How Downsizing Your Lifestyle Can Give You More Time

You might have heard of KonMari by now. Based on the best-selling novel The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, it’s a pretty common sense approach to deciding what stays and what goes when it comes to your belongings. Simply put, you go through everything you own and pick it up, deciding whether it sparks joy within your or not. If it doesn’t, it goes. While this notion is huge in the Japanese culture, the minimalism premise and all that goes with it are certainly popular in the U.S., too. The idea isn’t necessarily to have bags upon bags to donate to Goodwill as much to have things around you that make you happy. Many people likely giggled when they first heard about it, but the truth is that less is, indeed, more. The majority of people are looking to add less to their lives—not more. It helps us to focus more and feel more organized, which has a snowball effect of goodness on everything else. When it comes down to it, downsizing your lifestyle can give you more time, and more sanity.

There’s a reason the tiny house movement has become such an obsession as of late. People love the idea of spending less money on and less time in houses and more time and money on traveling the world. It’s such an amazing concept, really, but if you have a child (or two or three or more), you might wonder how a family can manage this lifestyle based on how much paperwork comes home with each child each night! If you do decide to downsize your home to live this kind of lifestyle, it’s crucial that you declutter regularly—we’re talking pretty much every day. Otherwise, that one little pile on the counter grows exponentially and, before long, you’re buying a new home to simply store all the paper.

If you want to go to the extreme, you might even consider selling your house altogether. Many people have taken sabbaticals for a year at a time to show their kids a different way to look at life—living more experientially but with fewer belongings. Bonus: You could probably make money by blogging on an experience like this, as many people would like to know how you got the courage to make the leap, and how you made it work. A company like Webuyhousesdever.co can help to get your house sold without the hassles that go along with house repairs, realtor fees, and more. Less home (or zero home!) means less work around the house, which will add up to an incredible amount of free time.

There’s another side to decluttering besides in the physical sense. It’s more of a lifestyle purge. Think of the things in your life that are eating away at your time and, ultimately, your productivity, and do away with them. Chances are, social media is a huge time-suck. As everyone knows, social media has benefits and drawbacks. It’s a phenomenal way to stay in touch with friends and family, but then there are those times when you go to take that “quick peek” at Facebook and caught down the proverbial rabbit hole. Two hours later, you’re looking at wedding photos of a person you don’t even know. Come on—you know you’ve done it, too. One thing you can do instead of quitting social media cold turkey is simply to take it off of your phone. That way, it takes a bit more effort for you to actually get into your account and, thus, will likely stay off of it more than you did before.

You can also declutter your brain with meditation, as sometimes a quiet, happy life is what you desire. You hear people say all the time, “I don’t have time for meditation.” It makes sense, as everyone is busier than ever these days, so who has time to sit down and “space out”, so to speak, for 20 minutes? The thing is, you really don’t need that long to make meditation effective. Download a meditation app and you will find that there are plenty of options in the 5-10-minute range. And the thing about meditation is, with practice, it will help you get rid of all the extra “noise” in your mind, making it easier to focus. You’ll work smarter—not harder—which will leave you with more free time.

Downsize the things and clutter in your mind and life and you’ll reap the benefits in time management. You might even find yourself bored on occasion. Gasp!