Tip 1: Throw out 50 things

Grab a box and do a fast sweep of the house. Grab empty cans, junk mail, unused toiletries, bits of paper with scribbled notes on the back, out-of-date food, anything that’s broken or unused. Don’t give yourself time to think: just clear that clutter now!

Tip 2: Get everything out

To streamline your kitchen, your office, or your bedroom, pick a day when you don’t have much else planned and pull everything out of the cupboards, closet, wardrobe and drawers. I did this with my bedroom recently, and it was a little scary to see how many random t-shirts I had acquired, most of them advertising things.

Put the most essential items back – so put a good knife back into your kitchen, and put your clean underwear back into your bedroom. Put everything else in a box. If you need it, get it out and put it back into the kitchen (or kitchen). After six months, give the box to a charity shop – without opening it.

After all – how many of us use paperclips anymore? How many times have we actually used that juicer? How many socks do we actually wear in a week?

Tip 3: Do 15 minutes a day

The Flylady website recommends spending 15 minutes a day decluttering. You can also get rid of one item a day, or do one drawer a day, or whatever small decluttering action you feel happy with. The key to this decluttering technique is little and often.

Tip 4: Get rid of Storage

It’s a harsh measure, but it works. Get rid of your sideboard, your free-standing wardrobe, your second fridge. Move to a smaller house. By forcing clutter out from the dusty drawers and dark spaces you force yourself to confront it. You might be amazed at what you find. Old pez dispensers, expired medication, bits of lego?

Tip 5: Scan It

We live in the digital era, and whilst digital clutter can be a problem in itself, it had to be said I’d rather my paperwork was virtual. Don’t print off every email and file it – send your files to your email.

PDF scanners like the ubiquitous ScanSnapcan turn all your tax returns, receipts, utility bills and other documents into PDF files.

I have one of these at work, and it’s pretty awesome. But if you don’t have a lot of paperwork, then don’t get it.

Even better is to opt out of paper-statements, bills and so on. Most companies let you get your bills and statements via email now – and they will often give you a bit of a discount for saving them the cost of postage.

Save a tree. Ditch your filing cabinet. What could be better?

Tip 6: Swap It or Rent it

One way to avoid getting clutter in the first place, is to rent or swap for what you need. Bookhopper is like PaperbackSwap for those in the UK. It lets you exchange your books with other readers, thus ensuring that you have both a plentiful supply of reading material, and you don’t have a big pile of books cluttering up your house.

Renting is often easier than buying. Renting a car, for example, can be cheaper than owning one – especially if you only use your car occasionally. Renting a TV over the World Cup period would work out cheaper than buying one, if that’s the only thing you’ve watched in the last four years.

Tip 7: Organise your Food

Many of us buy ingredients for dishes we end up only cooking once. The expensive pantry ingredients often sit around afterwards, taking up space and otherwise turning themselves into clutter. If you hated it, or it’s faded into something unusable – get rid of it. I once bought a spice jar of saffron for a specific dish, and it was so eye-wateringly expensive I never used it again. The result was that the taste faded and it ended up going in the bin. A total waste!

For any ingredients you have left, find some meals you can use them in, and then use them! Once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Buy your food once a day and buy only what you need. Keep your fridge clean and mostly empty, and you’ll never end up looking into it and seeing a pile of junky salad dressings but nothing to eat.

For your dry staples, get only what you know you will eat. Porridge oats are awesome to have – unless you never eat porridge. We all have four or five meals we always end up cooking – and it’s usually beans on toast, not duck l’orange.

Tip 8: Replace Multiple Devices with a Multi-Purpose Device

If you own lots of equipment, and you use that equipment, it may be worth upgrading to a multi-purpose device. Instead of having an mp3 player, a digital camera, and a mobile phone, you combine the three and get a smart phone.

Instead of a scanner, a printer and a photocopier, you get a combination all-in-one device.

Be careful with this one – it’s easy to get sucked into ‘upgrade’ mode. I have a mobile phone and a digital camera, but I don’t want the monthly fees associated with a smart-phone, and I don’t use my phone often enough to make it worth replacing.

Tip 9: Share with Someone

If you read a lot, share your books with someone else who likes to read a lot. Not only do you combine your libraries, you also get someone to talk about your latest read with.

