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More and more people are interested in minimalist living nowadays. 

If you happen to be interested too, you need to know these 8 steps for a better minimalist life. 

Here are some of the steps included in this article:

  1. Organising your apartment—to organise your life
  2. Keep the essential things—and keep everything else in storage
  3. Live with less stuff—to become truly happy and appreciate what you have in life

Sounds interesting? 

Let’s dive right in!

Step #1: Make a List of Your Priorities

This is the first step towards starting to live a minimalist lifestyle. 

It can also work as an individual tip to help you organise your life and feel better. 

So what this step is all about? 

Minimalist living is all about setting priorities in your life:

  • What kind of items are essential to you?
  • Why each of these items is or isn’t necessary?
  • What can you do with all the items that you don’t need? 
  • Can you use storage to keep them safe or you can just throw them away?
  • Is your apartment ideal for the lifestyle you want to live or you should move to another one? 

However, these priorities are NOT rules. 

They are not things that you should do, no matter what. 

Think of them as principles that will help you live a better life. 

Becoming a minimalist means that you can live with whatever you have. 

But, to live with the things you have, you need to set priorities. 

As a minimalist, you need to learn how to live with less stuff. 

This doesn’t mean that you can’t live in style. 

On the contrary. 

Even though it’s all a matter of perspective, a minimalist has the freedom to choose what makes her happy, by making small and simple adjustments to her life. 

For example, let’s assume that you have a family with 2 kids.

Happy family in the kitchen of their house.

Image Source: Unsplash

In that case, having a minimalist flat is not the same as it would be for someone who is single and lives in her own apartment. 

What I am trying to say is that your choice of becoming a minimalist should be aligned with your overall vision in life. 

This is why I suggest that you keep the following things in mind before becoming a minimalist:

  • Where is my life now and do I want it to be in 5 years from now?
  • How do I plan to get there?
  • How important are things like clothes to me; can I live with far less of them? 
  • What are the best ways to become a minimalist?
  • What changes and compromises do I have to make to achieve it? 

By asking yourself these questions, you can realistically answer the critical question:

Can I go minimalist now? 

I am sure that setting priorities and taking a clear look at how your life is at the moment will help you answer that question. 

Step #2: Make a List of Categories Your Personal Items Fall Into

This is the second step toward becoming a minimalist. 

You see, minimalism is strictly connected to items. 

In my experience, the less items you decide to keep the better. 

However, this is not always the case. 

You have to do what makes you feel better and you have to learn that there isn’t a size-fits-all solution here. 

So, in this step, you need to think what are the categories the items you possess can fall into. 

This is why you need to make a list of all these categories. 

Such categories can be:

  • Clothes
  • Furniture
  • Lifestyle items
  • Decoration items
  • Personal hygiene stuff
  • Items for travel (i.e. bag)

Now, as you can imagine, some of the above items are essential to your everyday life. 

For example, personal hygiene things are things you can’t live without so easily. 

This doesn’t mean, of course, that you can’t live with less of these items. 

All I am saying is that throughout this process, you’ll notice that some categories are more important than others. 

Minimalist Living, Follow These 9 Steps for a Better Life. Featured image for blog post.

Image Source: Unsplash

Just make sure that you’ve included all the possible categories that fit the items in your life. 

One last tip: You can also include a category called “Storage,” in case you have items stored in a storage facility or inside your house. 

You will use the Storage category in later steps. 

Let’s move on to the third step. 

Step #3: Add Each Item Into the Category It Belongs

This step is pretty straightforward. 

Here, you just need to start organising the items you possess into the categories you’ve come up to in the previous step. 

This way, you’ll get to learn one crucial thing:

How many items you actually possess.

Several items placed on a desk.

Image Source: Unsplash

Truth be told, most people feel a bit embarrassed by the end of this step. 

Why? 

Because they realise how many items they really possess and that most of this stuff are things that they don’t use more than once per month.  

One last tip: 

Next to each of the items you’ve added to the categories you’ve created in step 2, I want you to add the frequency in which you are using this item. 

This will help you mark items as essential in the following step. 

Once again: this process may make you feel a bit awkward, but if you are true about becoming a minimalist, you need to do it. 

Step #4: Mark Items That Are Essential

As I mentioned in the beginning, becoming a minimalist requires you to live with the essentials.

Don’t get me wrong; this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have everything that you need. 

However, there is a fine line between what you need, and what you think that you need. 

This step is all about finding that fine line. 

So by now, you have:

  1. Made a list of priorities in your life
  2. Made a list of categories your personal items can fall into
  3. Divided the items you possess into these categories

It’s now time to mark items that are essential as essential. 

Remember: You don’t need all of this stuff to be happy. 

3 men and 1 woman standing happy in the sun.

Image Source: Unsplash

People can be far happier with fewer items. 

Use the frequency of use as a way to determine what is absolutely necessary and also, make sure to ask yourself:

Do I really need this? 

If the answer is “YES,” then this item is essential to you. 

As you can see in the below graph, the interest in the minimalist movement is rising in our country:

Minimalist on Google Trends. Graph.

This means that more and more people decide to live with the things that are essential to them. 

By organising their life and using smart solutions like storage, minimalists refuse to live an ordinary life where materialism rules everything. 

This lifestyle is more a matter of perspective than anything else. 

