Turning a cluttered, bold, and frankly overwhelming living space into a minimalist haven can be a hard task. You may feel like your work will never be done. After all, it’s hard not to bring new bargains home from the shop and who knows if you’ll ever see the surface of that coffee table again!
But when you realise the purpose of becoming minimalist, it’ll be a lot easier to keep your home clean, neat, and tidy. If you don’t find stress in the living room, and you’re able to relax for a good night’s sleep in the bedroom, life tends to be a lot more peaceful!
Minimalism is about cutting back, and finding the best in what you own without needing to fill your home with unessential pieces. If you want some tips that’ll help you live this way through your decor, here are some things you might want to keep in mind.
Photo by Samantha Gades
Start with the Functional Rooms
Functional rooms get a lot more traffic. Such rooms include the kitchen and bathroom, whilst areas like the living room and bedrooms tend to be a bit quieter. Sure, you spend a good amount of time in all of these rooms, but seeing as you have plumbing fixtures and appliances in only a couple of them, focus on decluttering these first.
The kitchen, especially, will need a good clear out. We tend to use the kitchen as a semi storage room if we’re not sure where else to put things; we throw items in spare drawers and hide bigger pieces at the back of the saucepan cupboard.
Prepare a checklist here, and itemise every little thing that you’ve got in the kitchen right now. Then, go back through it and decide (definitively) whether or not you use all of these items on a daily basis. Anything you haven’t ticked yes to can be stored away; check out self storage options near you to get them out of your house until you decide if they need to be sold or not.
Invest in Textured Furniture
Textures are very important in minimalist homes. After all, you’re not going to have much else to interact with, so the chances of building a sensory experience are slim. That’s why you should focus on bringing more textures into your home in this controlled manner.
You don’t want things to get cluttered or stressful, and you certainly want to be able to move around your house without needing to step over anything, but you can still benefit from a soft cushion or a wicker stool for putting your legs up.
At the same time, you don’t want too many textures to come into your home. If you’re sensitive to touch, this could be more harmful than beneficial. You’ll want to focus on maybe one or two favourite textures and build up from there.
Photo by Spacejoy
Choose a Three Tone Colour Palette
Minimalism often chooses white as its backdrop colour, so let’s take that as a given here. Then you can layer three tones of another colour on top, to make sure you’re not looking at the same boring, whitewashed walls and floor day after day.
For most people, this colour palette tends to be in the brown tone zone. There are quite a few shades of brown that make for a lovely home. Sand, pebble, and oak immediately spring to mind. It’ll be easy to find furniture in these shades and you won’t have to look very far for them.
However, you can also use light shades of blue, yellow, green, and red if you’d rather. Being minimalist is about working with your favourite items and them alone, so if you prefer these colours over trendy home decor colours, incorporate them into your overall home design.
Keep Surfaces Neat
Like reading magazines, or you’ve always got a new book on the go? Make sure it’s the only thing on the coffee table in the living room. You can swap your reading materials in and out very easily once you’re done with them!
This will keep the surface in question as neat as possible. Apply this principle to all rooms in your house. The neater the surfaces are, the less stressful minimalism decor will be. Organising as you go is very healthy!
Decorate Your Walls (just do so minimally!)
Blank walls aren’t nice to look at. They can even make you think your life is small, which is not the intention of minimalism at all! Instead, you should still make an effort to decorate your walls, just do so with minimalist intention.
A simple wooden shelf, in the right tone to help complement the sofa or sideboard beneath it, is a perfect fit here. You could then pop a louder art piece on the wall opposite, if the TV isn’t already hanging in this prime spot.
Some people even like to build up small collages of pictures and photographs; white and/or light wooden frames work well for one of these, if the idea takes your fancy. This way you can create an interesting focal point – place it on the wall that’s opposite to the doorway into the room to instantly draw the eye.
Don’t Forget About Spaces Behind Closed Doors
Kitchen cabinets, for one. What’s going on behind that closer door, with all the plates, cups, and bowls you might own? If you’ve got too many, and you never quite use them all because there’s only three people living in your house, you might want to clear out the untouched pieces.
Your wardrobe, for another. How many clothes do you own? Probably more than you even realise. This is a common state for most people. We buy tons of clothes, only wear each piece a couple of times, and then pop it back on a hanger to collect dust and form holes.
This is where a capsule wardrobe would come in handy. Capsule wardrobes are good for people who want to be more minimalist without compromising. You simply invest in a few high quality pieces that can be mixed and matched with pretty much anything and wear each outfit in rotation. This will also cut back on the amount of laundry you have to do, which can even save some crucial pennies!
Keep Cutting Back
Minimalism never gives up! It’s why you should maintain a sense of a ‘capsule’ lifestyle at all times, much like you would with your wardrobe. Dial things back, focus on what’s actually important to you, and keep the clutter out of your life.
Whilst you’re getting used to living this way, it’s likely things will start to build up again. Be as strict as you can to prevent an issue like this from spiralling out of your control. You’re allowed to decorate in whatever way you see fit, but if you want to be minimalist, sometimes it’ll take a bit of effort.
You can buy new pieces to decorate your home with – just make sure they fit the bill every single time. They’re not too harsh on the senses, they’re in the right colour palette, and they make you feel good about your home.
If you feel you’ve got too much clutter in your home, adopting a minimalist approach could be key to sorting out that mess forever. When you can come home to a house that’s already clutter free and is designed to stay that way, you can embrace so much more free time in the evenings and over the weekends!