Share camping equipment with another outdoorsy couple, share fitness equipment with another fitness fanatic. Get a communal lawnmower for the neighbourhood.

Tip 10: Don’t Replace Things

When your jeans finally get just too many holes in to wear, or your washing machine leaks all over your floor, get rid of it. But don’t replace it. Learn to live without your jeans, and start using a laundromat or washing your clothes in the bathtub.

When you shampoo runs out, see if you can make-do with baking soda.

When your tent poles snap, go camping with a poncho instead.

When you spill beer all over your laptop, unplug. Internet cafes and libraries can fill the void, and you may find your life substantially better for not being able to check your emails every five minutes.

For every ‘time-saving’ device there is usually a cost. The cost of storing, cleaning, maintaining, replacing. If we went back to (some) of the labour intensive methods, we might find we don’t need to work 80 hours a week just to afford all of our time-saving toys.

What’s the hardest thing to get rid of for you? What have you decluttered today?

Related posts:

1. Permaculture – Simplifying by Zone: Zone 0
2. What you need
3. The Great Decluttering Project

The trouble is, it’s very easy to fill up the free time with some more useless activity. You might end up watching more television, or start mindlessly surfing the internet. You could get involved in a bunch of things you feel like you should be doing – even though you don’t really want to. Lots of minimalists tout their favourite activities as part of the minimalist life-style – but if you don’t like yoga, then don’t do it.

One of the first things I started doing was watching old TV shows that I had never had
time for before. I started watching X-Files, for example. And whilst I do enjoy the show, I have never made time for TV before because it just wasn’t that important to me.

And before I knew it, all my newly acquired free time was being eaten up by a bunch of little pointless things – reading random pages on wikipedia. Tracking the news about the UK budget in pin-point detail. Surfing internet forums. Watching Family Guy.

I needed to make sure I was spending time on the things that were important to me.

I should add that I don’t think we’re designed to be 100% productive all the time. As humans, we require down time – time to play and relax. But we should make sure we’re relaxing the way we want to, and not the way society dictates that we should.

• I love reading hard-boiled crime novels, and related genres.
• I love doing Yoga – and the best part is I was finally able to touch my toes yesterday after weeks of practise.
• I love sitting outside, drinking tea and just watching the sky.
• I love listening to cheesy 90′s music and dancing.
• I love rambling through fields and getting lost.

These are the things I should be filling my extra time with – not watching X-Files, or reading about David Cameron.

What do you like doing? Can you do it now?

Related posts:

1. Five Minimalist Workouts – Exercise Anywhere, Anytime
2. Simplify, simplify!
3. Backpacking: Why Location Independence Was Not For Me

The second approach is the ‘little and often’. That’s when you commit to slowly replacing unhealthy food with healthy alternatives, de-clutter slowly by giving away one item a day, or gradually educate and transition yourself over time into a new way of being.

Both methods have plus points and minus points. The ‘super-project’ can be high-risk. It can be overwhelming, it can cause us to burn our bridges, and it can be difficult to sustain. It can also be a fast and effective means of forcing yourself to follow through, a kind of Phoenix like rebirth of yourself.

The ‘little and often’ method is often more sustainable, less dramatic and safer. It can be an effective means of gradually transforming your life and making sure you have really thought it through and built the necessary foundations. You slowly reduce your spending in one area. You slowly tidy and de-clutter your house, drawer by drawer, cupboard by cupboard. You commit to a ten year plan, instead of a ten day plan. You can also spend a lot of time spinning your wheels, getting rid of something just to buy two other things, reduce your spending in one area just to have it creep up somewhere else.

The Art of Routines

A routine is a habitual set of actions that is performed regularly. A routine is often done on auto-pilot. We come home, we turn the TV on, and we stick dinner in the microwave while watching Family Guy. A routine can also be a small thing that leads us to the goal we want. We could come home, switch into our trainers, and go for a twenty minute run.

The key is to make sure our routines are in line with what we want to achieve. How do we make sure that happens?

Decide on what you want

The first step is to know what it is you actually want. Do you want to start a side business? Cook more meals at home? Save 50% of your income? Be able to run a marathon? You can’t work towards a goal, until you know where you’re going. Otherwise you just go around in circles.

Figure out the little steps that get you there

Start a side-business? You need a client. Where do you get a client? Figure out a small list of actionable things you can do, and then pick a time of day to them. For example, you could send out three leaflets a day to local businesses. You could do this every morning before breakfast, or last thing at night before sleeping.

