The Minimalist Life Cleanse: Revisiting your journey to a simpler life.

The Minimalist Life Cleanse: Revisiting your journey to a simpler life

Many months ago I shared my interest in minimalism, via a series of 3 posts, giving advice on how to simplify different aspects of your life to achieve a more minimalist life.

What Does Minimalist Mean?

The term has been associated with interior design, and the idea of having simple furnishings, only a few decorative details and a paired-back palette of colour. It was style that was focused on achieving peace, simplicity and functionality within the home.

These days, the word has become synonymous with a movement and a lifestyle choice, not simply a style of decoration.

Legions of people are retraining their thought patterns, steering themselves away from their consumerist nature, and just generally learning to live with less possessions. Some people go as far to apply minimalism to all areas of their life, simplifying everything from their social circle to their career choice.

The minimalism life cleanse focuses on this idea somewhat because you can't really achieve long-lasting minimalism in just one area of your life without giving attention to the others.

The series was launched a fair few months ago so I thought it might be time to encourage anyone who followed it back then, or has only recently found it, to revisit the core message of the series.

So lets take stock of where you're at on your minimalist journey and revisit the steps from Stage 1, 2 and 3.

The Home

• How tidy is your personal space? Does it feel a joy to be in?

• Consider your wardrobe. How many items of the clothing have you worn more than once in the last 6 months? How many items in there have you not even touched in that time?

• When did you last empty out your pantry or fridge? How many items do you have stockpiled which keep getting pushed to the back of the cupboards and never used?

• How many shampoo's and conditioners have you amassed, all with just a little bit left at the bottom? When did you last look in your bathroom storage and consider reducing you cosmetic products down to just your absolute favourites?

• If you previously discarded a lot of your possessions, consider if your spaces remain cleansed, useful and organized. Have certain corners or surfaces begun acquiring new clutter, or are you still yet to remove all the things you originally intended to?

• Are you tidying up more regularly, and if so, is that a sign that you still have a lot of clutter to discard?

Spend an hour moving through your home, and note any areas which need harsher de-cluttering; sort through the belongings slowly, discarding a few items a day in the very least.

Your home can collect clutter amid a busy life, but taking a morning or an afternoon to re-assess your space really can lead to much less stress in the long-run. An ordered space which works well for your needs will not require as much maintenance so will free up some time and energy for other things!

Read about how de-cluttering your home can benefit your mind here!

The Wallet

• It's all too easy to see the process of simplifying your life as an opportunity to acquire more, maybe to replace old and thrown away items.

• However it somewhat defeats the purpose to replace the things you have successfully gotten rid of and are able to live without. You should only be replacing things when the absolute need arises.

• When did you last create a budget, or list your spending? Do you know off the top of your head how much money is in your current account and savings? How far along are you on debt repayments, and are you throwing as much as you can each month, not just making the minimum payment?

• Consider the last five items you purchased (bar food). Where are they now, did they serve a purpose, and will they continue to be useful in the future?  Are your daily spending decisions focused on instant gratification or delayed?

• Are you making bill payments on time, and are you stretching your budget (if you've even made one) to last between pay-day's? Do you dig into your savings to make up unexpected short-falls or to pay for random indulgences?

• Do you feel as if you are getting what you want out of your life with the funds you have, or are you still making frivolous spending decisions that leave you wanting?

The way you view money and the ease with which you part with it will determine so much of the clutter in your life. Financial over-stretching, a home rife with objects and the worry of having little financial security, this can all be simplified and eased with more mindful spending decisions.

Read more about overhauling your spending here!

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The Mailbox

• It might be time to hit that unsubscribe button again, because somewhere along the way you may have given out your email address and are now receiving more useless emails destined never to be read.
• Stop ignoring all those unread emails; implement the 'read, delete, reply or move' rule, which is quite simply going to keep your inbox nice and clean. I created folders corresponding to different topics and I move non-urgent or follow-up emails to those folders, or I delete the email.
• Back-up the thousands of photos on your phone to clear the decks and free up some storage space on your devices. The anxiety attached with losing our phones is only heightened when we allow them to hold our precious memories in an intangible and vulnerable form.

• Review your social media and consider if you are really getting that much out of following so many people on twitter or seeing every post into that face-bay group on Facebook. Streamline your feed and reduce the amount of different subjects and people vying for your precious time and attention.

• Did you stick to the idea of only having the most useful apps on your devices, or have you been pulled in by appealing looking ones which now sit idle and forgotten? Delete any apps you haven't used for a month and move your most used into organized folders.

The nature of our electronic habits can lead to divided attention, split across numerous distractions. If we can reduce the number of outlets vying for our attention across our social media and devices, then we can get back some focus and true relaxation.

