Choosing to live minimally has been a wild adventure - especially as parents! We often get asked for our advice about how to create a minimalist house - and I think it is important to note that minimalism is not only a lifestyle it's a practice.

It is rhythm - one that takes time (and practice!) to evolve into. If you are looking to create a minimalist home, then our hope is that this blog can pinpoint you through some of our key takeaways and learnings from our own process!

What Is Minimalism

Minimalism is a practice of intentionality. It is a commitment to live simple, with an awareness of one’s possessions and their necessity. In terms of living decor, designing a dream minimalist house became popular in the late 1950s. However, the reality is that the concept of living minimally is an ancient practice - one that we see in early Buddhist and Christian monastic traditions, where men would live in scarcity, within the bare necessity of need!

Nowadays, creating a minimalist house has been popularized by tidy-experts who demonstrate an enviable care for detail, simplicity, and clean countertops through the inspiring home improvement methods of Marie Kondo and The Home Edit, making dreamy, uber-minimal homes feel within reach!

Creating a Minimalist Home: The Steps

Undergoing a minimalist house make-over is no simple feat! It takes time, it takes dedication, and it takes a commitment to scaling down and saying goodbye to items that one might otherwise have deemed essential.

Step One: Start With Furniture

In taking the steps into minimalism, it can be easy to start with a manic process of decluttering: diving in head first and rummaging through every box in your attic; sifting through one’s clothes and saying an enthusiastic farewell to every item at the back of your shelves; wading through the boxes of nostalgia and throwing out old knick knacks, old pieces of paperwork, old artwork that the kids did years ago…. And after a few days you come to the surface and realize just how looming and large the act of decluttering truly is. It can be overwhelming - trust me, I’ve been there!

Here is my advice: start with your furniture. Rather than scrutinizing every old box in your basement, start with the largest pieces in your house. The furniture. The things that occupy the most space. The statement pieces. Analyze them. Ask yourself: ‘Does this item serve a specific purpose in the room? Is it truly necessary… or have I just grown used to it?'

One of the boldest decisions you’ll make in creating your minimalist house is to scale down your furniture. Use tools such as Facebook Marketplace, Offerup, and Craigslist to sell some of your furniture - you might end up making a healthy sum of money that you can put back into your minimalist decorations. 

After scaling down your furniture to the key, essential pieces, you’ll already see a heartening improvement towards your minimalist home! Soon you’ll be appreciating floorspace you didn’t know you had - and the most daunting step in the minimalist process will be over!

Step Two: Clear Your Surfaces

The next step in the minimalist process is to clear away all the clutter that builds up on your surfaces. The key to this process is by finding strategic storage places for those items that end up occupying space on your counter tops. 

Start with your kitchen. What can be put away in your cupboards and drawers? If you have a juicer, a nutribullet, a crock pot, and a magi-mix all taking up space on your kitchen counters, ask yourself whether you truly need to keep all of these individual gadgets, or whether you might be able to store (or get rid of) some of the pieces that you use less frequently!

Step Three: Create Strategic Storage Solutions! 

The key to clearing your surfaces, is to build strategic storage solutions to get those objects out of sight and out of mind! 

Over the course of a week, try to take a mental inventory of your house. What are those bits and bobs that always seem to wind their way onto your surfaces. Perhaps it is the car keys that get thrown onto a side table: consider getting some key hooks nailed into the wall by your front door in order to store these tidily. Perhaps it is newspapers and magazines that somehow find themselves spread across the kitchen table: consider a small paper basket to store those neatly and intentionally.

Step Four: Finding Decor For Your Minimalist House

As we ventured further down the road to minimalism, we found that our style and taste in decor was naturally changing and evolving. The more we stripped back and leaned into simplicity, the more we became attracted to sleek and clean works of art and decor details. 

In step four, you want to do a thorough comb-through of your house. What are the ornaments and objects that don’t serve a specific purpose. You might not want to get rid of anything: there may be items that have sentimental or nostalgic value. Create a system of storing the items that you might be thankful for in the future and be prepared to rid yourself of some of those ornaments you’ve gotten accustomed to, but don’t necessarily serve any purpose to your living arrangement.

Try and practice a strict rule. Say "no" to buying yet more candles and more plants. Invest in Kindles for the family, and take your reading digital, rather than buying more hard copy books, magazines, and newspapers. 

Step Five: A Minimalist House Calls For A Minimalist Color Scheme

Your minimalist house should not only be minimal in terms of the amount of ‘stuff’ that you fill it with, but minimalism will ultimately impact your entire home design. Most minimalist houses, such as ours, lean into soft or muted color schemes. You might notice that our whole family dresses in monochrome: this is a highly strategic decision - one that came from our days on the Skoolie, where each of us had a designated ‘clothing capsule’ of clothes to wear. Keeping a monochromatic color scheme helped to simplify our look - and keeps our closets looking beautiful and uniform.

Try to limit yourself with a centralized color scheme. Consider 2 to 3 core colors, and an accent color for a pop of flare. If you are investing in new pieces for the house, if you are painting a room, purchasing new cushion covers, or hanging new curtains - ensure that you keep strictly within your color palette in order to create a clean and cohesive design that runs throughout your entire home! This is the cherry on top of the minimalist cake!

Start Creating Your Minimalist Oasis Today!

Creating our dream minimalist house has been the project of a lifetime. Waking up in a home that is simple, clean, and mess-free has profound impacts on one’s stress levels. Many people express feeling such a freedom when they commit to living minimally - and I know exactly what they mean! The process has been a gift to our family - one I am so grateful for and would recommend to ANYONE who is curious to try it!

Now that you know how to create a minimalist home, check out our blog: A Minimalist Lifestyle: 6 Things You Need to Know for everything you need to know for pursuing a minimalist lifestyle!

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