I remember the moment when I decided to give minimalism a shot. The thought of it frightened me at first, kept thinking to myself “does this really have a positive impact?” At the back of my mind, I really didn’t want to let go of all the little things stored up in boxes. Birthday cards and notes received when I was a kid, gifts that had served its purpose but I could not let them go due to sentimental attachments, but I did! Got rid of everything, which no longer added value to my life. I want to share the top 3 things I learned by embracing minimalism.
#1. Throwing away old gifts.
I’m sure we all experienced this at one point in our lives. You get busy cleaning out your closet and you stumble upon an old gift from a friend, maybe it’s a toy or a picture, and you end up staring at it for the next 30 minutes thinking to yourself “how can I throw this away?” My response to this is simple: the value of a materialistic object is not tied to your relationship. Throwing away/donating that gifts will not make your relationship with the person who gave it you any less. I mean, can you imagine the person going “ I can’t believe you threw away the t-shirt I gave you on your 15th birthday, we can’t be friends anymore” lol. Chances are that t-shirt has served its purpose and it’s time to part ways with it. Donate it, maybe someone else can make use of it more than you can right now.
Having said that, I threw away old objects, clothes, gifts, which were stacked up like a mountain! Don’t get me wrong, I had second thoughts all the while doing so. I donated all the things, which I thought could be useful to someone else, and threw away everything that had no reason to be kept besides sentimental value. I don’t regret it, and I don’t miss anything! 6 months later I think to myself “WOW, what on earth was I thinking all that time?!”. I was a typical hoarder! And letting go of 80% of my things was nothing short of a magical experience.
#2. Less clothes, less laundry.
I want to point out that I was extremely lazy when it came to doing laundry. Just by looking at the stack of dirty clothes would make me exhausted. Not anymore. After donating almost 90% of my clothes, everything now fits inside 1 single suitcase. Some people call me crazy, and that’s ok. I even sold my wardrobe. Why keep it when you hardly have things to keep in it? Clothes stay properly stacked now, and laundry no longer seems like a pain in the A**. If there is one thing that helped me the most is that, now I spend less time deciding what to wear. This reduced stress, think about it for a minute! If you spend less time on deciding what to wear, that quicker its going to be moving on to other important tasks in your day.
#3. Goodbye clutter!
I don’t think I need to explain this point too much. It’s so much more easier to clean the house when you don’t have things piled up one on top of the other. Throw away all those boxes that you think would need in the future, but you don’t really need them at this point. They’re better off gone!
Well that’s my story! I want to hear from you! Are you a minimalist? Or thinking of becoming one? Drop a comment and share your thoughts on this! =)
Love,
Hossain
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