Read more on simplifying your online world here!

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The minimalist life cleanse isn't really a one-off act; it is a conscious effort and a way of approaching all areas of your life, that just like an exercise regime or a diet, can fall by the wayside.

Its important not to beat yourself up if you feel that maybe the initial thrill of simplifying has died off, and you are going back to old habits.

But it's also important to remember the enthusiasm you felt when you first followed the steps from stage 1, 2 and 3, when you tackled the many facets of your life which weren't bringing anything good to the table.

You can definitely get back to that mindset, one where your life is not paired down or dull, but enriched with quality objects, interests and interactions.

You can create a home and a daily routine that can be purposeful and peaceful at the same time, building a solid foundation for reaching your goals in the rest of your life.

Next to read: Life After De-Cluttering: Finding Fullfillment In Simplicity.

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By the way, before you leave, I recently released my book, Minimalism: Cleanse Your Life, Become A Calmer Person, available NOW! It's a more in-depth guide to de-cluttering your home, organizing your life, refining your spending habits and simplifying your relationship with your technology:

Amazon UK Store / US Store / AU Store / CA Store

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Thanks for reading!

Want more reads like this? You can now find Hannah in her own online space, Good Intentions. Minimalism, mindfulness, conscious living and self-love; all the good stuff centred around being kinder to yourself, and kinder to the world.

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The Minimalist Life Cleanse Stage 2 [Simplifying Your Online World]

The Minimalist Life Cleanse Stage 2 [Simplifying Your Online World]

In stage 1 of this series, we talked about minimalism in the home..

Focusing some energy on stripping our homes of the things which really add no value to our lives, and only bring mess and stress, you may have began to feel lighter and less weighed down by your material junk.

Maybe you discovered beautiful treasures beneath the clutter, re-lived old memories, or found special artefacts to proudly display in your newly cleansed space.

Hopefully you took the steps put forward, and will take forward an attitude of loving the things you have, instead of bringing new distractions and items into your life.

Of course it doesn't take a day to clear years of amassed bits and bobs, but you have made a start and can continue at your own pace, knowing you have done the hardest part, which is to begin!

You might now feel all the more ready to tackle stage 2 of this series...

THEME: Minimalism in your Technology.

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Social media and the internet influence every aspect of modern life. We live in a world where in many western countries, the government is investing in high-speed internet; it is that much entrenched in contemporary culture, it's no longer just entertainment, its has become a right and to many, a need. 

The world of new-sites and online editorial content, is steadfastly replacing print media, and now most people stay in touch with important news, blog''s of interest and other things which they enjoy exclusively via the internet. It really is at the centre of peoples everyday lives and behaviours.

...so goes the sign-of-times saying “Home is where the WIFI connects automatically”.

Many of us feel anxious when our internet doesn't work, or we go somewhere without wifi.

Temporarily disconnected, literally and mentally, you are sure that you are going to miss out on some vital piece of information, news, meme or dog video.

It's not wrong to feel this way, it just the natural result of our constant repeated use of our devices. I personally hate when the internet fails or I am out of a free wifi zone. I feel adrift and like I am going to be behind on something everybody else is in on.

Why do we feel this way?

Many of us live out our entire lives online, reporting it all in vivid colour and vibrant language, whilst others build a career based on online creativity; the internet is where some peoples whole businesses are founded and maintained.

The net (I feel like I am writing this in the late 90's or something...) has somewhat replaced television for many, with sites such as youtube and Netflix providing an array of entertainment, springing forth a new-breed of celebrities in the form of Vlogger's and Bloggers; the online world covers even more niche's than TV ever has or could. 

The internet is there for all manner of weirdness, hobbies, fetishes, obsessions and escapism.

Despite most people agreeing on the usefulness of the online world, due to its potential for creating connections, fostering learning and of course building commerce, many despair at just how much we have been drawn into the inter-web.

And when you begin to look at your relationship with social media, your mobile phone and the whole world of apps and websites, you will observe the complexity of it, and often, the repetitive and dullness of your daily absorption within it.

I realized recently, whilst scrolling Instagram for maybe the 3rd time that day, that I was skipping past a lot of images. I was not really giving anything any real attention, yet I had chosen to follow these accounts at some point when the person or subject must have been vaguely interesting to me.

But this interest was clearly short-lived, and the result is me now mindlessly passing over things instead of taking a brief moment to un-follow these people, and escape from an endless conveyor-belt of thumbing over content.

So now it's time to bring back some more organization, purpose and clarity to your online life!

By the way, before you read on, this phase of the life cleanse is expanded upon, alongside the rest of the series, in a my new book, available NOW.

