13 Minimalist Habits For A Calmer Home And Life

Today, I want to share with you 13 simple minimalist habits that will help you have a more minimal home and life. You may have heard it said before that 40 to 90 percent of what we do —  the beliefs that we have, the actions that we take, the decisions that we make — all boil down to habits.

Habits are incredibly important in order to be able to achieve any of our goals. Of course, they’re happening all the time, we just aren’t always intentional about them. I’ve been talking about habits for many years now. You can listen to some of my old podcast episodes where I break down habit tracking.

Right now I’m using the Habitify app and am loving it. Let’s go ahead and dive in.

1. Heat Mapping

Out of all the minimalist habits, my first and favorite is when it comes to keeping your home clutter-free is heat mapping. It’s essentially an awareness technique that allows you to see the items that you’re using versus the ones that you’re not.

It’s really simple to do. You can do it in pretty much any area of your home. The way that you would do it with products, for example, is:

– Group together all items of a certain category in one spot. This could be spices, face products, shoes, etc. You can even do this for your clothes by flipping the hanger around each time you wear a certain item.

– When you use one of the items in a group, put it off to the side. Then, every time you use something, add it to the “used” group. Simple, right?

– After a specified amount of time, whether that’s a week or a month, let go of those items that you haven’t been using.

This helps to bring awareness to the things you’re actually using. A lot of times we assume we are using something more frequently than we actually are. You can see why this is truly one of my favorite minimalist habits. 

2. Feeding Your Brain

The second habit that I talk about quite a bit is what I call “feeding your brain.”

This helps to keep the important things top of mind. If you’re working toward a goal, whatever that may be, you want to make sure that thing is staying in your daily feed, literally. It could be your newsfeed, social media feed, YouTube channel feed, etc. You want to constantly be reminded of your goals and be nourishing them with new information.

If you’re working on improving fitness, you might try watching more health-conscious videos on YouTube. To create a holistic, clutter-free home space, follow people whose Instagram accounts share images that inspire you. 

This is another type of awareness technique, that is also an anchoring technique.

3. Being Present

My third minimalist habit is the practice of being present. One of the most unhealthy things that I’ve seen people do is to focus on the past and dwell in it — not wanting to detach or move on. That could also show up as focusing all of your time and attention on the future and completely disregarding the present.

If you want to get more official, practices like meditation are great. It’s what works for me! Of course, meditation can look different for different people. Essentially you want to declutter your mind and take some deep breaths. Make sure that you’re taking the time to recenter and find that balance.

4. Movement

Fourth is movement. If you’ve been here long enough, you know that my type of movement is yoga. Maybe yours is walking, running, or weightlifting at the gym.

Our bodies were made to move. That means you’ll start to develop a lot of stagnant energy, and mental clutter, and even become depressed if you don’t allow your body to frequently move. 

By moving, you can get that circulation going to your brain and increase your productivity. 

5. Awareness

This is so important that it can be applied to many different categories. For example, self-awareness is HUGE. It’s so huge that it’s one of the first things that I teach to people who are trying to have a clutter-free space! Try practicing awareness in these three areas for a more minimal home and life.
1. self
2. space
3. life, in general

Developing awareness of how you’re interacting with the world and even how you’re interacting with your environment can be incredibly liberating. 🙂

6. Digitizing

This is one that splits a room, I know. I like putting pen to paper too. But I also see the benefits of digitizing things and doing so quickly. If I get a paper notice, I’ll snap a picture and get rid of the physical copy.

In my post, 15 Systems That Have Simplified My Life, I talked about how I’ve paired our Google Calendar with Alexa. So if the girls want to know when they have an appointment, they can just ask Alexa. I don’t have to keep all that information in my head. And I don’t have to worry about misplacing a physical piece of paper with that information on it.  

The key to making digitizing really work is to make it a habit so you’re doing it automatically. I have had people ask, “What if the system breaks?” But I think it’s much more likely that I’ll lose a physical paper than the entire internet and Alexa going down.

7. Immediate Re-Homing

Staying on the theme of doing things automatically, the seventh in the list of minimalist habits is to re-home things. And by rehome, I don’t mean give them a new home. I mean, put them back in their own home.  

This means, that if you use the can opener, it’s so much easier to just put it back where you got it than to set it on the counter and have to collect 20 things later. If you do it often enough, you won’t even think about it — you move like clockwork.

8. Organic Decluttering

I’ve mentioned this before when I talked about how to find the time to declutter because a lot of people really struggle with finding large quantities of time to do big projects of decluttering. 

Organic decluttering just means that in any area where you already are, you declutter something in that area. Let’s say you’re in the bathroom brushing your teeth. While you’re standing there, you can go through the medicine cabinet and remove things that you’re no longer using. 

By doing this, you’re following your natural flow of things that you’re already doing in places you already frequent. 

9. Single Tasking

I know you’ve probably heard about this all over the place. But in case you haven’t, single-tasking means doing one activity at a time with as few distractions and interruptions as possible.

Instead of getting overwhelmed and mentally frazzled trying to tackle multiple things at once, just focus on one at a time. As soon as I allow myself to focus on one thing, I immediately feel a release.

It’s also a useful tool to use while decluttering. Don’t bounce from one room to another and use up all your energy. By focusing on one area, you can also see the results of all your work much easier. 

10. Getting Enough Sleep

This is very important and I personally track it because it’s vital. Whenever I miss even an hour of sleep, I feel it when I wake up. I even see it in myself physically!

Our bodies need that time to rest and repair. You might find it actually takes you more time and energy to get things done when you’re not sleeping enough.

11. Inbox Zero

My goal is to achieve inbox zero twice a day. I track it and do it in the morning and at night. I started using my friend Kath’s star boxing method. She has a free class where she teaches you how to follow it.

Ever since doing that, I feel like my email has been at the next level. Everything has a place and a category. It’s also nice because it gives me a quick win on my habit tracking every day.

12. Wishlisting

This is something that I shared when I talked about how to curb your shopping. When online shopping, instead of immediately throwing something into your cart, add it to your wishlist.

I also shared in my minimalist gift ideas post, that I keep a running list of things that I would be interested in for things like birthdays or Christmas. It’s helpful for other people and I don’t end up with a lot of clutter in my home. 

By using a wishlist, you’re saving money. You’re saving your space because you’re giving yourself that grace period to see if it’s something you really want. 

It also takes away the sting of telling yourself “no,” which can be really hard to do sometimes.

13. Tenacity

This habit is simple and may not necessarily be easy. A lot of people have the habit of giving up when things get hard. 

But it’s like Charles Duhigg says in his book The Power of Habit, willpower is a habit. Nurturing a habit of pushing through things with tenacity and optimism will help you achieve your goals. It can make your life simpler and also help you create the home you want.

Build your first habit today!