Becoming (sort of) Minimalists

When we showed our closet last week, the number one message we got in our DMs was “is that all your clothes?!”. Yep, it is— and the thing is we don’t exactly consider ourselves to be minimalists, but we also recognize that we probably have a lot less clothes than the average couple. This wasn’t the way we always were, and we weren’t always able to tidy our bedroom in less than 5 minutes. This has been years in the making.

Newlyweds

Let me paint a picture for you: a newly young 20 and 21 year old couple, one of which had never lived on her own before. No cleaning skills, very little organization skills. Cups lining the entirety of the nightstands at all times, clothes on the floor always.

I had always loved a clean tidy space and was constantly stressed out. I didn’t even know how our room got that messy. My husband had lived with a roommate for a little while on his own but he had never exactly been required to clean and tidy and never really learned how to maintain things. We just lived in a constant cycle of cleaning everything up, letting it get really messy and then doing it all over again. Things constantly got lost— including things we loved to wear but we couldn’t even find!

I’m going to tell you something right now. If this sounds like you, the problem is not that you need to buy out the container store so can “get organized”, and the problem isn’t that you simply aren’t a “tidy person” by nature. The problem is that you have too much stuff, and you’re wasting your time managing a lot of things that you DON’T EVEN LIKE.

Moving Into Our First Home

When we moved out of our newlywed rental of 4 years after buying our first home, we happened to be moving at the same time that the Kon Mari method book, “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” was growing in popularity. I bought it— and it really was life changing. If you’ve never read the book, it operates on the philosophy that if you don’t really love an item (if it doesn’t spark joy for you), then you should let that item go. It’s as simple as that. Items you don’t love and that don’t serve you, should leave your house. Marie Kondo now has a Netflix special with two seasons that I found absolutely delightful and simplifies this concept even more.

After reading the book for the first time in 2016, I went about going through my entire house looking for things that I was holding onto for the wrong reason. I held onto stuff because I thought I might need it one day, because someone I love gave it to me, because I didn’t use it as much as I thought I would and I felt guilty, because it fit into my aspirational self. But none of those reasons made me love the items, and none of them motivated me to use the items— and so I made the decision to let it go. I did that with a lot of our items as we were moving and that made the move and subsequent unpacking so much easier.

Our Bedroom in Our Second Home

I could go into how we made decisions on how to purge our entire house, but I want to talk about the bedroom specifically. Right now, we are super happy with how things are feeling in there. We have storage systems for all our items so that each thing has a place and everything is put away and out of sight. We like most of our clothes, and know exactly where all our items are at. It takes us 5 min to tidy it up each morning. I am not exaggerating— 5 MINUTES. Here are the steps to follow if you’re looing to achieve the same thing in your own bedroom.

1.) Purging

This could be a multi-step process. I have always noticed that the first time you do it— there are lots of things you’ve been able to identify and things you no longer want.

• Empty out your whole closet, and all your drawers.

• Make piles— Keep, donate, trash. Some people have one more pile for really nice clothes that they know a friend of theirs would like. That’s such a great idea. Another can be made for name brands to sell secondhand if that’s an option. That one is more time consuming and I usually just donate it.

• Make a decision for each item, hang your “keeps” back up in the closet sorting by colour or garmet type as you go.

• Haul out your trash, donate, and give away piles and put them in another room— they no longer live in your bedroom.

• Try to get those trash*, donate, and give away clothes out of the house as soon as you can to limit “stealing” items back. Those items landed in those piles for a reason.

*some people like to use their trash clothes as t-shirt rags for projects or cleaning which is a great way to recycle them.

After round one of purging, reevaluate your clothes every few months. Subsequent purging rounds tend to reveal clothing that is out of style, worn out, a colour you don’t really look good in, and things that you have multiples of. You can ask yourself questions like, why do I need 10 pairs of yoga pants? Do they actually all fit me, are they pilling, do they have holes in them? If I do laundry once a week, does it even make sense to have 10 pairs? When we went through my daughters room we found that we had almost 15 onesies in a single size! We knew there were ones we never even put her in because we always picked her favorites to put her in which got washed each week.

2.) Organize and Designate Spots for All Items

The key to being able to tidy our room in less than 5 minutes each morning is giving everything a place that it “lives”. In our bedroom, there are three spots that we store items: our hanging rack, our dressers, and the baskets on the top shelf of our closet. We have a nosy 2 year old who likes to pull things out of drawers so we don’t even store things in our nightstands. And we like the ease of vacuuming under our bed, so we don’t have under the bed bins either. Here is a list of the types of things we store in our bedroom:

• clothes

• purses

• jewlery

• toiletries/makeup

• glasses/ glasses accessories

• personal memory boxes

• laundry

We used to store extra linens, cleaning supplies, and shoes in our closet and have since relocated them. We didn’t feel like we needed to store these items in there.

Here are some tips for organizing these areas:

• Store your hanging clothes either according to garment type or colour. I’ve stored mine by colour.

• Store your clothing in our drawers according to garment type. We fold them “folder” style according to the Kon Mari method so they are really easy to see.

• Use organizers. We use the Ikea Skubb boxes to keep our clothes staying neatly in their spots. Every time we put away laundry we just pop the clothes back in their designated spot.

• Use smaller organizers to keep your toiletries and makeup neat and accessible if you like to do your makeup in your bedroom like me. Every makeup and toiletry category has a designated spot in its organizer.

• Keep surfaces clean. If you need to store an item on top of a dresser, use a little basket or holder to keep it neat. I like to store my journal and my perfume on my dresser along with a plant. I like that it looks neat all the time and seeing these items spark a lot of joy. My husband has a small wicker basket for keeping his glasses in that keeps the top of his dresser neat. We opted for wall sconces in our bedroom to keep our nightstands clear.

• Try a laundry system that is pretty enough to keep out in the open. We combine our clothes in one big woven hamper that is a great Serena and Lily dupe. It fills up every other day, at which point I just toss it in the wash using plastic hampers that I store in the basement. Not hauling that basket up and down the stairs keeps it nice.

3.) Maintain the System

These systems work best long term if they are maintained. Here are some of the things we do monthly to keep our systems working.

• go through drawers regularly to identify things that don’t belong there, items you no longer need, or items that are no longer useful. I.e clearing out dried up mascara containers, empty vitamin bottles, work out t-shirts etc.

• Clean out drawers, and wipe down surfaces as needed. I find I need to completely empty out and clean my makeup drawer each month due to makeup dust and hair accessories getting the inside of the drawer pretty messy.

• When purchasing new items consider how they will fit into the designs and existing pieces of your wardrobe, if they are good quality to last a long time, and if they are versatile. These days I try to think as much as possible about each piece and if I really need it and if it will really serve my wardrobe well. I’m looking for versatile pieces, that feel like me and that are really good quality so they will wear out slower. Keep in mind cost per wear. Ex.) a verstile t-shirt that is good quality costs you $55 but you wear it for 5 years at least once a week. That makes the cost per wear about $0.21— worth it in my opinion!

And that’s how we keep our bedroom tidy in less than 5 minutes a day. It took a lot of initial work, and every system needs maintaining. However, this simple system makes it easy to get ready for our day so we can move on to more important things— like getting off to work, playing with our daughter, and renovating the rest of our house!