How Minimalism Helped Me Begin a New Life
“Simplicity involves unburdening your life, and living more lightly with fewer distractions that interfere with a high-quality life, as defined uniquely by each individual.” -Linda Breen Pierce, 1947.
Introduction
During my first year in college, I was that clumsy kid who didn’t care about his belongings. People would always hang out in my room, and I never cared to clean it in the entire semester. I would buy things and lose them way too often. All I cared about was attending lectures for attendance and hanging out with friends. Imagine yourself being in my state. I knew something was wrong.
The Spark!!
Fast forward to the Sophomore year at college, there were exams ahead of us. So, I was at the library studying. I went back to the hostel room, leaving my belongings at my place in the library to get some snacks. When I returned to the library, I was unable to find the library token. That was trouble. In my college, you give your bag to the guard, and he provides a coin with a number. If you lose it, You have to pay 1000+ rupees and fill a form and get it signed by someone from the Student Affairs to get the bag back. It was a long process, and I was too occupied to do that because of the exams. My bag had some important documents I had to send back home via courier within three days.
I searched the entire Library and the surroundings but I was not able to find it anywhere. I returned back to the hostel and checked everywhere in my messy room. I was so irritated that day because of how everything was just lying around in my room. After 4 hours, I was able to find the token in my trousers pocket. The main thing I forgot was when I returned to the hostel for snacks, I took a shower and went back. I forgot to take the coin from my pocket.
This may seem like just absence of mind, but the tension I felt during those hours was something I remember my entire life because of the importance of the documents and the urgency to deliver them back home. That entire night, I thought about how I could avoid these mistakes in the future in case of an emergency.
The Youtube Algo played Strong
Fast forward to the next day after the exam, there was a holiday. I was just chilling in my room and watching random videos on youtube. Then something caught my eye in the recommendations.
This video of Fumio Sasaki was the key to the doors of minimalism I was about to open in the future. That day I watched some more videos about Minimalism and I came across another channel which I consider as Treasure right now
Yes, Matt D’avella it is. This guy inspired me so much that I wanted to really try it out and check if I had any results. After those incidents, I was open-minded and I was completely into it. So, Youtube Algo actually turned out to play strong
Implementing Minimalism
Let me help you imagine my room’s condition before I started decluttering it. The wardrobe is full of clothes, both washed and dirty. My bed had some clothes and I had washed clothes on my chair which I never used for sitting. I had papers and notebooks lying around from the starting of the Sophomore year. You can get a picture of my room with the above details (Don’t worry, I will share some clean images from my room in the later part of this blog.)
I did not want to do the decluttering in a rush. So I did it step by step. Every day I would get rid of at least 5 things that are useless or did not give any value to me. Minimalism is all about Living More with Less but that doesn't mean you should get rid of everything. It is about keeping the things that you use every day and gives value to you.
Decluttering went pretty well and it took me almost a month to get rid of things which I did not want. Here are some things I got rid of
- I donated the clothes which I don't use often to the nearby Madrasa
- I threw all the papers and notes in the bin and asked the cleaner to get them recycled and take the money
- All the nonworking wires were dumped and I gave some working ones to the people who need them
Now that most of the useless things are not in my room, I made a habit of cleaning my room every three days and I would continue decluttering useless things regularly.
What you can learn from my story
Implementing minimalism into anyone’s life is hard. I believe there should be a driving factor for anyone to accept change and for me, the driving factor/realization point was losing the library token. That event shook me to the core and got me into minimalism. So, find your driving factor for anything in Life and always be open to accepting change. When you accept to change, you will be able to see the other side of the mountain.
I highly suggest the people who are reading this to try out minimalism for a month and see the results for yourself. I am pretty sure that your efforts will be fruitful. You can always contact me to speak more about Minimalism, Tech, or Productivity. I would be happy to meet more people who share the same ideology so don't hesitate to drop by.
Resources
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Peace 🖤 🖤 🖤
