Knowing how to live a minimalist lifestyle
Lucky for you, a mobile home is a perfect candidate. They are already more compact and usually have simpler designs than stick-built homes, which already puts you on the right foot. There’s no doubt that you have heard the term “minimalism” floated around a lot nowadays, but how do you actually make your home more minimalist?
That’s what we’re helping you with today.
What benefits can I expect?
There are many altruistic benefits that people attribute to a minimalist lifestyle. Better focus, a more peaceful mind, an improved attitude. These may be up to debate and can depend entirely on the individual involved. However, there are some solid benefits to converting your mobile home into a minimalist living space:
- Minimal homes are easier to clean: The fewer things there are in a room, the quicker it is to clean. It’s as easy as that. Minimalism also means choosing furniture that’s easier to clean, even if it means choosing one that is less attractive.
- Minimalism is in style: You have probably already seen your fair share of minimal (or what claims to be) interior designs. They are on the cover of almost every lifestyle magazine and featured on every lifestyle channel. Minimalism is definitely in right now. In fact, minimalism with an Asian influence is about as “hip” and “now” as you can get.
- Helps you to stress less about your home: Any family mom or dad would agree that less cleaning already means less stress. However, the very fact that you aren’t surrounded by so much clutter already does wonders for your mood. It also means having less valuables to worry about when you’re not around.
Establish why you want to live a minimalist lifestyle
The word “lifestyle” is very important in this context. Minimal design has had huge interest lately as a style of interior decorating. This doesn’t necessarily mean that people who have had their home designed in this way also live minimalist lifestyles. In truth, sometimes what people consider to be a minimalist design isn’t even minimal at all.
While choosing a minimalist design purely for aesthetic reasons is a completely valid choice, it often isn’t enough on its own to give you some of the benefits of living minimally.
It’s good advice that for any huge change of lifestyle that you should first take a moment to really contemplate what it might be like and why you want to adopt it. Meditate on it, so to speak.
Generally speaking, there are 3 reasons why you might want to live more minimally:
- In order to save money.
- To remove unnecessary frustrations from your life.
- For aesthetic reasons.
Anyone of these can be a valid reason on their own to pursue a minimalist lifestyle. If you have a desire to achieve all three, that’s even better. In most cases, you will already make some ground on the other two if you only want to achieve one of them and you will only have to take slightly different approaches.
Once you have found the root of your desire to live more minimally, write it down and remind yourself of why you are doing this. This will help keep you focused and motivated during the time to come. Going minimal is much easier for some than it is for others. Having a clear goal will make it much easier to get (and stay) on track.
Get rid of things you no longer want or need
The first step to going minimalist is to properly declutter your home. At the very essence of minimalism stands living and being more content with less. So, it’s a logical place to start. Just like all the other steps on how to live minimally, you should start out small. Minimalism isn’t all or nothing and as anyone who has jumped into an icy pool has told you before, sometimes it’s best to take it slowly and acclimatize yourself.
On average, mobile homes are a few hundred square feet smaller than their stick-built counterparts, which unfortunately means it can much easier to start to feel cluttered. A good approach to take to protect the sanctity of the free space inside your home is to place a value on it. Think of it as a commodity in and of itself. You can then start to “barter” that free space and compare it with the price you pay to have something take up that space permanently.
How to declutter
Thinking of your space as a possession that you give up whenever you fill it, might help you think twice about buying that new sofa or lounge chair. However, it pays to start way smaller than tossing out big pieces of furniture. Two areas of our home where there is often clutter to be found but that we often overlook is our kitchen and our wardrobes.
How many pieces of cutlery do you have vs how many people live in your home? How many pieces of clothing do you have that you haven’t worn in ages? Do you really need all those blouses? What about that old butter churner your grandparents left you but you’ve never used? To make things even easier, aim for duplicates among your possessions and get rid of them until you have only one left.
You should start with small things like these and gradually work your way up. Give your brain a chance to cope with and adjust to this new sense of freedom from material value and let it get better at letting go.