Amazon UK Store / US Store / AU Store / CA Store

Deleting Apps

Our phones and tablets will soon contain more contain apps than the actual app-store.

• Count how many apps you have on your phone/tablet.

• Now count how many you actually use.

• Delete any apps you haven't used in the last month.

• Re-arrange your used apps into folders labeled for their theme. I have 'WRITE''WATCH''READ', so I use short names which are fairly self-explanatory.

• Look at your most used apps again and assess if you can now delete even more apps, the ones outside the category you consider most important or worth keeping.

Unfollow

Maybe some of us are too polite (or lazy) to un-follow people, but really, when you look at it realistically, someone's follower count really isn't something you should be giving much worry to...

• Is it really that engaging for you or beneficial for the person posting stuff, to have their offerings ignored and scrolled over all the time?

• Maybe its time to cut-down on the things you give your time and attention to.

• Consider cutting down on who and what you follow....

• Twitter: If you still want to follow someone but are bugged by their updates, then just mute them on your feed! That way you can keep in touch with their updates in your own time.

• Facebook: The same thing applies here – you can streamline your time-line without causing any offence, by simply un-following peoples status updates. No need to see everything they have to say, but you can still check in on them now and again! And as for un-friending, well, I like your style, you're thinking big.

• Instagram: I am so guilty of scrolling repeatedly over the same people, and I never stopped to observe my behaviour. When I finally did I started de-cluttering my account, I un-followed lots of people and made it so I only saw the things most interesting to me!

• Myspace: Go on Myspace, re-activate your account, try to remember the now-defunct email address you used for your login, spend hours trying to locate this address to no avail. But once you do get it, login, and scroll through all your college friends, check out your pictures from those house-parties, and decide on whether that friend is displaying good HTML skills. And change your automated song to something more fresh.

Obviously, we're joking on that last part... how to improve your Myspace is in next weeks post.... :P

Clear Your Inbox

This is the virtual room that you need to de-clutter. It has shelves and shelves of things you have never read, or ever will....

• Yes, you took the time to set-up which incoming junk-type emails to automatically send to your 'Filtered' folder, which is the same as saying “Go here, you will remain in my inbox but I will not read you and you will remain there until the end of the time”. Tut.

• Now it's time to go and actually un-subscribe to those emails never read or which you no longer want to receive. Check the very bottom of the email, you will have an option to receive no further contact. Hurrah!

• Clear that spam folder, and your (now quickly filling up) deleted folder.

• Look at your other saved folders – are you keeping emailed bills from 5 years ago? It should be easy to find lots of things to send into the abyss of deleted emails!!

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If your online activities, or the mass of information stored in your own personal online accounts, aren't adding to your happiness, helping you, or bringing inspiration into your life, then, why are you giving them so much of your time? Time you cannot get back.

Taran has found that deleting the Facebook app off of his phone made perfect sense; he didn't want to keep finding himself on that endless scrolling spree, and so he fixed that quite easily!

You could take that drastic step, or, alternatively, follow the above steps. The more you delete, the more you will want to delete! Editing, refining and creating an online space that meets your own personal wants and needs is such a satisfying process. 

You'll realize that nowhere in this post am I explicitly telling anyone to cut down on their online time; being a blogger and a blog-lover I am permanently in the internet matrix, I never leave.... I am simply offering advice to help you enhance your relationship with your online practises, and make them more fruitful and fulfilling.

And if you happen to find yourself online less, or become more inspired by your new de-cluttered inter-web space, then you've taken a positive if unintentional step towards even more minimalism and simplicity. 

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Thanks for reading!

Want more reads like this? You can now find Hannah in her own online space, Good Intentions. Minimalism, mindfulness, conscious living and self-love; all the good stuff centred around being kinder to yourself, and kinder to the world.

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The Minimalist Life Cleanse Stage 1 [De-Cluttering your Home]

The Minimalist Life Cleanse Stage 1 [De-Cluttering your Home]

The Theme here? Minimalism in the home.

Minimalism is such a broad word for all that it encompasses, the meaning stretching across many different elements of your life and approach to, well, almost everything.

Your lifestyle consists of numerous different habits, routines, behaviours, activities and passions. Some of these become stagnated or so repetitive you sometimes fail to notice that they aren't quite satisfying you any-more, or adding any substantial value to your daily life. That is where stage 1 of the cleanse comes in. 

You are going to bring minimalism into your life, beginning with your home.

Why minimalism you ask? Why is everyone so nonsensically obsessed with this movement, what is so appealing about it!

Well, it's kinda like exercise, if you don't ever do it, you can't fully understand how beneficial it is and how good it makes people feel, so naturally you look at it with apathy and scepticism. And minimalism, well you can't understand the sense of clarity and peace that comes with the practice of de-cluttering your life until you yourself try it. And you learn quite quickly once you begin to de-clutter, how you never needed so many types of items, and so many different versions and options!

