A minimalist lifestyle is often also helpful in making you more sustainable in your approach to living. That’s simply because you’re eliminating excess in all aspects of your life.
If you feel like you’re due for a change and want to live a life that’s not tied down to excess, here are some tactics you can apply to help you make that lifestyle shift.
1. Change your mindset
The most simplistic way people have thought of minimalism is through its aesthetic. However, simplicity and minimalism aren’t just something you do physically or as a way to change your look.
With that in mind, if you genuinely wish to have a greener lifestyle tinged with the minimalist lifestyle, you must remember that. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with surface-level approaches and changes in your life that don’t make you any more or less eco-conscious or minimalistic.
The best way to start with this mindset shift would be through your understanding of the relationship between you and items or objects. If you get too attached to material things, that’s the biggest hurdle you must face with a minimalist and eco-conscious lifestyle shift.
2. List the things you don’t need
Once you’ve acknowledged the lifestyle shift that should precede whatever your efforts may be with a greener lifestyle, you should start looking at your current inventory.
What items do you have? And what things can you do without?
We’re not talking about things like the family heirloom that’s been in your family for generations. It’s more about the items in your home that are gathering dust you don’t even use or care about. For example, if you have clothes you’ve been “waiting to fit into” and haven’t worn them for over a year, it’s time to let go.
Besides, clothes that fit you right look better on you, and it’s better for your mental health to not attach yourself to what you could be.
3. Grow your food
One practice you can adopt that can lead to a greener lifestyle while promoting minimalism would be growing your food at home. People with green thumbs can enjoy this, but that doesn’t mean you need the experience to do this yourself.
Setting up your vegetable patch at home may take a while before you start seeing anything significant out of it. However, once you get things going, it will be one of the delights of your home that you’ll enjoy seeing and maintaining, especially as you see how much produce you can get out of it.
If you don’t have space, you can always grow smaller plants like herbs or some small produce. These you can grow even if you live in an apartment as long as you get sunlight in some way.
4. Reduce food waste
If you start growing your food, you’ll realize how challenging it can be to grow them yourself. Hopefully, this experience will teach you the value of making the most out of your produce at home.
You can start reducing the food waste in your home in different ways. For example, many people avoid being picky with their foods and eat out less by repurposing their leftovers.
Another way to reduce food waste is by planning out your meals. Although it can be a lot of work, once you get into this habit, it becomes easier to take every morsel and find a way to turn it into something else.
Some people, though, would instead turn their food waste into compost to use it for their garden. If you started to grow your produce, you can also opt to start composting to use it in your garden. You can even ask your local community garden if they need compost if you have excess.
5. Declutter and avoid duplicates
We’ve mentioned earlier that you should look at what you don’t need. One of the easiest ways to find things you don’t need is by eliminating duplicate items in your home.
For example, if you have multiple pairs of jeans, you should reconsider and choose only one to keep. Not only are they bulky, but you can get rid of them and keep only one, which would likely be fine.
Look at clothes you don’t wear often, if at all. These are some of the first things you should eliminate from your inventory.
6. Buy high-quality products
One of the best ways to reduce your reliance on having multiple items in your home would be to spend your money on durable, durable, and long-lasting products. By doing this, you won’t have to buy other items knowing that you have a reliable one at home, so that it will save you money and space at home.
Of course, it’s right to acknowledge that usually, these items are more expensive, but in the long run, they will be much cheaper for you since they’re long-lasting. You can do this with everything from appliances to clothes to tech.
7. Invest in reusable items.
Aside from buying high-quality products, it would help if you also looked into replacing some of your single-use items with a more reusable alternative. For example, get a reusable water container if you’re getting single-use plastic water bottles. They’re reusable and can even maintain the temperature of the liquids you put in them.
8. Stick to the 3-month rule.
If you’re looking for a hard and fast rule that’s a little more ruthless with getting rid of items, go with the three-month rule. Get rid of any clothes that you haven’t used in three months.
If you want to sell them, take the first price you can get and don’t negotiate too heavily with it. Otherwise, if the buyer doesn’t take it from you, you should donate them.
Although it’s a more stringent approach to getting rid of items, you might need this if you feel like you’re getting too caught up in the logistics of separating the things to discard and the things to keep.
Conclusion
These tactics can help you approach your greener lifestyle and minimalist approach more practically. That way, you can start adopting this lifestyle quicker, but more importantly, it should help you make it last for a long time. If you’re serious about your goal of a greener and minimalist lifestyle, consider these approaches and apply them yourself.
Photos:
Photo by Soroush Karimi on Unsplash
