Minimalism is for anyone who wishes to pursue it. Ridding yourself of the things in your life that are not important, or that distract you from your priorities, will free up the time and energy to focus on the things that are most important to you. There are a few things that you can do right now to start living a more minimalist life.

One

Think about why a minimalist lifestyle appeals to you.

Are you overwhelmed by all of your stuff? Tired of all the commitments on your calendar? How about maintaining a lifestyle because of the expectations of others? You need to identify your why. At some point, you will have to make tough decisions and your why will give you the motivation and incentive that you need.

Once you’ve figured out why you want to pare down your belongings and commitments to begin living a more minimalist lifestyle, write it down somewhere so that you can refer back to it when needed.

Two

Do a wardrobe clean out.

One of the first things that you do in the morning is go to your wardrobe and select something to wear for the day. For most people, this means you wade through a ton of clothes. Sometimes, you end up feeling like you have nothing to wear, irregardless of the amount of clothing you own. Or you end up wearing something that you’re not entirely comfortable in. So already, you’re fatigued or discouraged and the day hasn’t even started.

There’s a reason that Steve Jobs wore a “uniform” everyday. His signature black turtleneck and blue jeans prevented him from decision fatigue, the idea that you can be mentally worn out from making menial decisions, leaving less energy for more important decisions.

When your wardrobe contains fewer items, but ones that you really love, getting ready in the morning is a much more pleasant process.

Three

Remove unnecessary items from around your home.

The average American home has 300,000 items (source). That is a lot. It’s hard to fathom that we would need that many things in our homes. A lot of these things are duplicates. To illustrate, go around your house and collect all of your screwdrivers. How about tape measures? Look in your kitchen drawers and see how many duplicate kitchen tools you have. How about mittens and hats? Now that you’ve collected them all, discard the ones that you don’t need.

Now go through your house and look at each item and determine if it adds value to your life. Is it beautiful? Useful? No? Then discard. Society tells us that we need to decorate every square inch of our homes, and we spend a lot of time simply trying to fulfill that expectation instead of filling our homes with only the things that we really love.

Four

Stop buying stuff.

Without getting our shopping impulses under control, we will never be able to stop the vicious cycle of buying and purging. This not only leads to wasted money, but it results in an excess of clothing and home decor that is sent out into the secondhand market, and eventually, the landfill.

If you shop when you’re stressed or bored, go for a walk, read a book that you borrowed, watch a documentary, or tackle a household task that you’ve been meaning to do. Over time, you will have a habit shift and you won’t feel the urge to shop when your emotions are unbalanced.

Another thing that you can try is a challenge. No-spend challenges, where you decide to not buy anything besides essentials for a certain period of time, are useful for controlling impulse spending. Or maybe a clothing challenge, such as a capsule wardrobe challenge, where you only wear a select number of items in your closet for a certain period of time, can help you stop spending money on clothing and help you to determine what in your closet you really love.

Five

Analyze your schedule.

Go through your schedule and delete the commitments that are not adding value to your life. Too many times we say yes to commitments because we feel pressured into them or because we don’t want to hurt the asker’s feelings, at the detriment of our own time spent doing the things we enjoy. And while there are circumstances where saying yes even if you don’t really want to go is okay, it’s also okay to say no at other times.

We are often raised, especially as women, to be people pleasers, to do things that are counter to our own interests simply because it will please others. At some point, we need to stop putting our interests and needs behind those of others, although I exclude kids needs here.

Six

Simplify your meals.

We often spend far too much time and energy trying to decide what to make for meals. Simplify the things that you eat daily by having only one option for breakfast and lunch.

Consult with your family to make a meal plan of things that your family likes to eat at dinner time. Then repeat this plan in the following weeks. If any meal starts to be less appealing, switch it out with a new meal, only changing that meal. Repeat as required.

The benefit of meal planning is twofold: predictability, which leads to less stress, and less dining out at restaurants, which leads to reduced spending.

Seven

Set up a simple routine.

Now that you’ve discarded some items that were not adding value, and removed unnecessary commitments from your schedule, set up a simple routine that allows you to enjoy your newly available time. Time that was once spent managing your stuff and commitments can now be spent practicing gratitude, exercising, reading, spending quality time with family, hobbies, or any other way that would add value in your life.

I wish you luck in your journey. It is one that will be filled with many ups and a few downs, but inevitably worth it in the end, if there is such an end to this minimalist journey. Once we remove distractions from our lives, it opens up opportunities for us to explore more areas of intentional living. The opportunity to learn more about living with less is like a wide open highway stretching before us.