Downsizing is the practice of reducing what you own and sticking with that smaller amount. It’s embracing a more minimalist lifestyle and doing away with the stresses of maximalism. So, what can you downsize in your life?
Story Stages
1. Your Wardrobe
You have a lot of clothes. Your closet is jam-packed with blazers, dresses and skirts that have been gathering dust for years. Your dresser is stuffed with socks with holes in them and sweaters that still have the tags left on them. You have clothes spread all over your house, on the backs of chairs, in piles on the floor and inside hampers in the laundry room. It’s just way too much to keep track of.
You’ll have an easier time organizing your wardrobe by downsizing it. Start by going through your clothing items and determining what needs to be tossed out. These are just some types of clothes that need to go:
- Items that are worn out, stained and in disrepair
- Items that are too small
- Items that are too big
- Items that are very uncomfortable
- Items that don’t suit your personal taste anymore
Removing these clothes from your wardrobe should drastically reduce its size. If the items are in poor condition, throw them out. If they are in good condition, there are plenty of websites where you can sell used clothes online for a profit. And if that doesn’t work, you can donate them to a charitable organization.
Ideally, you should have a capsule wardrobe. A capsule wardrobe is a small, practical wardrobe of essential clothing items that can be mixed and matched into a wide variety of stylish outfits. Depending on where you live, you may want to make a capsule wardrobe for each season so that your outfits suit the weather.
2. Your Books
Your bookcases are spilling with books. To save yourself the shelving space, you should downsize this personal library. Remove any books that you’re not 100% sure you’re going to read. If you’ve already read the book, remove it if you’re not 100% sure that you’re going to re-read it. You can donate these books to charitable organizations or try to sell them to used bookstores. By the time you’re done, you should have a much, much smaller book collection.
To keep your collection small, you should use an e-reader for your future book purchases. You can fill a small library’s worth of content into an e-reader without taking up extra space. And if you don’t want to have any digital clutter, you can keep the content on your e-reader minimal by using a library app. With a library app, you can borrow books instead of buying them. They’ll be removed from your e-reader when you return them.
3. Your Living Space
Have you ever considered living in a tiny home? A tiny home is a stand-alone house that is typically under 500 square feet. It condenses everything someone needs in a traditional single-family house into a compact living space, including a bathroom, a bedroom and a kitchen. So, if you’re interested in going minimalist, you should think about downsizing your home and moving into something smaller.
How can you get a tiny home? You can make one. All you have to do is go to a website like Boxhub and order a one-trip grade shipping container. Pick the container size that meets your needs — you can choose between standard lengths of 20ft and 40ft. Then, the website will find a container that meets all of your requirements near you.
After your purchase, you can convert the container into a house, adding insulation, windows, doors and all of the trimmings. Soon, you’ll have a cozy tiny home to live in all year round.
Live more with less stuff. Follow these tips to downsize unnecessary things from your life, whether those things are clothes, books or extra rooms. It will make a big difference.
