Simple Serenity: The Minimalist Way To A Peaceful Home

Minimalist Way To A Peaceful Home

NAVIGATION

ryans tiny house

Hi, I’m Ryan

As a minimalist who also works from home, I’ve put a lot of thought into how to make my house peaceful and serene to reduce stress in the day to day. My peaceful surroundings help me to be my best self each and every day.

ryan mitchell simple living expert

Why There’s Nothing Better Than Living In A Peaceful Home

Why Live In A Peaceful Home

Cultivating a peaceful home is much more important to your wellbeing than people realize. It can be easy to get caught in the cyclical chaos of the daily grind and neglect taking care of your house.

cultivating a peaceful homeWith so much to tend to and take care of like kids, bills, groceries, work obligations, and more, creating a peaceful, decluttered home can feel a little out of reach.

However, if becoming a minimalist has taught me anything, it’s that tending to the things that add value to your life is always worth it, even if it takes some extra time on the front end. Taking the time to declutter, clean, and create peace at home for you and your family might take some work, but the benefits will far outweigh the cons.

Your Home Environment Impacts Your Mental State

Living in a peaceful house is vital for your mental and emotional wellbeing. People often don’t give enough credit to the impact of our physical environment on our mental state.

Several neurological studies reveal that clutter and mess are directly linked to negative, more stressful emotions. Conversely, maintaining peace at home, keeping your space clean, and integrating relaxing and peaceful décor are all linked to an increase in happiness and positive emotions.

ways to declutter your mind

It’s Easy To Stay Organized In A Peaceful Home

Maintaining a peaceful house will not only improve your mental wellbeing and mood, but also can boost focus and mental clarity in the day to day. This is especially true for me and other people who work from home — keeping an organized, peaceful space makes it easy to keep things flowing so I can get my work done.

The last thing I want to be dealing with day to day is distraction from my physical surroundings. I don’t want to look around my office at scattered papers I haven’t dealt with, laundry I haven’t folded, or even flashy posters and ostentatious décor. By keeping my office clean and serene, I can easily focus on the tasks before me.

how to organize a small house

You Can Make A Peaceful House Your Own

Another reason making your home peaceful is important, especially as a minimalist, is that your house, room, and space is an extension of yourself. In the same way that you would take the time to invest in your physical health, emotional health, or relationships, your home and physical environment is another facet of self-care worth investing in.

Put in the effort to design a peaceful home that caters to your specific personality and needs. If you love to read, maybe add a book nook to your bedroom. If art is your thing, consider integrating a crafting corner into your space. Part of building a peaceful home is tailoring the house to what you love.

minimalist house

Five Steps To Creating A Seriously Peaceful Home

Steps To Creating A Seriously Peaceful Home

When it comes to taking steps to turning your own house into a genuinely peaceful home, there isn’t just one specific way to go. The minimalist life is known for not having too many rules, mostly because of how important it is to customize all of these ideas to your personal needs and desires. However, I’ve put together a few steps that have helped me create a peaceful house of my own.

1Focus On Decluttering One Section At A Time

The biggest thing I see when people try to make their home more peaceful is becoming too stressed by the clutter and mess that they never get around to getting started. However, this will just leave you stressed about trying to create more peace, which kind of defeats the purpose.

Decluttering One Section At A TimeThe best remedy for this is to focus on one small section at a time. I always give this advice when talking about cleaning or decluttering, but hyper focusing on smaller tasks instead of trying to tackle the entire job at once can make the decluttering, cleaning, and organizing process much smoother.

Start very small. Begin with sections like a single desk drawer, your dresser, or your closet. Eventually, you’ll declutter and organize each section of your home, bringing you more peace of mind.

2Tailor Each Room’s Design To Suit Its Purpose

After you’ve taken the time to clean and declutter your house, take some time to analyze the purpose of each room and brainstorm ways you can design the space to cater to that specific purpose. This can manifest in many small ways.

design each room with a purposeIt might look like adding a mini-fridge in your office to give you sustenance throughout a long work day. Maybe you want to add more shelving and additional storage spaces to your laundry room. You might want to integrate a vinyl record player in your living room to add background music to social gatherings.

Thinking through the purpose you want each room to serve and ways to make that happen will make your home a better fit for your life. This will in turn provide more peace overall.

3Don’t Add Too Much Stuff

One surefire way to make your house feel stressful and overcluttered is by crowding too much stuff in it. A home that’s jam packed with too much can easily increase anxiety and make the house and space feel extremely stressful.

One storage hack I like for any space is to utilize storage benches that double as storage and seating, as these won’t add too much clutter.

In your decluttering and organizing process, try to only keep the items in each room that you truly need and that add value to the function of the space. Get rid of or swap out too-large furniture pieces to make the room feel more open, spacious, and calming.

