my new minimalist apartment

[Music] so it's been about a year since i started practicing minimalism now a lot has changed since then i've moved into a new apartment i've built out an office and i have my separate bedroom and so because some of this has changed i want to take you through my apartment show you around enjoy the things that i've added to my minimalist apartment and what you're going to notice here is that everything has some type of purpose as what i've been practicing for the past 12 months and either this purpose is because it's very practical of an item something that i use on a daily basis or it brings me some type of joy so like every apartment tour we need to start at the door so let's go do that now alright welcome to my apartment this is my living room and i like to keep it relatively empty as you can see there's a lot of space here and some people like to fill their apartments with televisions and multiple sofas and chairs and different things but i like to keep it very very open and this makes it feel like i have a lot more space to move around a lot more space for activities and for the most part you know i think it's something really nice to have all of this extra space here so if you remember my last couch i got from ikea it was relatively inexpensive i learned the hard way that if you get a really cheap couch they end up wearing down pretty quickly it was not very comfortable so i spent a little bit more on this couch and hopefully it lasts a little bit longer so let me show you one of my newest additions to my apartment and it's something that i'm honestly pretty excited about this is my friend gary now gary takes care of all my cleaning for me uh he's a little vacuum cleaner and honestly uh i didn't think i was gonna buy something like this because i thought these little roombas were just a total waste of money uh but when i started factoring in the time thinking about if it takes me 20 minutes per week to vacuum times 52 weeks that's over a thousand minutes per year which is what like 17 hours of time that i would be spending vacuuming so i just got gary and he takes care of everything i'm actually not a very clean person i drop stuff and so i don't have to worry about cleaning it up immediately he just comes around and picks it up whenever i tell him to so come on out gary let's see what's he doing hey come back so for example if i drop something oops gary will just uh take care of it gary let's go you're slacking come on he's a little slow but he's getting there gary no this way come this way gary good boy so let me show you my dining room my kitchen and uh some of my plant friends here actually so i haven't come up with the name for this little guy yet i'm not quite sure not really sure what it's looking like but uh if anybody has any good name ideas feel free to let me know because i need to name this guy but i think adding plants to any apartment is really just good to have especially too because you know when you want to add a little bit of color here it just adds a little bit of splash we get some green in there and i think it looks really good i'm also not good at designing things so i like to keep things very simple and it's really difficult to go wrong with something like this now i also have this kind of creepy looking john lennon painting i shouldn't say creepy my mom made it back in like the early 80s so it's not not creepy mom it's it's it's beautiful i love it i mean that's what happened in here anyway right so it's it's like i i like it if i didn't like it i wouldn't hang it up i'm really digging myself in a hole here but um yeah so i have this bowl as well this is sort of what i use just to throw in my keys or empty my pockets out at the end of the day this is really nice to have to just be able to not lose things because i think sometimes we end up losing so much when we you know maybe we put our keys somewhere we forget where we put them and it just turns into a total disaster so putting everything in here emptying my pockets in here is really useful so that i don't lose things let me show you the kitchen here really quickly so the kitchen as you might remember from last time is pretty empty i mean i like to keep the counters very clear but don't mistake this for thinking that i don't have any appliances i have plenty of appliances but i keep all of them below or above the counters and i try to keep the counters as clear as possible this is an important step because as soon as you start to allow one thing on the counter then it starts to build up and build up and then it gets totally cluttered and i don't think it's very good so the only thing i do keep on my counters is this blender here uh which i use on a daily basis so it wouldn't make sense to have to pull it out every single day and i also have my handy cast iron pan which could probably kill somebody with this thing not that i would but um yeah it's it's it's pretty heavy duty but cast iron pans are really the move and maybe we'll make a cooking video because some things in my diet have changed a little bit and i think you might be interested in that so make sure you subscribe to the channel for that and we have a lot of other videos coming up as well but uh my my kitchen area uh as as far as my dining room goes doesn't really exist very much i don't have a dinner table this is mostly by choice also ikea didn't have any dinner tables they were out of stock but last time i didn't have a dinner table either so this is not where i actually eat dinner i don't just sit here and just like eat like my food like this but sometimes i do sit here i guess but no usually i'll eat my food either on the couch or more likely in my office which i'll show you in just a second i can just eat at my desk and i don't really have a need for a table unless maybe if i had friends over and a lot of people over then it would probably be useful to have some type of table so like i said i have two rooms at my office and my bedroom let me take you to the office now so like i said i have two different rooms here and this was really something that you know last time i only had one room but i think it's really important to separate your work from your sleeping and so i had the budget to be able to have two separate rooms and it really is helpful because i think the problem sometimes that we face is if your desk is right next to your bed uh it's really problematic because then when you're working then you you just lay down on your bed you take a nap you wake up like four hours later you missed a lot of work um and we run into a lot of problems so that's why i have this separate room just for working this is where i spend most of my time so i actually built this desk last week i was gonna buy a desk because i wanted a standing desk the last one i had was a sitting desk um because they say sitting is a new smoking i i don't know how true that is but i don't think sitting for a very long period of time is good for you so i was gonna buy one at ikea but it was like 600 for a standing desk that's not even the same size as this so this is like 74 inches and it cost me maybe 65 so one tenth of the price uh and honestly i think it's a better desk than what you could have bought and it was really easy to assemble just got a basic frame underneath the only thing that's not minimalist about this apartment is i have two separate computers so i have my imac and then i also have this little dell computer uh this is for two reasons one because well i just wanted to stop editing videos on a 13 inch screen it was getting kind of small but also it is nice to be able to travel with this dell computer and then just have this one for when i get home um so it's