Our room-by-room guide will help design your own sustainable and minimalist home or apartment. Enjoy living with less, more free space in your home and beautiful minimalist decor.
What is Minimalism?
Living a minimalistic lifestyle means paring your household down and creating space only for essential things that serve a purpose and bring joy. This goes hand in hand with conscious consumption; both promote the idea of living a fulfilled life through few possessions and minimalist decor. Minimalist living brings with it a whole range of benefits — not only for your home but also for your own well-being. These include, for example:
Tidiness: A minimalist home contains fewer belongings, which makes it easier to keep things tidy and create order. A neat apartment with minimalist decor is both beautiful and relaxing.
Save money: If you consume less, you’ll save money, which you can use instead to take a trip, donate to those in need, support environmental organizations, or grow your savings account.
More space: You don’t need much space to store only the most important items. With a minimalist home, you end up with so much more usable space for activities like morning workouts, baking, and working from home.
Less stress: Reorganizing your space into a minimalist home is a great way to reduce the stress associated with having an endless amount of clutter in your apartment. It also makes it easier to keep things clean and organized.
Tips for a Minimalist Apartment
Here are some tips for how to get started on creating your minimalist home:
- Pare Down: Cleaning out is the first step to living minimalist. Be mindful of what you are keeping and what you are getting rid of. Keep in mind that you don’t have to achieve this all in one go. Take it step by step! Gift or donate the items you chose to remove from your space to friends, family, or charity.
- Don’t Fear Blank Space: By keeping the walls and floors as free as possible, your space will look much bigger and tidier. Limit yourself to your favorite pictures on the wall, one cozy throw on your couch; things that make you feel at home.
- Furniture Choice: The key to a minimalist home is having less furniture that is multi-functional and space-saving.
- Decorate Consciously: Having a minimalist apartment doesn’t mean going without decorations altogether, it just means decoration in moderation. Minimalist decor may be a few simple framed photos or an indoor hanging plant, which can add a lot of charm to a room without taking up much space.
Minimalist Home: Room by Room
Having a minimalist home means different things in different rooms. Here’s what you should consider in each room to make it minimalist and sustainable:
Kitchen
You’ve probably heard the French culinary phrase “mise en place”, which means “everything in its place”. This concept was originally meant to describe a way to organize oneself when cooking, but it works for storage in a minimalist home as well.
Have an area in your kitchen dedicated to food storage, cooking utensils, and cleaning supplies, and give each area its own drawer or cupboard. Keep only the kitchen appliances you need and use on a regular basis. Going zero waste in the kitchen is another great way to keep clutter to a minimum.
Bathroom
Your bathroom should be as simple as possible. Use medicine cabinets and under-sink storage for your bathroom products. Allow yourself as much free space as possible. For even less clutter, try going zero waste in the bathroom.
Living Room
Ideally, a living room in a minimalist home or apartment consists of nothing more than a simple (but comfortable) sofa, a tidy table, and simple shelves. Around it, you can enjoy the empty and calm atmosphere of your living room. Add a few houseplants in for the ultimate oasis.
Bedroom
The focal point of the bedroom in a minimalist apartment is a sturdy and comfortable bed. Consider under-bed storage for an even tidier looking space. A well-organized closet forms the most important storage space in the bedroom. Having a minimalist wardrobe or capsule wardrobe is an important part of a minimalist lifestyle.
This article has been translated from German by Karen Stankiewicz. You can read the original here: Minimalistisch wohnen: So klappt es nachhaltig
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