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Oftentimes, we get so caught up with whatever that’s going on in our lives at the moment that we start to forget the reasons behind why we do what we do. It is easy to be swept up into the whirlwind of never ending tasks, too exhausted to make the most of life but also too busy to make a change. Sometimes, life feels so draining and we feel like we are dragging ourselves through the days.

When we stop to think about it, we actually spend a lot of our time doing things that don’t really matter. And I don’t mean things like hobbies or relaxing or anything unproductive— after all, happiness is a journey not a destination. What I mean is things that you, personally, would rather not spend your time, energy and money on. By this definition, things that “don’t matter” are things that don’t matter TO YOU.

This is where the minimalist lifestyle comes in. There are many tips and guides out there on how to lead a minimalist lifestyle, but it all boils down to one mantra: Avoid the unnecessary.

Benefits

The most straightforward result of a minimalist lifestyle is having fewer material possessions. Getting rid of unnecessary belongings reduces the time and energy required to clean, maintain and organize them. Clothes that are seldom worn, old devices that barely work, books that will not be read again and so on. With fewer material possessions comes a smaller financial burden. taking the constant worries about budgeting out of the way.

Furthermore, the act of seeing a less cluttered environment around you has actually been scientifically proven to affect both physical and mental health. A neater environment can change the brain such that memory, focusing abilities and information processing are enhanced. A neater area also has been linked to better digestion, cardiovascular health, and better sleep. Some studies even showed a link between the tidiness of an environment and healthy eating habits.

In the end, it results in more time, energy and resources for you to spend on the things you actually want to do, or that can help you achieve your long term goals. The minimalist approach can be divided into three categories.

Decluttering your Space

This category is probably the simplest place to start adopting the minimalist lifestyle. It involves evaluating your current belongings and discarding some of them. The same elimination process has to be applied to all future spending as well. Good places to start are clothing, accessories, decor and any other common impulse buys. As you progress further, even furniture, vehicles and homes can be streamlined.

The Minimalists, two of the most prominent creators in the minimalism scene, suggest using the 90/90 rule to determine whether an object should be kept. The rule states that if you used an object in the last 90 days, or will be using it in the next 90 days, it can stay. Otherwise, into the bin it goes.

Tidying expert Marie Kondo suggests an ingenious method to ease parting with objects that are defunct but retain sentimental value. She does so by saying thank you (yes, to an inanimate object!) for serving its purpose and then gratefully letting it go.

Reducing Responsibilities

Because it is not readily in your line of sight, it is easy to forget that not all your money goes to physical goods. A portion is also spent on non-physical possessions. Examples include subscriptions like Netflix and Spotify. With more and more of such subscriptions available, it might be useful to reconsider whether they are really necessary.

Other non-tangible things to consider streamlining are credit cards, banking accounts. These usually have extra service fees and combining them into one can actually help you to save more.

Clearing the Mind

Overthinkers often have unwelcome thoughts plaguing their minds that are not useful in achieving whatever they want to achieve. While cutting out responsibilities can help greatly to reduce the number of things to worry about, sometimes it’s just not enough to keep those sneaky thoughts away. This is where you have to condition your mind to stop wandering pointlessly and instead focus on more significant matters.

A good diet and regular exercise is always the top recommendation to boost overall health. This study reports that mental health is improved by more than 40 percent in those who exercise as compared to those who do not.

A controversial alternative to clear the mind would be the use of cannabis. In recent years, recreational marijuana has made its way into the mainstream and many states are starting to open up. However, opinions regarding this topic are still pretty inconsistent and it is important to make sure you do your own research before trying it.

Cannabis, like any other substance that you take into your body, has to be regulated by the relevant authorities first and there are rules put in place. For example, New Jersey, the most recent state to legalise recreational marijuana, requires that marijuana dispensaries obtain the New Jersey Cannabis Retail License 2021 before operating.

Another great way to clear your mind and understand things better would be to take time out of each day to do journaling or meditation. These practices allow you to have a space to consolidate thoughts and events amidst a chaotic schedule.

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Are you craving a minimalist wardrobe? Are you tired of your cramped and bursting cupboards? Are you tired of cheap and disposable fashion items, the kind where the faux leather started peeling and bubbling because you got caught in the rain? Would you like more space and actually be able to see the clothes hanging in your closet? It’s time to start afresh. Minimalism is the new black. We live in a world where more is finally too much. Psychology professor Barry Schwartz argues that having an infinite number of choices is paralyzing and exhausting. We are all too familiar with the meme where a woman stands in front of an overflowing wardrobe and complains that she has got nothing to wear. It turns out that having too many choices and too many things to choose from is actually making us unhappy. That and the constant worrying that what we have is never good enough or will last through seasons and trends, hence onto the next thing we need to get.