it's a nice combination there that i have um i do have a couple other things just on my desk that are important like my hard drives my camera some notebooks and some papers but for the most part i like to keep my desk as clear as possible so i'll take you over here show you a little bit i also have more artwork that my mom made back like way long ago i don't know i kind of just raided her her attic i realized she had all this artwork and i thought it was pretty good so um thanks mom and also sorry mom for stealing your stuff but let me show you the closet i think you might be interested in this there's there's literally just nothing in the closet i i genuinely don't know what i would put in here i've been living here for about two months um maybe by month number 12 of this lease i'll have something to put in the closet uh but i really just genuinely don't have anything to put in here um so yeah i mean yeah there's there's not really much there so this then i have this bookshelf i like to keep not too many books if you remember from previous videos i could have you know three or four bookshelves like this with all the different books that i've been reading over the past five 10 years but i also don't like to have too many books on hand at any given time so these are just some of the ones that you know i've read recently or i wanted to read or just the most important ones that i like to go back and look at but for the most part i'll just read on my phone or i will listen to audio books or go to the library to pick up books and then return them so that it's not cluttered with tons of books and there's a couple other things on here too that are important like for filming i also still have my good old cookie jar for locking up my phone i don't have to use this anymore because i'm pretty disciplined uh when it comes to my phone and not being on my phone too much i think it's a real problem that a lot of us face um and i just have a couple other things as well so this plaque that youtube gave me didn't know where to put it and then i have my microphone as well also i have this boosted board here i think this is really cool this is like a little toy of mine and going back to the idea of minimalism and thinking about you know everything that you're having has some type of purpose this thing really brings me a lot of joy it's fun to just rip around the city in philly with this and so that's why i have this boosted board for that reason um and it's not all about just you know not having anything it's okay to have things in your apartment it just should be something that is used quite a bit and if i'm not using something like for example next year if i never use this boosted board anymore um i'll probably get rid of it i'll probably sell it to somebody because if i'm not using it there's no point having it cluttering up my apartment so that's the office let me take you into the other room there's also a washer and dryer there as well but it's not too interesting so let me take you to the bedroom now that's not good all right so uh i think we'll skip the bathroom because that's just kind of weird to talk about that so now i'll take you into my bedroom here uh what you're gonna notice is there's probably a grand total of maybe five items in this entire room uh and that's because i really just use my bed for sleeping i mean i don't really use this room for anything else you know eight hours per night i don't need tons of stuff in here because i have my office i don't need to have a desk in here i don't have a dresser all my clothes just go in the closet and my wardrobe is relatively minimal as well so i'll actually show you that here right now but you know over here i just have some plants and just one lamp that's all i need i also have overhead lights if i really need extra lighting but i hate overhead lights um and you know this apartment's not super fancy i mean i have window air conditioners it's not some type of like fancy luxury apartment complex maybe if i wanted to i could probably afford to live in like a luxury apartment complex but i i really don't see the purpose of it i mean this place gets the job done uh it's relatively inexpensive and uh this is all i really need for this and i i like the wood floors i like the layout of it and it serves its purpose pretty well let me just quickly show you my closet here there's not much to see really but i have been changing up my wardrobe a little bit i like to keep it pretty minimal um actually most of my stuff is is in the washing machine right now so uh but yeah black t-shirts usually and i do like to change it up a little bit and just you know start with black as a base i wear just black pants um and then add on some different color on top of it so flannels it's october right now great time to wear flannels but just add colors on top of that nice to just change things up a little bit so not be too bland with the wardrobe but also not have to spend too much time thinking about what you're going to wear every day because that also takes up a lot of time and if you know anything about me i like to find ways to be as productive as possible so overall i think having very few items in my apartment really is something that makes me very happy and i think this comes down to a couple of different things first of all minimalism can not only save you money by having less items but i think one of the biggest problems that we face is this sort of materialism especially in america where we tend to think that buying new things is going to make us a lot happier um and this is actually a real problem i think because sometimes it does make us happy for maybe a week or two weeks we buy something new it's really exciting but it tends to wear off rather quickly and that's why i think it's more important to value people relationships friendships over items and materialistic goods and so that's why if i'm buying something new i'm you know it's it's nice if it's practical or if it's something that really does make me happy over a long period of time but if it's some flashy new car it might be fun for a couple of weeks and then you get used to it and that that starts to wear off and we start to not get as excited about it so not only does it save money but it's also i think really going to help you with a lot of mental clarity as well so there are a lot of other reasons why having a rather minimal apartment can be valuable i think it's something that takes a lot less time to clean as you probably noticed especially with my friend gary over there takes care of a lot of my problems um but also i think it's kind of good for the environment instead of having to buy new things all the time you know there's a couple of things that i did buy uh that i didn't have my last apartment so i gave my other couch away to my brother i gave a couple things away to other people so didn't want to see those things go to waste but for the most part keeping a lot of the things congruent with how they've been in the past so i hope you found some value in this video if you did make sure you subscribe for more videos like this we're gonna be rolling out uh new videos about some of these different productivity minimalism lifestyle and of course personal finance videos as well so thanks for watching and i'll see everybody in next week's video [Music] [Music]

Channel: Nate O'Brien

Views: 390,538

Rating: 4.9094863 out of 5

Keywords: nate obrien, minimalism, minimalist apartment, apartment tour, minimalist apartment tour, minimalist living, my minimalist apartment, minimalist house, home tour, simple living, minimalist room tour, how to be a minimalist

Id: 5gwuwcLrHhE

Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020