people end up spending so much money on things that they just don't need and it's it's kind of two problems that I have with this one of them is that people just spend money that they don't need or that they don't even have I was in vest by the other day because they really had to get something for my computer for work and it was incredible how many times they push their credit card onto me trying to get me to finance things that I could buy at Best Buy if I wanted a TV I could get in an 18 month financing for it guys look if you don't have the money to buy something right now if you can't buy ten of those items right now then you really shouldn't be considering even buying one especially if it's an item that's not necessary whatsoever so Black Friday I avoid it like the Black Plague I I just think that when people say that they save $200 on this clothing and they still spend $200 on it well I don't really view it as saving money I just kind of view it as spending more money that didn't need to be spent and you know I think doesn't balance there but kind of taking it from a minimalistic standpoint look if you're gonna be buying things that you don't necessarily need especially if it's something that you know you don't really need to upgrade this item maybe you have a 42 inch TV and you see that there's a 60-inch TV for you know a few hundred dollars on Black Friday you're gonna save $200 easy it really worth it to upgrade it to get a bigger TV I don't know to me it's not I just think that upgrades people are going for them too often and they're kind of falling into this trap from a lot of businesses so it's gonna save you a lot of money and even have a lot less clutter by just not going out on Black Friday and I know there are some good deals out there I've seen some good deals but I just can't stand the headache of waiting in a line running around getting trampled by people trying to save a couple hundred bucks it's just not worth it to me the next one that I think is important for myself it's actually pretty simple it sounds simple but a lot of people don't do this it's by keeping all of your counters clear as clear as possible now maybe this is OCD or something I don't know but the way that I feel it's sort of the same idea of if you don't make your bed in the morning and your bed is all like sloppy and your sheets or everybody your pillows are everywhere I just feel like if my apartment is messy if my counters are messy then my life is messy and my brain is messy so I like to keep everything clean and clear and you know there's some appliances that I'll have in my kitchen that I just make sure that I store them in cabinets so they're not just sitting out taking up counter space because that one I want to make a meal or autumn or I want to make food or somebody could come in towards my apartment well it can be a lot easier for to look a lot cleaner a lot less to clean what I have pretty much nothing on the counters except for sometimes I'll keep the blender top on the counter because I use it on a daily basis everything else keep below deck and the final tip that I wanted to share with you guys today is to consider borrowing instead of buying certain items now we can give you some specific examples here but sometimes I found that you can be better off by renting something or borrowing it rather than going out and buying it for example if you go skiing every few years should you go out and buy skis well maybe what is going to create a lot more clutter so what I would rather do is just rent the skis when I want to use the skis and obviously there's give me a time when it makes more sense to buy it if you're using it very often and you find yourself renting it all the time it's not going to be worth it for you but there's things that are going to be better off borrowing let's say that you have some people coming over for dinner and it's a rare occurrence and you don't have enough chairs should you go out and buy four more chairs or is there a way that you can find to get four more chairs maybe from getting somebody to bring them or knocking down your neighbor's door if you're very friendly with them that's just an example there's tons of different examples that we can use but it's something that I think you should definitely take into consideration alright so those are my six tips for you guys have you found any value in this video make sure you subscribe to the channel drop a like on the video and check out this video right here for more content [Music]

Channel: Nate O'Brien

Views: 307,861

Rating: 4.9419665 out of 5

Keywords: minimalism tips, minimalist hacks, life hacks, minimalism, becoming minimalist, minimalist living, modern minimalist, minimalist apartment, nate o'brien, minimal, minimalist lifestyle, optimize, efficiency, minimalism hacks, how to declutter, minimalism life hacks

Id: AptLEDgMGIg

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2019