If it’s the ability to run a marathon, you need to go running frequently. If you want to lose weight, you need to eat a salad a day. And so on. You’re a smart person, you don’t need me to tell you what you need to do.

Keep it Simple

This is a blog about simplicity after all. Just pick one daily routine. Don’t start a side-business, go on a diet, commit to run a marathon, and take something to the charity shop every day. You want one habit that you do daily. Not ten habits that you forget and run out of time for.

Once it becomes habitual, you can start a new one. Around thirty days is probably good. And try giving up habits too, for every new one you bring in.

Remember you have a lifetime

You don’t have forever. If you keep putting it off, you’ll wake up when you’re seventy and realise you never did anything. But also – realise you have an entire lifetime. You don’t need to do everything urgently. Learning a new language can wait until you have your health sorted. Ten years is a long long time. You can spend a year messing around with one thing, and then move on to something else.

It’s about the journey – not the destination.

Related posts:

1. Do it Now
2. Ten Simple Ways to Relax. Right Now.
3. The Great Decluttering Project

Last month I managed to drag our spending on food right down – to £180. How did I do this?

By shopping every day. I gave myself a daily budget of £5, and from that £5 I had to get breakfast, lunch and dinner for the two of us. I thought it would be more difficult than it was. By shopping every day on my way home from work, I was able to pick up the fruit and veg that was being reduced, and snap up any major bargains. It meant I didn’t have to plan beyond the next three meals, so I never forgot any vital ingredients. I frequently came in under budget, which was a dramatic difference from my weekly shopping.

It didn’t even mean that I missed out on bulk buys – picking up 8 cans of baked beans on a ‘Buy 2 for £3′ deal, and several ‘buy one get one free’ deals on frozen pies etc.

It did mean I had to downgrade some things. I couldn’t spend £4 on two slices of cheesecake for a start. I also had to downgrade my washing powder – to a brand that actually made my clothes smell nicer.

In short I would say the experiment has been a great success. I certainly haven’t felt deprived – especially since I’ve been feasting on a fantastic greek salad for the last three days – olives are always amazing!

Related posts:

1. Tuesday Tips – Frugality Made Simple
2. Decluttering: Not Replacing Broken Appliances
3. Tuesday Tips – Frugality Made Simple

Namely, a space problem. I have a 120gb external harddrive – and it’s full. That’s a lot of data. The problem is, most of it is important – old artwork files, photographs, writing, music, and web-design work. Stuff I want to keep. Memories of who I used to be, old friends, and long journeys to places that changed me.

But, I have no space. I have the virtual equivalent of an overflowing house, and a moving van parked outside. So what do I do?

• I could upgrade. I could buy a 1tb hard-drive for about £65, and never run out of space again (until I do)
• or, I could delete stuff. I could decide that actually, 13gb of music – that’s 2919 songs, or 8 solid days of non-repeating music – is overkill. Especially when I haven’t listened to over 70% of them in years. I could go through the photographs, keep the ones that have special meaning, and delete the thousands of generic and fuzzy shots of flowers, clouds, and people’s backs. I could pare the artwork down to the few pieces I am actually proud of, and dump the experiments with software and colour.

It’s easy to ignore digital clutter. It doesn’t take up physical space in our house and lives – we can truly forget it’s even there. But it is still clutter. You end up losing the few important things in a sea of junk.

Digital clutter is insidious. It’s too easy to download a free song, a free e-book, to sign up to another free RSS feed, another newsletter, and to shove all your half-finished projects onto another hard-drive. After-all, virtual space is endless, right?

Not quite. Apparently, by 2020, we’ll have 35 zettabytes of data globally, and will be struggling to find the room to store it all. The question, of course, is how much of that data is actually worth keeping. In all the frantic digital activity of the last couple of years, as everyone turns to content creation and content sharing, as people get used to tweeting what they had for dinner and facebooking every interaction – will we have enough space to keep it all backed-up? Will there be huge warehouses, filled with gigantic hard-drives, all backing up each trivial comment ‘just in case’?

Don’t get me wrong. That everyone has a cheap and convenient outlet for their creative sides is amazing. That we have leapt into the ‘age of information’ is something to be impressed by, not scared of. But we should all try and make sure that the data we produce isn’t just noise, but is actually meaningful in some way.

