The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life

On the other hand, perhaps you get manicures because your friends do, watch television to keep up with water cooler chat, or read certain magazines out of habit. Here’s your opportunity to do some purging! When we ask ourselves why we do certain activities, we may be surprised at the answers; we probably never stopped to think about it before. Such

Start Over by examining how you spend your day. “Dump out” the contents of your schedule: put every activity and commitment on paper, so you can see it all laid out in front of you. List everything: going to work, getting your nails done, shopping for groceries, going for coffee, doing the laundry, reading the newspaper, cooking dinner, watching te

Let’s take a breather, and reminisce about how carefree and happy we were in college. Not coincidentally, that period was likely when we had the least amount of stuff. Life was so much simpler then: no mortgage, no car payments, no motorboat to insure. Learning, living, and having fun were far more important than the things we owned. The world was

Many of us look back on our young adult days as one of the happiest, most carefree times of our lives. No matter that we were living in a shoebox (sometimes with two or three other people), and had little disposable income. No matter that we couldn’t afford designer clothes, fancy watches, or electronic gadgets. All of our possessions fit in a few

I once saw an interview with a prolific author who had turned out hundreds of books over the course of his career—and could write a single one in a matter of days. His secret? He had developed a computerized template for outlining his plot, and simply changed the premise, locations, characters, and other details for each new story. In essence, he h

Cross out those two hours of television each night, and you’ll gain over half a day each week. That’s quite a windfall!

The most straightforward way to set priorities is by ranking them. List everything you need to do, and order them from most urgent to least. For example, answering time-sensitive emails, or completing a project due in the next few hours, will rank much higher than working on your development plan or picking up your dry cleaning. Furthermore, highli

Now, imagine your ideal day. Which activities would you include, and which would you omit? Of course, you’ll probably still need to go to work and cook dinner; but would you visit the park instead of the coffee shop, or do yoga instead of surfing the Internet? How closely does your ideal schedule match your real one?

In pursuing a minimalist lifestyle, we need to resist the temptation to recreate the outside world within our abodes.