How to Declutter like a Minimalist | advanced decluttering tips for extreme downsizing

hello everyone today I want to talk about how to declutter like a minimalist by that I just mean I want to give you some advanced decluttering tips that will get you far if you try to minimize your belongings and if you try to get rid of everything that doesn't spark joy and everything that doesn't like add value to you to life you want to live if you're new here my name is Leah I'm uploading videos twice a week about minimalism so if you're interested in this topic consider subscribing to my channel and now let's get started so my first tip is getting clear about what you want in life or what kind of life you want to live specifically which items you need in this life and if you're recovering your items just really keep that vision in mind so you can get rid of everything that does not belong in your ideal life that you want to live in the future I do understand that that's a bit hard sometimes I myself to struggle with defining what exactly I want in life and how my life should look in a few years so I think it's already enough if you can like define a few things if you already know that you want to have less visual clutter if you know that you want to be able to move like without the hassle it was in the past it's okay to know a feeling that you want to have when it comes to your items and then while decluttering while thinking about if each individual item is going to stay with you in the future decide if it's something that will add value in the future or if it's something that will hold you back that will make it harder to reach the future that you want to have in your life the next tip is especially for you if you have a lot of things you want to declutter and if you want to get rid of a lot of things so if you really want to make a huge step in your minimalist journey and downsize your items drastically and that tip is to just pick your favorite things and just don't even think about the rest too much so for example when it comes to your wardrobe there are so many people that have so many clothing items they don't actually need I guess you can have 20 shirts and wear all of them regularly but you don't need to have 20 shirt you have to have enough shirts to get from like one wash to the next or to have something to wear for almost every occasion that comes up regularly that's at least what I believe so I think it would be enough if you just pick your favorite items and just get rid of the rest I get that most of the people wouldn't do that completely but you can at least start with that you can pick your favorite items and then look at them and see what's really missing and then just ask the items that are missing in that collection of favorite things so that you at least have a word robe for example that works in the future so if your favorite items are only tops then maybe you have to add a few bottoms but you don't have to go through the rest of your tops if there's another hundred items because you already know you have 15 you really love and you really don't need anymore at least that's if you want to downsize drastically if you think 30 tops is perfect for you then by any means of course keep 30 tops it's whatever number you wish to keep but just think about it like that if you could wear your favorite pieces everyday if you only had favourite pieces wouldn't that be amazing that is at least what I try to do with my wardrobe so that I don't have these pieces that I think I have to keep for some reason but I just have to think I love wearing all the time also another more like mental exercise when it comes to physical decluttering is that you just think about the things that are important to you and it doesn't matter if that's with your wardrobe with your hobby gear with whatever you are decluttering but think about which items are important to you so the things you couldn't remember the things you stumble upon while decluttering your things we think like oh I totally forgot about that item maybe you don't need these because clearly they are not a part of your everyday life they are not a part of what you are currently doing but of course I get sometimes you find a real treasure sometimes you find something you have been missing a long time but also really if you haven't thought of that item in the last few month maybe I really don't know if it's keeping it if you like find it during the cluttering my next tip is thinking about a situation where you have to move and not just like and move a few minutes away but a move overseas or where it just really don't want to bring everything or really what would you take with you if you had only a few suitcases only one backpack only one truckload of things you could bring what are the items that are so important to you that you would take so much effort and spend money to take these items with you to another place to just like really carry these items with you wherever you go and I have to admit for myself that's not much I think I'd never again take more than a backpacks worth of stuff if I moved to another country and maybe I would leave a box here maybe one box but not more I wouldn't leave any furniture I wouldn't take any furniture with me there are just not many things that are so important to me that I would want to have the hassle to have the effort of taking them over long distance spending money renting a car renting something where I could like take these things with me so I think that's really a powerful exercise because we would keep a lot of things when we know that it's just like here in our apartment or house and we don't really have to take it anywhere but still sometimes we keep these items without actually thinking about if we really want them and I think if we wouldn't take them anywhere with us I don't really see the point of having them I mean of course I wouldn't take my bed with me because it's just too much and maybe I would buy a new one or I would give that to somebody else just because it's stressful to move a bed at least if it's in an up to another country or overseas but I wouldn't get rid of my bed I just mean that's for the things that you don't use on a regular basis that you just have and that you would just move kind of for the sake of having them in your next place and not actually for really using them and then when you're tackling the individual items and you're really thinking about whether you should get rid of it or not think about if you lost that item would you instantly rebuy it would you pay the same amount