The world was not always like that. Fast fashion and factory-produced stuff was not normal, until the industrialization age. It could be about hankering after a simpler age, where there were less things, less choices and things were made for people to use, instead of for people to keep as a status symbol. The lockdown has nudged the world another step into minimalism. Locked in their homes for days, weeks and months, people realize they need more space. Wandering into basements and attics unearthed stuff to throw out, wardrobes to clear and cupboards to empty. Stuff bought on impulse, because they were cheap and it seemed like a good deal at that time, all needed to find new homes through a yard sale or donation. In the past, clothes were made to be worn, sometimes every day. Bags and shoes were made to last. Instead of looking like new all the time, aging was worn with pride and stories were told about how long the items have been with their owners and how well they have stood the test of time. When you buy something that will last because it has been made with quality materials and thought and care has been put into the design to make it timeless, it also has a higher recycle value, when you or your lifestyle change. When you buy less, you can buy better.

Making the Right Choice

When we needed to go out and make a refuel run to the supermarket while masked during the lockdown, we require one, maybe two canvas tote bags. But the world is opening up again and much as we would prefer to slouch around in PJs the whole day, life is moving on again. Given the opportunity to start afresh, the question to ask is, “What do people really want?”. Is it that bag on sale that might just complement the colour of the jacket bought at another sale? Or is there something classic and durable that can match many different outfits and occasions? What are the top bags that would fit into a minimalist lifestyle? What does that even look like? It might seem like an easy question, but the truth is that we have been so used to fast fashion that is unsustainable for the environment and for the people who are employed to produce it, that it is hard for us to imagine something that we use through the years and is present on every occasion.

Making the right choice takes time. It is not about going to a sale, grabbing a bag because it is time-limited and going home and realizing it was another impulse buy. Though things do not and should not represent us, they should at least make us think about who we are, how we live and what we need to help us live better. What kind of bag will suit your lifestyle? Do you travel and entertain a lot and have to be on the go from morning meetings to evening dates with minimal fuss? Or do you work from home, with the occasional meeting uptown, after which you pick up groceries on the way home? Are you a soccer mom and you sit on the parent-teacher committee and need something practical but classy? What you like in reality and what you like in theory can end up being different things. You may love how a certain color or design looks in the photos, but held up against your skin, it doesn’t exactly look the way you thought it would. Think of it as a second chance to develop your style. The two keywords you need to keep in mind as you start your minimalist journey are: quality and versatility.

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Television is changing. Television is cleaning up its excesses, and decluttering its messy and unwieldy business model. The future of television is here, and it’s called streaming.

In the past, if you wanted to watch a television show, you really only had two options:

First, there was terrestrial television. This was where shows would be transmitted to your set via radio waves from a local television station.

The other method was cable television. In this, you paid a monthly fee to have shows sent to your television set via cables instead of radio broadcasts (hence the name).

Each of the two had their own strengths and weaknesses.

For the longest time, terrestrial television was the cheapest means available to watch television, as it involved simply buying a television set with a working antenna, and plugging it in your living room.

This made its programming available to everyone. However, this was also a double-edged sword, as that meant it had to appeal to everyone, from children coming home from school to bored grandparents in the throes of retirement.

While many shows benefited from this wide appeal, just as many other shows had their interesting elements censored, to avoid the risk of alienating a viewer with the show’s content. Violence and swearing got toned down, if not entirely removed. Saccharine happy endings were demanded. Protagonists were made to slot into familiar archetypes. Plotlines were predictable and cookie-cutter.

What I’ve just described didn’t apply perfectly to all shows broadcast in this mode, but it did describe the ideal show for their broadcasters. They wanted shows made to appeal to as many people as possible, which mostly resulted in bland programming that interested nobody.

Cable, on the other hand, had shows for more specialised audiences (e.g. adults, fans of mystery fiction, thrill-seekers, sci-fi aficionados), and so could have programming that had maximum appeal for a certain type of viewer.