A good example for myself, is my nail polish collection...since taking off travelling I have had two nail polishes in my collection, a mint one, and a purple one. I am yet to finish either or get bored of them. And then I remember I have about 25 polishes back home, doing nothing, sat in a drawer. And it occurred to me, I definitely have no real need for that amount of choice when I can evidently be more than happy with less! I don't need 25 of anything. I can be happy with 2. And you can apply this same concept to your stuff.  

Having lots of things, or lots of options, has a lot to do with our commercial capitalist world.

Of course we end up with numerous things in our homes because shopping is a regular pastime for many people that means we inevitably add things to our collections that we already have, and end up with something in 3 different styles or colours. We pander to fashions and changing likes/dislikes in the culture around us, and yet still keep the old, the things we no longer consider attractive.

That leads to a cluttered mixture of things within the home, some never seeing the light of day. The result can often be a state of indecision within ourselves; what do we even like any more! 

We end up seeing our wants, as needs, and this has lead to not simply our cluttered home spaces but a whole host of other issues; overspending and debt, hoarding, being weighed down by too much choice, feeling inadequate in the midst of the commercial world and it's changing fashions vying for our attention and our money.

So, I want to change things. WHERE DO I BEGIN?

TAKE THESE 3 STEPS, AND BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY TO MINIMALISM, SIMPLICITY AND A MORE CONTENT LIFE.

1. Discard

DOWNLOAD OUR DE-CLUTTER CHECKLIST HERE!

• Start wherever you wish in the home. Choose a space to thoroughly declutter top to bottom.
• Put your merciless boots on, you are taking no prisoners. 
• A good way to think is, would I want to save this item in a fire? And go from there...
• Throw away, donate, or sell, all the items that you haven't touched or looked at in the last 6 months (maybe excluding Christmas decorations!).
• Apply the need versus want rule: You might want 10 different styles of sunglasses but do you honestly need them?
• When looking at fashion items, ask yourself, if you saw this in a shop now, would you buy it today?
• You don't need duplicates of items, old worn out items, things you simply ignore the existence of in favour of just never having to actually put the effort into cleaning and tidying!
• Be even more merciless than you have ever been before when you might have tidied your home. You might be holding back a little but you must be committed and positive from the beginning of this journey.

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2. Reorganize

Now you have less stuff, it's time to organize what you do have.

• Do you need 3 chests of drawers or a giant wardrobe any more?
• Could you get by with less furniture, meaning you can add space to your home?
• If you want a less cluttered look to the home, a shelving unit with spaces for storage bins might be a neat alternative to storing items.
• If you want to create an eclectic aesthetic, consider a shelving unit which shows off your most treasured items, books, keepsakes and photographs. Seeing the things you find meaningful each day reminds you why you don't need to acquire more.
• Minimalism needn't mean no art on the walls or rugs on the floors, in fact I cant imagine anything more inspiring and simultaneously peaceful than having only a few beloved furnishings making the home individual and comfortable.
• Try to order your things in the way that you can recall where everything of daily need is, quite quickly. A sure sign that you have too much stuff is needing to rifle through all your storage in order to locate something.
• Seek inspiration for storage solutions on PINTEREST. This is my favourite source of clever ideas which not only work in a minimalist environment but generally make life easier!

3. Regard

You've done it! Well done!

• You have created a space that is not only calm and ordered, but you have also detached yourself further from the practice of acquiring material things. 
• The less you have the less you need; this is a realization you may be experiencing having completed this process.
• Do you feel lighter? Do you feel like it would be easier now to enjoy your space, be creative, or social within it, and if you want to, pack it all up and go somewhere new?
• Enjoy it. Enjoy knowing you are giving yourself and your treasures, the space and the atmosphere to be happy and content.
• Take interest in all those hobbies or interests that might have fell by the wayside in the past. You have far less distractions to split your attention and efforts in your new streamlined space. 
• No need to spend half your life tidying! There's hardly anything left to tidy!
• Find pleasure in your new space. Revel in it. Love the things you have kept and use them well. 

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By the way, before you leave, I recently released my book, Minimalism: Cleanse Your Life, Become A Calmer Person, available NOW! It's a more in-depth guide to de-cluttering your home, organizing your life, refining your spending habits and simplifying your relationship with your technology:

Amazon UK Store / US Store / AU Store / CA Store

---

Thanks for reading!

Want more reads like this? You can now find Hannah in her own online space, Good Intentions. Minimalism, mindfulness, conscious living and self-love; all the good stuff centred around being kinder to yourself, and kinder to the world.

WANT MORE?