Dont Add Too Much Stuff

4Make Your Home Intentionally Cozy

Focusing on making your home feel cozy and comfortable is another important way to create peace in your home. Lots of people do this by integrating the concept of hygge into their homes.

Make Your Home CozyWhen I took a trip to Europe back in 2018, I learned so much about hygge and took notes on the ways comfortability can turn a house into a home.

There are so many small, simple ways to make a house cozier and more peaceful. You can add some cozy blankets or pillows to otherwise harder or more sturdy furniture.

I know many people who add soft rugs to hardwood floors, twinkling lights to the borders of their walls, or salt lamps to make their house cozier.

5Choosing Peaceful Decor To Accentuate Your Home

Lastly, take time to ensure the remaining décor in your home evokes a feeling of peace. There’s no need to overdo it and go out and buy a bunch of extra décor to incite this calming feeling.

It’s highly likely that you’ll be able to work with items you already own. Live plants, candles, and pictures of loved ones are common additions to add a peaceful feeling to a room.

Getting rid of stressful décor is another way to make your house feel more peaceful and stress free. This might look like nixing extra busy wall décor, ostentatious trinkets, and of course piles of clutter.

choose peaceful decor as home accents

Maintaining A Peaceful Home Environment Day To Day

Maintaining A Peaceful Home Environment

After building a peaceful home and removing specific stressors, it’s important to take a step back and see how you can stop these stressors from existing in the first place. The work you put in to create a peaceful home will only be worth it in the long run if you identify ways to maintain it.

There are several little regimens and systems I’ve added to my own minimalist life that don’t take too much effort, but help me to maintain peace at home.

Maintain A Peaceful Home Environment

Assign Everything A Place And Keep It There

The most important tip for keeping a home stress free is to assign a place for every item and make sure it finds its way back there when you’re done. The easiest way for a space to feel increasingly more stressful is when items just get thrown around without a home!

Find Ways To Make Cleaning Tasks Easier

Our homes make us feel more and more stressed as they become less and less clean. It can be a lot to clean an entire house at once, but finding small ways to make cleaning tasks easier and more accessible can help you to keep the peace in your home over time.

One way I do this is by dropping off my laundry to a wash and fold service each week because of how much I despise doing laundry. You can also hire cleaning help or invest in devices like a Roomba that can make the cleaning process faster and easier.

If you don’t have the budget for extra cleaning help right now, use the resource of time to your advantage instead. Set aside a block of time each week to devote to cleaning for 5, 10, or 30 minutes at a time. This way, you are taking care of your cleaning needs little by little and preventing more stress later.

minimalist cleaning

Standardize Household Items To Make Them Easier To Find

A messy, cluttered home often leads to essential items getting lost in the sauce. This adds time to your getting ready routine, gets you out the door slower, and increases stress. Like I said before, a peaceful house is one where everything has a place and stays there.

Standardize Household ItemsOne way to streamline things and make essential items easier to find is to standardize what you own.

What I mean by this is, don’t keep lots of items that serve the same purpose in your house. Have one pair of scissors and be aware of exactly where you keep them.

Standardize your tupperware so you can find the matching lids quickly. Keep your matching pairs of socks together and in close proximity to your shoes.

Ask Yourself Intentional Questions About Your Home

Lastly, make sure you take time periodically to ask yourself intentional questions about your house and identify ways you can adjust it to feel more peaceful and stress free.

It’s easy to get in the grind of life and forget to update our home as we change and grow. However, it’s important to continue to check in.

When Creating A Peaceful Home, Ask Yourself

  • Can I rearrange my furniture to better fit my needs?
  • Do the items in each room of my house match the room’s purpose?
  • Is each room organized in a manner that makes my life easier?
  • What section of each room stresses me out most, and how can I fix it?
  • Does each room of my house have cozy, homey elements?
  • Have I chosen peaceful, calm décor for each room?
  • What’s one small change can I make to bring more peace into my home?
  • Does the color scheme in my space incite peace?
  • Do the scents in my house make me feel calm?
  • Is my home supported by peaceful sounds?
  • How can I reduce clutter and stress in my house?

The Value Of Living In A Calm Environment

The Value Of Living In A Calm Environment

At the end of the day, there are so many reasons that it’s vital to maintain a home that brings your mind peace. Over the past several years, minimalism has helped me realize these benefits, from improving my focus to freeing up more time to do what I love.

I find that when I actually take the time to intentionally bring more peace into my physical environment, my days get easier. Every couple of weeks, I make it a priority to evaluate how my space can better match my current needs, declutter, put items back in their place, and take a moment to enjoy the little things in my home that bring me inner peace.

Living In A Calm Environment

Your Turn!

  • What will you change in your house to make it more peaceful?
  • Which habits can you integrate into your day to keep your house stress free?

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