The problem for cable television, though, was that it was inefficient and expensive. Cable television was frequently sold as packages of many different channels offered together, with a steep monthly price to match. Oftentimes, though, viewers often found that only a small fraction of those channels genuinely interested them. You couldn’t just stop paying for all those other channels in the package, though. As a consequence of how the business model of cable television worked, either you paid for channels you didn’t watch, or you didn’t get any cable television at all.

Both terrestrial television and cable television shared one glaring flaw, as well. Viewers had to meticulously plan their schedules around the programming they wanted to watch. If they weren’t at their television sets during the right time slot, then the show went on without them. If you happened to miss an episode due to a sudden emergency or urgent appointment, then tough luck, it could be ages before broadcasters decided to rerun that particular episode again. This was most of the reason why television was a largely episodic affair before the rise of streaming. Missing an episode in a serialised story could mean losing an important chapter required to understand the later parts of the story.

It’s no surprise then, that everything changed when streaming TV came onto the scene. Here were services where you could watch whatever episode of whichever television series you fancied at any time, without relying on an external broadcast schedule imposed from on high. Because of this freedom to pick your programming, viewers could watch their favorite shows whenever they found it convenient, instead of having to plan their life around their favorite shows. This meant one less thing to worry about for modern viewers, who already had enough worries on their plate. This also freed up shows to be as unique as they wanted, confident that their target audience could find them easily through the search function.

As a bonus, streaming services generally cost less than their cable competition, meaning less worry over one’s wallet as well as one’s time.

Like many other innovations throughout history, convenience wins over new users more than any other quality. With the advent of cheap or free streaming services, more and more people are "cord-cutting", cancelling their cable subscriptions (or never setting one up in the first place) in favour of more efficient streaming services.

As a result, many old and established media companies are suffering from this tectonic shift.

Today’s children are growing up with the notion that how you access video content need not be dictated by the whims of a fixed broadcast schedule. Just like with a book or a game, you can begin watching a television series any time you fancy, and go through the story at your own pace. You need not complicate your life by planning around external, arbitrary time slots.

Indeed, streaming TV might be one of the few innovations that results in less clutter in our lives, rather than more.

Minimalism is the practice of removing everything unnecessary and focusing only on the things that really add value. It can be applied to a lot of areas — minimalist art and design are well established and have long histories. However, these days incorporating minimalism into your lifestyle is rapidly becoming the next big thing.

Doubtless you would have heard of Marie Kondo and her Netflix show, which is based on her popular book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” Other key figures in the minimalist lifestyle movement are Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, who call themselves minimalists and have written books, made films and hosted podcasts on how to live a minimalist lifestyle. They also have a popular blog that shares tips and tricks on how to remove the clutter from your life.

At first glance, the concept of minimalism seems simple. Just get rid of everything you don’t need. But often, we are too busy and stressed to take the time to figure out what we truly need in our lives and what we keep around as distractions. There is also a misconception that minimalism means just getting rid of all your furniture, painting your walls white, and putting in a wooden table and chair. There is a growing industry dedicated to selling you things that will help you maintain a minimalist lifestyle — but doesn’t buying more things go against the basic concept of minimalism?

At its core, minimalism is about focusing your life only on the things that add value. Whether it’s your home, work, school, or social life, you can use the principles of minimalism to make your daily life a more fulfilling one. Keep in mind that minimalism is not the magic solution to all of your life’s problems. It is just a foundation on which you can build other good habits and practices to improve the quality of your life.

Here’s how you can incorporate minimalism into your everyday routine. It’s not difficult, and the more you do it the easier it will be to extend the approach to other aspects of your life as well.

Home. No, you don’t need to throw out everything you own and live like a monk. But let’s be honest, there are probably an awful lot of things in your house that you haven’t looked at or touched in years. These are the things you need to be throwing out. As Marie Kondo’s now-viral catchphrase goes, if it doesn’t “spark joy”, throw it out. Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary. If an old letter or diary sparks joy, then keep it. But if a new sweatshirt or pair of shoes doesn’t, then don’t be afraid to get rid of it. Don’t wait around for acts of nature to prompt you into starting the decluttering process — there’s no time like the present!

Relationships. Getting rid of the toxic people in your life can go a long way to decluttering your social life and giving you peace of mind. We’ve all got an acquaintance or two that we just hate hanging out with because they just leave us feeling bad when the day ends. Don’t be afraid to jettison these people from your lives. Some relationships are just not meant to be. Channel the energy you use to maintain these superficial ties into the relationships that you really care about. In relationships, as with most other things, it’s about quality rather than quantity. Better to have a handful of really good, trustworthy friends than a whole collection of “friends” that don’t add anything to your life.