Let’s move on to the next—and one of the most important—steps of the process. 

Step #5: Make a List of The Items You Can Live Without

In the previous step, you marked items as “essential.”

These are things:

  • You can’t live without
  • You use very often

In this step, you need to decide on the things that you can live without. 

I would say that being a minimalist means that you need to be courageous. 

You need to have the courage to admit that you don’t need most of the items that you possess. 

Thus, you need to take a look at the list you created in the previous steps and start marking items as “Not Necessary.”

It can be anything from items you have in your apartment, to clothes and pretty much anything else. 

Grey T-shirts on a hanger.

I know it’s challenging to do that. 

However, it’s the only way to achieve this simple living that you crave for. 

A life that is free of rules on what you need to have to be accepted as equal in modern societies. 

Thus, my advice is to be ruthless with this process because it will help you feel much better and will lead you to your new life. 

Step #6: Store Items That Are NOT Essential

Storage can be your secret weapon. 

Now that you know which items are essential to you and which ones are not, you can start organizing your life by:

  • Keeping items that you both need and use often
  • Storing items you need but don’t use often
  • Throwing away items you don’t need and don’t use often

Living with less stuff in a minimalist house will help you feel better and “breathe” within your space. 

When it comes to storage, these are the two paths you can follow: 

  1. Self-storage
  2. Door-to-door storage

The first one has many downsides, such as:

  • You need to move the items you want to store all by yourself
  • You need to hire a moving van or use your own car
  • You need to visit the storage facility to get your stuff back

As you can imagine, this is too much of a hassle. 

This is why door-to-door storage is the best option. 

Dog in a box.

What it means is that the storage company:

  • Will come at your place and pickup your items
  • Keep them safe for you
  • Bring them back when you need them

Note: This is what STORED offers to all people using the service. No other companies are offering the same or similar service in the prices that we do. Learn more on our pricing page.

Thus, in this step, you need to find a trustworthy and affordable storage solution to store the items you need but don’t use often. 

Just make sure to do your research before hiring a storage company, as there are many storage solutions out there that are not trustworthy. 

Step #7: Start Decluttering 

Living with less stuff and decluttering is what this article is all about. 

At the end of the day, decluttering is an integral of the process toward becoming a minimalist. 

Even though extreme minimalist living requires you to declutter a LOT, this is not what we are going to cover here. 

I am only going to talk about some necessary actions that you need to take when it comes to decluttering. 

But first, let’s see what decluttering really is. 

Declutter on Wikipedia.

Does “remove” means that you need to throw them away? 

Well, not necessarily. 

Here are some solutions you should consider:

  • Storage (that we described earlier)
  • Give them away to charities
  • Gift them to friends

In any case, decluttering is where everything ends up after you’ve completed steps 1-5. 

Let’s move on to the next step. 

Step #8: Rinse & Repeat

As you may have guessed, following the process I’ve described so far doesn’t mean that you’ve finished. 

Going minimalist means that you always need to be on the lookout for opportunities, and always try to maintain the minimalist lifestyle. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to embrace extreme minimalism. 

It just means that you need to need to repeat this process constantly. 

Living with less requires you to always ask yourself:

Do I really need this? Can I live without it? Do I have something similar? 

The message just say no written on a tree.

Image Source: Unsplash

If the answer is “NO,” then you don’t need to buy it, or you don’t need to purchase it in the first place. 

This means that as a modern minimalist, you have to be skeptical, and you always have to repeat the same processes that you know will make you happy. 

It makes sense, right? 

Let’s move on to the last step of the never-ending process of becoming a minimalist. 

Step #9: Start Living as a Minimalist

I’ll keep this one short. 

By now, you’ve come to realise two things:

  1. The minimalist way of living is truly fascinating
  2. Living a minimalist life is NOT easy

You certainly need a process to follow if you want to succeed in this. 

Regardless of the position, you are at right now, keep in mind that most minimalist people started as materialists. 

These were people who couldn’t bear the thought of living with less stuff. 

Slowly but steadily, they changed that and started living a minimalist lifestyle. 

The same can happen to you. 

All you need to do is to decide that you want to live as a minimalist. 

iMac on a desk.

Image Source: Unsplash

Note: You can also read some of the best books on minimalism to get inspired and get more actionable advice and tips. 

When you make that decision, follow the steps in this article and everything else will come along.

Want to Become a Minimalist? 

Do you want to begin living a minimalist lifestyle? 

You now know 9 steps you need to follow to become a minimalist. 

As minimalism becomes more popular, more people will want to learn the “secrets” of living with less. 

If you are ready to take the next step and live with fewer items, you have two options:

  1. Get rid of items you don’t need
  2. Store items you don’t need for future use

We can’t help you with the first option, but we can definitely help you with the second one. 

So if you need a reliable and affordable storage solution that will allow you to live a better life, you can contact us at 020 3637 1234, and talk to one of our storage experts.

We are here to help you with your needs.

Some additional resources you might find useful:

  1. 26 Space Saving Furniture Ideas for Your (Small) House
  2. Second Hand Furniture in London: The 30 Best Shops (for 2022)
  3. The 14 Best Self Storage Tips You Need to Know in 2022

Stored is a new kind of storage company — Making storage as simple as it gets and making our customer’s lives easier is what we’re all about.

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