of money again to have it with you would it be something you would really miss if it got lost or stolen or broke that I think is a powerful question as well because so many things we just have because we have them and they are kind of nice but we spend time maintaining we spend time caring for these items moving these items dusting these items and maybe they are just not really adding value to our lives and another very important thing I think is the feeling it gives you is the item you're thinking about decluttering making you happy and if that sparking joy thing Marie Kondo suggests isn't working for you if you can't really feel if it's barking choy or what the feeling is you have about the item I suggest just asking yourself or trying to explain yourself why this thing adds value and if you have a good explanation if you can really like tell yourself why you love this item why it is super useful why you can't get rid of it then I think it's worth keeping but there I think we have to be very careful because there are a lot of these just in case items that we tend to keep but not actually need I really try to get rid of these things but we still have some of them in our household especially with tools and like fixing stuff and manuals first stuff I mean I never keep the manuals for my electronics but maybe the manuals for building furniture or things like that and know you can find these online and a lot of times also we keep maybe screws and things and it's just like just in case that item breaks just in case we need an extra screw just in case we couldn't need that for any future project we might have and usually these situations never come up so that was the only example I could think of it's like these house fixing house maintaining things there we have some just in case items and I think it is because I'm feeling unsure about this area because I never really know what I'm going to I cannot predict when anything is breaking or anything like that so I tend to keep a bit more but I think in every other area I've learned enough about how do you things work and when they tend to break or that they actually do not tend to break apart or that usually if something breaks it's that all that it's worth like exchanging or that I actually don't need it so I think if you get familiar enough with the area you keep just in case items you can get rid of them because you already know how likely it is that you need it and usually yeah I usually you will understand that it's not likely that you are going to use them and of course there are items I'm not using at the moment but I know I will use them in the future for example I have a few extra pairs of socks just because I have too many pairs of socks so I have two ones I'm currently wearing which is about a week's worth of socks in my like normal wardrobe counting to my normal pieces of clothing and I have extra socks which is another like weeks worth of socks that I will use whenever the ones I'm wearing right now are like weren't out have holes so whenever one pair of socks has to go to the trash because it has so many holes I will take another pair of socks out of my like stash of socks and bring it in there so I mean that's not really a just-in-case item but I am really I know that I'm going to use these socks even though I'm not using them right now so maybe there is no actual sense in keeping just in case items but only items you know you are going to use and of course maybe it's another thing it's if it's a very important item and you know the chance is that a part of it is breaking and you happen to have that extra part and you have it just in case the part breaks maybe that's a valuable reason to keep a part and just a part of that I do not want to tell you what you have to keep I think these are some questions you can ask yourself and these are some guidelines and some thoughts you can have that could help you declutter your things but it really just depends on where you're heading if you are comfortable living in a big house with a lot of stuff in it then you might just not need to declutter do things because of course it can happen that you have to buy one of these items that you've decluttered before but usually I can tell you it doesn't happen for me it has only happened with things I used up like products I used in a bathroom where I thought I didn't have to rebuy them and I can actually link you a video where I talk about these items that I had to rebuy after I declutter them after I thought I'd never buy them again and I will link it up here in the cart so you can click it and watch it if you're interested in general I think it is just very important to think about what kind of lives that you want to live if you want to be an extreme minimalist yeah then you maybe need all of these thoughts and all of these methods and even more to be able to declutter everything to an amount where you just have 100 items or less but if you want to be just some person that lives with a little bit less stuff than average then maybe you want to keep a few extra items and I guess that goes for everything if you really know what you need if you have the experience in that area that you really know what you're going to wear what you're going to use what you're going to do with that stuff then you can be clutter more because you already know which items you actually use and I think the uncertainty is what key makes us keeping so many things but if we get to know our life if you get to know our routines our preferences if we just get to know ourselves better we can understand what we actually need and then we can just let go of the rest because the most important thing is that our things are supporting us in our life and that they give us value instead of taking up time making our life stressful and things like that so I hope you could get something out of this video and if you want to see more videos I will link you some right here and thank you so so much for watching and I hope to see you next time bye

Channel: ecofriend. lia

Views: 18,172

Keywords: minimalism, how to declutter, decluttering tips, how to become a minimalist, advanced decluttering tips, minimalism tips, minimalism hacks, decluttering advice, decluttering strategies, decluttering mindset, become an extreme minimalist, extreme minimalism decluttering tips, downsize, minimalism 2020, minimalism for beginners, minimalist lifestyle, simple living, minimalist living room, minimalism journey, ecofriend lia, ecofriendlia

Id: RbOThDM-sBY

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020