Organizing Tips and Tricks for a Minimalist Home

“Less is more” is the foundational mantra for the design trend called minimalism. While its popularity remains up to this day, make no mistake—this movement has been around for a while. Its staying power owes to the fact that it’s a no-nonsense approach to designing one’s home. And that’s not at the expense of swoon-worthy aesthetics.

Minimalism made a splash in the design scene back in the 90s. Since then, it’s continued to attract devout followers who value simplicity and practicality. The sustained prevalence of minimalism as a design movement is easy to understand.

With minimalism, you can maximize the floor space at your disposal, making your home appear larger than it is. It’s also easier to put together and manage thanks to resources you can find everywhere. Lastly, minimalism’s achieved refinement never goes out of vogue; therefore, you can keep it for as long as you want without your home looking like it’s from the middle ages.

If we have you convinced as to why minimalism might just be right up your alley, here are tips and tricks that’ll help you pull it off.

Take a Cue from Marie Kondo

Marie Kondo’s Netflix show titled Tidying Up with Marie Kondo was released in 2019. It made a huge cultural impact and earned the lifestyle guru a primetime Emmy nomination. That recognition should be enough to convince you to get behind the basic premise of the program, which is to build a clutter-free home via the KonMari method.

The KonMari method is quite simple. You hold something and if it does not spark joy, you throw it away. Or better yet, donate it to charity. The goal of the process is to rid your home of physical clutter to achieve peace of mind.

The method sounds controversial to some people. But if you look at it closely, it makes absolute sense. We make it a habit to hoard stuff, not recognizing how they take up unnecessary space in our lives, both in a literal and figurative sense.

What the KonMari method teaches you is the art of letting go. Doing so will allow you to live in the present, with a home and a heart free of excess baggage.

Color Restraint

Your chosen color palette will significantly affect the sense of warmth your home manifests. And in the minimalist tradition, warmth is right up there with simplicity in terms of importance. As soon as a guest enters your abode, they must feel welcomed.

That happens with restrained colors. Ideally, you choose no more than three hues. That does not mean you can juxtapose blues with oranges and yellows. The key is to keep those colors just a few shades apart from one another.

Stick with neutral chromes. You cannot go wrong with blacks, grays, whites, and creams.

Empty Spaces

If you have been to several minimalist homes before, you would have noticed one design element they all share. We’re talking about empty spaces.

Minimalist homes have spots that look bare and untampered. But that’s not because the owner or designer forgot to do something about it. That's exactly the point. To keep those empty spaces, well, empty.

Minimalist home design champions peace and clarity. Those empty spaces are great instruments for the achievement of those goals. They allow the eyes and the mind to rest.

Visual Balance

While minimalist homes work with as few carefully curated accents as possible, they nonetheless achieve visual balance. That is thanks to the introduction of focal points.

For example, in a minimalist living room, there might be little to no accouterments on the floor other than the sofa. But on the wall, a sole wide painting might serve as the entire room’s focal point, giving the area a sense of visual balance.

When deciding where to put visual focal points and what kind, consider the other elements you’ve gathered for your interpretation of the minimalist design. Those should inform the accents you choose.

Repurpose

Would you believe it if we said that you could redesign your home into a minimalist space without purchasing new stuff for the project? Well, you should because that’s exactly the case. That’s doable when you repurpose what you already have.

Remember that the first step in creating a minimalist space is getting rid of clutter. Once that’s out of the way, you will be left with things that you can reimagine to serve your current design goals.

Do you have picture frames you don’t know what to do with? Create abstract art from those by gluing them together in such a way that results in an odd but clean geometric pattern.

Meanwhile, you can use old but still pretty boxes for kitchen and pantry organizing.

Clean Textiles

Again, pick neutral colors for textiles, whether they're for window curtains or bedding. If you feel like you’re quite limited in terms of colors, do not worry. You have the opportunity to play around in terms of texture. In that regard, you may opt for a combination of soft cotton, edgy hides, and fluffy furs.

Concise Lighting

Keep your lighting, well, light. It also won’t hurt if it’s discreetly placed and angled. As for color, again, soft hues are your friend.

Wrapping Up

Minimalism expertly marries form and substance. With less is more, every aesthetic element you bring home has a purpose. It might not be in the utilitarian sense, but that purpose nonetheless proves vital to the design ensemble.

You know you have achieved the minimalist design of your dream when you look at what you’ve created, and there’s no nagging feeling that there’s something out of place. Or that something is missing. By then, you deserve a pat on the back.

However, keep in mind that minimalism is not for everyone. For instance, if you’re the kind that thrives in clutter, you likely won’t feel at home in a space where there’s virtually nothing to distract you. If that’s the case, you could go the other way and decorate with clutter.

Whether you choose minimalism or its antithesis – cluttercore – the important thing is that you stay true to your vibe.