How Minimalism Can Make Your Home a Beautiful Haven
Beauty makes you feel good. It brings peace. It makes you happier.
These are important questions, because the answers impact you and your family every day. It's not enough to have a wonderful vacation getaway once a year or even one weekend a month. You need your home to be beautiful and welcoming every day.
Every home can benefit from some degree of minimalism.
Gorgeous decorator photos and TV shows are designed to make us think about what we need to buy or add to our homes, rather than how to curate our belongings for the best effect.
But what if we began by decluttering and then working with what we already have to create the home of our dreams? If only we realized that the first step toward making a home more inviting is fewer things.
- Is your home too small and crowded? The answer is fewer things.
- Is it dark or dingy? You need fewer things.
- Does your home weigh on you like a burden? Do you feel swamped by your home chores? Before anything else, you need fewer things.
Owning fewer things allows us to experience more open space, more natural light, and easier home care. It lets us choose the items that mean the most and display them in a way that lets them shine.
The good news is that the best way to start making your home a haven doesn't cost money. It doesn't take specialized training. It just takes time. Put on some good music or an interesting podcast and it can be fun. Stretch, squat, and lift while you do it and it can be good for your body, too. Even five minutes can be enough to make a start.
40 five-minute decluttering tasks
- your purse
- the medicine cabinet
- the bathroom counter
- under the bathroom sink
- your makeup bag
- your bedside table
- your underwear or sock drawer
- the coffee table
- magazines
- the top of your desk
- your digital desktop
- smartphone apps
- a pile of mail
- the top of the refrigerator
- the refrigerator door
- small kitchen appliances
- the silverware drawer
- one shelf in the pantry
- one shelf in the refrigerator
- one shelf in the linen closet
- one shelf of books, toys, games, DVDs, knickknacks, or whatever you have on shelves
- one junk drawer
- the inside of your car
- make your bed
- load or unload the dishwasher
- clean the sink and wipe the counters
- sweep the floor
- sort and start a load of laundry
- fold a load of clean laundry
- put away folded laundry
- put away your tools or hobby supplies
- pay a bill
- make an "action" folder for bills to pay, permission slips, RSVPs, tax-related receipts, etc.
- clear out your inbox (flag important emails and delete the rest, especially anything from last month or earlier)
- answer an email
- write a thank you note
- check voicemail and return a call
- empty the trash cans
- pull some weeds
- take bags of donations to your car for drop-off next time you're out
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