Time. Time is finite, and many of us often find that we don’t have enough of it to focus on the things we want to do. Take a look at your daily schedule and objectively evaluate how many of the items on there are really related to your interests and wishes. Don’t be afraid to skip an office function or a school reunion every now and again if it really doesn’t interest you.

Work. Try not to let your work bleed into the rest of your day. We spend most of our time in the office anyway, so make sure that when you’re off-work, you’re really off-work. Try not to check your work email or reply to work related messages outside office hours. This will help you make sure that you’re maximizing your free time to enrich your own life as much as possible.

Minimalism is not an aesthetic. There’s no fixed way to do it, no right or wrong answer, no set of rules that you have to follow. Read up about what it’s really about and how people have used it throughout history. Then, look at your own life and see how best you can apply it in a way that suits your specific context. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to start small — every little counts.

As a minimalist, I spend more time than you might think managing my belongings. Part of living a simple lifestyle is owning less possessions, which makes it all the more important that you don’t lose them—as there are no backups.

As a business owner, I therefore place a lot of importance on inventory management—a term that encompasses all of the processes and strategies that are used to manage the inventory that a business has. In this article I want to talk about tips I’ve learnt in business, and how these ideas can be carried over to your personal life as a minimalist.

What is Inventory Management?

Inventory management is the process of planning, implementing, and controlling a system that tracks and manages a company’s inventory. It is a system that is used to achieve control over the flow of inventory within a business.

Inventory can be anything from products, to raw materials, to the box of paper clips on your desk at work. It’s important to track inventory within a business because it allows you to forecast demand, and therefore plan for the future, as well as optimize your processes.

Why is Inventory Management so Important?

A key component of business success is maximizing efficiency and minimizing waste, and one of the most important parts of this is effective inventory management. Effective inventory management will streamline all of the processes involved in the production, delivery, and sale of the product. Without it, you risk being under-resourced, overstocked, or just plain inefficient.

For example, let’s say that you own a retail store. You’re always going to need a certain amount of inventory to facilitate the sales process. You’re going to have a certain amount of toothbrushes on the floor. If you have a toothbrush that is sold, you’ll need to order more. If you don’t have enough toothbrushes on the sales floor, you lose both sales and the confidence of your customers. You might be tempted to order excess stock in advance – but what do you do if the toothbrushes don’t sell? These are the types of inefficiencies that can be avoided with good inventory management.

Likewise, in manufacturing businesses, inventory management is used to ensure that the right amount of raw materials are purchased to meet demand. In the event of a sudden surge in demand, there is enough inventory to meet that demand. If there is too much inventory, the business might end up with excess stock. Every business, whether it is a manufacturing business, a retail business, a service-based business, or any other type of business will have some inventory.

Tracking Inventory

A major component of inventory management, of course, is tracking what you have and where it is. Systems for this, called inventory management systems, can be invaluable – this is something I learnt early on when I worked for a small Amazon competitor. This includes software that can be used to track and manage inventory, as well as the physical tracking of inventory with technology like RFID warehouse management. I want to talk more about RFID in particular, as it’s something we minimalists can also adopt to manage personal belongings.

What is RFID?

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a technology that combines the use of wireless non-contact radio-frequency communication with computer technology to identify and track tags attached to objects.

There are tags that can be attached to items in your home or business that allow you to track and manage them. These tags are used in a variety of ways. For example, they can be attached to items that are being shipped. When those items are shipped, the tags will allow you to track the items and make sure that they arrive safely to their destination. They could also be attached to items in your supply chain, allowing you to track what is going on with that item at every stage of the process.

The tags are also used for inventory management in e-commerce. They are attached to products, and the information is transmitted to the website. This allows you to track what you have in stock and what you need to order, to fulfill demand.

Inventory Management for Minimalists

As a minimalist, you’re going to have fewer things, and therefore you’ll have fewer things to manage. However, while you may need to manage fewer things, the things that you do have are going to be more important to you. If you have fewer things, then you’re going to be putting more value on each thing that you do own.

I have tagged many of my personal belongings with RFID tags—it’s fun, and it really helps me to know what I have to avoid excess consumption and waste.

Conclusion

Inventory management is a key component of business success and is something that I learned early on. I now use these principles to manage my personal belongings and to help me live a more minimalistic lifestyle. I hope that you can do the same!