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Create a minimal living space
Before you renovate your whole mobile home, consider starting with a single room first. You can start off simply by declaring it a clutter-free zone. Then, gradually start turning it into a minimal living space. Starting off small like this helps you get the hang of being in a minimal space and how it makes you feel before you commit to larger changes.
A study or living room can be a prime candidate for an experiment like this. If you have a spare living room or a guest room, that could also work.
For most of us, a professional interior designer would be out of the question and if you plan to DIY it, you’ll need to experiment around a bit to get the perfect result. There is a fine line to tread between turning the room into a cold, barren, and lifeless place and simply making it a simpler living space.
Many minimal rooms still have plenty of decorative “stuff” in it, but more often than not, it’s just as much about how you space things and the colors you choose as how much stuff there is (or isn’t). For example, going with lighter colors for the floor, walls, and ceiling automatically make the room bigger. If you use some small, colorful items it creates a focal point that stretches the surroundings even further. This could be something like a colorful lamp or potted plant.
To get some amazing ideas for inspiration and to get you started, you should look at what others have done. There are plenty of personal bloggers and interior design blogs as well as sharing platforms where you can get ideas. Pinterest is a great repository of ideas that usually come with some handy tips.
How to make a minimalist room
Clear the room
It’s easiest to start off with a blank canvas. The obvious place to start is to declutter and clean the room. Next, completely remove all decorations, artwork, and furniture from the room. Take stock of what doesn’t need to be there and store it someplace else.
Establish room function
Do you want to entertain here? Is it a secret place for you to disappear to relax? Focusing your mind on a goal for the room will help a lot in the following stages.
Decide on a color scheme
As we explained before, most of the room’s surfaces and the furniture should be lighter or plainer colors. You can then use smaller items to bring a dash of color into the room.
Choose your furniture
In most cases, furniture is the stuff that takes up the most space in a room and is used the most. So, it’s only natural that any arrangement would center around them. If you are buying new furniture, go for quality over quantity. Arrange furniture in a way that is functional, but makes the room feel spacious and easy to move through.
Choose accents
We talked about how color can be a good thing. Now is when you get to utilize your creativity to make the room special. This is arguably the hardest stage to stay true to your minimalist roots. Don’t let your creativity run away with you and make you forget why you are doing this! One of the key things to remember when it comes to furniture and details is simplicity comes first.
“Edit” the room
If you got it 100% right the first time, you might secretly be an interior design prodigy and make a career switch! Go over your new room one more time and see if there are any tweaks you can make or something that doesn’t quite fit. Get an outside opinion if you are really stuck. If you struggle to find a space for a specific item, it’s usually a sign that maybe it doesn’t belong.
Here is a fantastic guide to creating a minimalistic room that we recommend.
Start saving money!
You probably didn’t expect this one! There are a few reasons why tightening your belt and putting more of your hard earned money away can help you in your pursuit of a minimalist lifestyle.
For one, saving money that you don’t touch forces you to tighten your budget and cut down on your monthly expenses. This will help you prioritize the most important things in your life by prodding you to cut out what isn’t needed and save money on the things you truly need or make you happy.
Secondly, sometimes we spend just because we have some spare cash lying around and regret it later. Putting away more of your money will help prevent this regret. By starting to save money now, you will actually be in a much better financial position later on.
Thirdly, one of the cornerstones of living minimally is to be free. Having a financial cushion in place that saving creates in the long run sets you free. It means worrying less about what will happen in an emergency and get on with your life.
Lastly, saving will inevitably allow you to use that money on experiences. Minimalism is also about encouraging people to put more of their energy into experiences and living in the moment and less in earthly possessions. By not wasting your money on furniture, food, and clothes you don’t need, you now have money available to see the world and broaden your horizons.
A happy coincidence of living minimally is that you will be leaving fewer things behind and consequently have less to worry about when you are away from home!
Keep calm with a minimalist lifestyle!
We hope that this article will help lay the foundation for you to start dreaming up how to live a minimalist lifestyle away from the hectic and noisy outside world. A minimal home has benefits all around from saving time to saving money to set your spirit free. Follow these steps, and you will be well on your way to achieving all three of these lofty goals!
