13 Minimalist Habits For A Calmer Home And Life

Today, I want to share 13 simple habits that will help you create a more minimal home and life.

You may have heard it said before that 40 to 90 percent of what we do, our beliefs, our actions, our decisions, all boils down to habits.

Habits are incredibly important for achieving any goal. They happen all the time whether we're intentional about them or not, and I've been talking about habits for years now.

1. Heat Mapping

Out of all the habits on this list, my first and favorite for keeping a home clutter-free is heat mapping. It's an awareness technique that shows you the items you're actually using versus the ones you're not.

It's simple to do in pretty much any area of your home. Here's how it works with a group of products, like spices, face products, or shoes:

• Group together all items in one category in a single spot. You can even do this with clothes by flipping the hanger around each time you wear something.
• Every time you use one of the items, move it into a separate "used" pile.
• After a set amount of time, whether that's a week or a month, let go of whatever hasn't moved.

This brings real awareness to the things you're actually using. A lot of times we assume we're using something more than we actually are, which is exactly why heat mapping is one of my favorite habits on this list.

2. Feeding Your Brain

The second habit I talk about a lot is what I call feeding your brain. It keeps the important things at the top of my mind.

If you're working toward a goal, you want that thing showing up in your daily feed, literally. That could be your newsfeed, your social media feed, or your YouTube feed.

If you're working on fitness, try watching more health-conscious videos on YouTube. If you want a clutter-free home, follow accounts that share images that inspire you.

This is another awareness technique, but it's also an anchoring one.

3. Being Present

My third habit is the practice of being present. One of the most unhealthy things I've seen people do is focus on the past and dwell in it, not wanting to detach or move on.

This can also show up as focusing all of your time and attention on the future while disregarding the present completely.

If you want to get more official about it, practices like meditation are great, and it's what works for me. Meditation looks different for everyone, but the goal is to declutter your mind, take some deep breaths, and find that balance.

4. Movement

Fourth is movement. If you've been here long enough, you know my type of movement is yoga.

Maybe yours is walking, running, or weightlifting at the gym.

Our bodies were made to move. Skip that movement long enough and you'll start building stagnant energy and mental clutter, even depression.

Moving gets circulation flowing to your brain, and it increases your productivity.

5. Awareness

Awareness is so important that it applies to a lot of different categories. Self-awareness is huge, so huge that it's one of the first things I teach people who are trying to create a clutter-free space.

Try practicing awareness in these three areas for a more minimal home and life:

• Self
• Space
• Life, in general

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

6. Digitizing

This one splits a room, I know. I like putting pen to paper too, but I also see the benefit of digitizing things quickly.

If I get a paper notice, I'll snap a picture and get rid of the physical copy.

In my post on 15 systems that have simplified my life, I talked about pairing our Google Calendar with Alexa. So if the girls want to know when they have an appointment, they can just ask Alexa instead of me keeping it all in my head.

The key to making digitizing work is turning it into a habit so you're doing it automatically. People ask me what happens if the system breaks, but I think it's a lot more likely I'll lose a physical paper than the entire internet and Alexa going down.

7. Immediate Re-Homing

Staying on the theme of automation, the seventh habit is to re-home things immediately. Re-homing means putting an item back exactly where it lives every time instead of setting it down somewhere new.

If you use the can opener, it's so much easier to put it right back where you got it than to leave it on the counter and collect 20 things later.

Do it often enough and you won't even think about it. You move like clockwork.

8. Organic Decluttering

I've mentioned this before when I talked about finding time to declutter, since a lot of people struggle to find large chunks of time for big decluttering projects.

Organic decluttering just means that in whatever area you're already standing in, you declutter something in that area.

Say you're in the bathroom brushing your teeth. While you're standing there, you can go through the medicine cabinet and clear out things you're no longer using.

You're just following your natural flow of activities in places you already spend time.

9. Single Tasking

You've probably heard about this one everywhere, but if you haven't tried it, single-tasking means doing one activity at a time with as few distractions and interruptions as possible.

Instead of getting overwhelmed trying to tackle multiple things at once, just focus on one. As soon as I let myself focus on one thing, I feel an immediate release.

It's also useful for decluttering. Don't bounce from room to room and burn through all your energy.

Focus on one area and you'll see the results of your work a lot more easily.

10. Getting Enough Sleep

This one is huge, and I personally track it because it matters so much. Whenever I miss even an hour of sleep, I feel it the moment I wake up, and I can see it in myself physically.

Our bodies need that time to rest and repair. When you're not sleeping enough, everything ends up taking more time and more energy to get done.

11. Inbox Zero

My goal is to hit 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, and she has a free class where she teaches you exactly how to follow it.

Ever since doing that, my email has improved a hell of a lot. Everything has a place and a category, and it gives me a quick win on my habit tracking every day.

12. Wishlisting

This is something I shared when I talked about how to curb your shopping. When you're shopping online, instead of throwing something straight into your cart, add it to your wishlist first.

I also shared in my minimalist gift ideas post that I keep a running list of things I'd be interested in for birthdays or Christmas. It helps other people, and it keeps my home from filling up with clutter.

Using a wishlist saves you money and space by giving yourself a grace period to decide if you really want something.

It also takes the sting out of telling yourself no, which can be hard to do sometimes.

13. Tenacity

This habit is simple, but it isn't always easy. A lot of people have a habit of giving up the moment things get hard.

Charles Duhigg makes this point in The Power of Habit. Willpower itself is a habit.

Nurturing a habit of pushing through with tenacity and optimism will help you reach your goals, and it can make your life a hell of a lot simpler.

Build your first habit today. Start with whichever one on this list calls to you the most.

Habits like these are just one piece of a bigger picture. When you're ready to zoom out, here's how to simplify your life for more time, energy, and mental capacity.