Jenna K. Vickers - The Ultimate Minimalist Home

THE ULTIMATE

MINIMALIST HOME

How To Win Your Never Ending Battle With Stuff, Clean, Organize And Declutter Your Life in 7 Days

JENNA K.

VICKERS

Copyright

A ll rights reserved . No portion of this publication or any section therein may be reproduced, distributed or stored in a retrieval system in whatsoever manner or by any means, including recording, photocopying or any other means of transmission without the express written consent of the publisher, except as permitted under section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act.

Copyright 2019 Jenna K. Vickers

DEDICATION

T his book is dedicated to everyone who wants to be a minimalist to live simple, maintain a clean home and overcome overwhelming clutter.

Preface

L iving a clutter-free life is the dream of everyone but how to achieve that has always been a problem for many of us. Regular visual sight of clutter can be quite overwhelming that, it is time sucking and energy consuming which can be detrimental to our health, emotional and social life.

In a bid to help individuals overcome the ever common clutter challenge among people, there comes the need for penning down these informative tips and strategies to help people solve their ever battling clutter troubles.

This book will provide real-life techniques and time-saving tips for cleaning and organizing your home. The information is meant to serve as a guide to you to clear off those things that are taking your joy away and help you retain only the items that will give you the happiness you desire in life.

INTRODUCTION

A t a time when I was having no job, I have always paid great attention to what I wear. Then I started working, and thinking about my wardrobe became too tiring. However, I still carry around the legacy of my past little beginnings with me. My cupboard is stuffed with things I do not wear. To help myself, I've gotten into the habit of not putting pieces that I regularly wear in the closet, but on a chair next to my bed.

Recently I had an encounter with a female friend of mine Katherine. Katherine works in the advertising industry, where people dress much better than journalists, and she told me about some of my colleagues trying out Project 333. The idea is to limit their wardrobe to 33 parts for 3 months; an exercise in minimalism.

The project was invented by the American Courtney Carver. It became known to a wide audience through the documentary Minimalism- a documentary about the Important Things in Life. The (minimalist) filmmaker Matt D'Avella portrays different people trying to have as few things as possible; which is really well received by people who own a lot of things. One of these people is Carver. Her motto - and basically the whole minimalism movement is: Be more with less. I think more is good.

Here are the rules: underwear is not among the 33 parts, as well as sports clothes. However, both clothing (pants, jacket, shirt) and accessories (belts, sunglasses, wallet) are counted. So I mucked it out, and in the end, I banished two-thirds of my clothes from my closet. The look in the cupboard annoys now much less. Finally, there is order, which is not surprising with so little stuff. Because I only have few shirts, I always iron immediately and hang them in the closet, instead of leaving them lying around. The danger, of course, is that with this kind of restriction, one constantly thinks of what else one might need. Logically, because one has so little, one thinks; polo shirts are really cool again, one, two would be good. Or I need some good summer shoes, for example, a few penny loafers. I would wear them without socks, like the damn snob that I am.

Of course, you also have to learn to improvise, with so few clothes. On hot days, I will go back to my suit trousers because it's the thinnest I have. This looks very chic and leads to irritated glances from people. Otherwise, nobody notices at work that I always run around in the same clothes. Not even the colleague who had made fun of me when I told her about the project - which I did not understand at all because, in my view, she always comes to work in the same three dresses. But the project 333 is not about the appearance anyway. Only superficial people think that. It's about inner peace and the brain.

One of the biggest enemies in modern life and also an old nemesis of mine personally, is the decision. More precisely, the majority, the decisions. The more someone has to decide, the worse the decisions he makes, because the brain gets tired. So, the ability to decide things is a scarce resource. And to be sparing with it, people who are supposed to have many important things to do reduce the number of decisions to make in their lives, for example, in clothes. That's why Mark Zuckerberg always runs around in the same gray T-shirt, and Steve Jobs always wore the black roll. Even the former US President Obama has, when he was still in office, reduced his wardrobe.

Minimalism is currently on everyone's lips, but the chances are good that this is not more about a family. Families do not usually live in semi-empty rooms and rarely travel with only one backpack as luggage. Is minimalism for families an unattainable goal? Do you really have to count the things that you own and if there are more than a hundred, is one not a minimalist?

What does minimalism mean anyway? Minimalism is described as conscious restriction to a minimum, to the essentials. The Minimalists define minimalism as a tool to free you from the excessive in your life, to focus on what is important so that you can find joy, fulfillment, and freedom. Especially the latter definition sounds not only tempting but also achievable as a family.