Minimalism : Part 2 (Organize)

If you have not already read my earlier post on Minimalism, please read it here. In my previous post on this topic, I talk about the books that got me into minimalism and what I learnt from each of those books.

From last few years, I have been trying to downsize my belongings and trying actively to buy less. I have not been completely successful but I am heading in the right direction. I cleaned all the rooms and got rid of all the junk at home last year. Having gotten rid of everything that was not bringing me joy, I am now mostly left with stuff that bring me joy.

Getting rid of unwanted items was easy for me. It was all about the mindset. Once you have made up your mind to clean all the junk, you can easily get rid of them. The next step in my journey is to keep everything organized at home. I am a hoarder so I still have plenty of items that bring me joy. I need to downsize further I guess and even throw stuff that I like because I don’t have space to store them. I am doing great in some areas but some areas are still messy and it’s still difficult for me to find stuff when I need them. I still look for them in multiple places before I either find the item or I lose hope of finding it.

I started an organization journal recently where I document how I am trying to minimize and how I plan to organize various items at home. I write out all the projects that I am planning to undertake, all the storage units that I own or plan to buy and how I want to organize them and the tasks that I have completed with pictures. I have a collection of home organization and design pins in Pinterest that I have collected over the years. I went through those and printed out some of the ideas that I would like to implement and pasted these in my journal. I love browsing through this journal every now and then and get my creative juices flowing.

For more ideas on organization, I referred to these books –

My knowledge about interior design is zero and I know next to nothing about decorating the house. So when we moved into our first own house few years back, I just filled it with every possible junk that looked nice. The walls are full of geeky middle-earth, Harry Potter and Batman posters. I love photography so there are some photos on the walls. There is nothing artistic on the walls. The only art pieces are those that I got from Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii and other such places to which I traveled. That’s where Cozy Minimalist Home helped me. Now I know how to decorate my house in a minimalist style. The author suggests having some white empty areas and not filling every wall with posters and art pieces. The author has given detailed steps which I plan to implement, starting with the living room which is full of stuff. So the next step for me is to implement what is given in this book to my house. I am planning to do this sometime this year.

Coming to organization, some areas like kitchen are still not very organized. I read Organization from the Inside Out with the hope that it will help me organize everything neatly at home. The one great advice I got from this book was to divide a room into different zones based on the activities that you would like to do in that room. I am now planning to reorganize my kitchen, bathroom cabinets based on the suggestions in this book. My goal is to have zero items on the kitchen countertop (seems like an impossible task). I am having a hard time organizing my kid’s toys as they are too many and they are in every single room in the house. I am still trying to figure out how to do that.

Minimalism and Color is a book that I want to use when we repaint this house or move to a different house. I would like to throw all the furniture that we own and buy minimalistic furniture in colors that are minimalistic too. This book has loads of ideas on how to add color to your rooms in a minimalistic fashion. Definitely going to use it when we move to a new home. Instead of going to the store and buying the first couch that I see, I am going to invest some time and plan the color of the walls and furniture for the entire living room first.

The next book that I am planning to read is Styled. Even though this is not really a book on minimalism, the author talks about various ways of decorating. She even has a quiz at the beginning to determine which style suits you and I got “Minimalist”. Really not surprising right? She has tips on minimalistic way of decorating as well. I have not completely read this book so I cannot fully comment on this book yet.

I also read The Nesting Place but did not like it much. It’s an okay read if you are living in a rental house I guess. Cozy Minimalist Home is a much better book for homeowners.

My next plan is to create a capsule wardrobe for myself. My wardrobe is a mess currently with too many dresses that I dislike or hardly wear. I even have a huge stack of dresses which no longer fit me but I have kept them with the hope that I will reduce my weight. So getting rid of extra clothes and creating a wardrobe with essentials is going to be the next project at home that I am going to work on.

Let me know if you have more suggestions of books on minimalism.

Also check my first post on Minimalism which has more book recommendations : Part 1 of Minimalism.