Otherwise all the great ideas, the amazing artwork that moves us to tears, the songs that kept us alive through puberty, the writing that opened new doorways in our minds – these will be buried beneath a hundred you-tube videos of someone falling downstairs, a thousand spurious e-books full of fluff and mis-information, and a million doodles of stick-men.

Which isn’t to say that stick-men can’t be genius.

Related posts:

1. 10 Tips to Declutter Your Home
2. The Great Decluttering Project
3. Holiday Apartments: Clean, Clear and Uncluttered

July is all about barbecues, picnics, salads and refreshing glasses of ice-cold lemonade. Family gatherings, water-balloon fights, and siestas in the sun. Bliss!

Eating what’s in season has a number of benefits. It’s cheaper, it’s healthier, and it keeps us in touch with the cycles of nature. When we can buy strawberries in December, or pumpkins in April, the food loses a touch of what makes it special. Anticipation, after all, is half the fun of anything.

The Best Food of July

Cherries – ripe, luscious little fruits that taste like nothing else. Unfortunately, Britain has lost around 90% of its cherry orchards in the last 50 years, in favour of importing them from overseas. July 17th is Cherry Day, so go pick your own from a local orchard, or buy some from a farmer’s market. Cherries can be used to make fruity buns, sauces for meat, or delectable pie fillings. Or just eat them by the handful. Om nom.

Peaches – peaches are another refreshing fruit. Somehow, the idea of eating a peach with juices running down my chin while sitting under a cloudless blue sky is my idea of heaven. If you like peaches, you’ll be pleased to know that peach trees can be grown in containers. Just make sure they get lots of sunshine. And make sure you get lots of sunshine as well – we all thrive and grow during the sunnier months.

Cucumber – cumbers are cool. They’re famous for it, in fact. And, when you get a bit hot and bothered, or maybe don’t like the sun quite as much as the peach tree – a cumber is the perfect antidote. A cumber salad makes for a good lunch, or as a trusty side for a bbq. If you feel a bit worn out, you can lie down with a couple of cumber slices on your eyes. Or, you can drink it.

Fennel – It’s not all fruit and salads. You might still want your sunday roast, or fancy something a bit more filling. Enter fennel, a vegetable I was first exposed to as part of my veg box delivery (for those of you unable to get to a market, one of these can really help you support a local farmer – I really miss it), and which I instantly fell in love with. It looks a bit like it came from outer-space, and it tastes like aniseed. Aniseed is one of those flavours you either love or hate, so if you didn’t like the sweets you won’t like this. It goes well in a risotto, and makes a perfect match with fish.

Spinach – spinach is in season through most of the year, which suits me just fine. As a leafy green, spinach is one of those nutritional powerhouses that – whilst not turning us into Popeye – has a truly insane amount of vitamin K and A. Plus a bunch of other things, all of which are good for you. Add it to a salad, steam it as a side, or dump it into a fruit smoothie and turn that smoothie a beautiful shade of green.

Peas and Beans – Peas, green beans and broad beans are all being picked and podded right about now. Add them to that risotto, or enjoy them with fish and chips. Vegetarians can enjoy this tasty walnut and green bean dish – well, and so can the rest of us. Don’t you just love summer?

This is a mere sampling of what’s on offer right now, but it makes a good start. Remember to buy local – if you shop in a supermarket, look for the British sticker. Alternatively, visit a farmers market, or get a veg box delivered. Fresh, in-season produce – it simply cannot be beaten.

Related posts:

1. Another Method of Keeping Food Bills Down
2. Permaculture – Simplifying by Zone: Zone 2
3. Sky Planter: Upside Down Gardening

That’s the simple mantra for a healthy life. You can make it complicated – eliminating certain foods, eating a strict diet, and sticking to a regimented and punishing gym-schedule. But most of us don’t have the time – and for most of us, any kind of exercise is better than none.

So here is my ultra-simple list of five incredibly simple exercises you can do – no gym membership, no equipment, and dead easy for beginners.

1. Walking

Walking is the easiest, simplest way to get some activity into your life. Walk to the shops. Walk to work. Walk to a friend’s house. Walk around the block. Walk through the forest, up the mountain, across the fields.

Walking is incredibly under-rated as a mode of transport. You can walk a lot further than you think, and it’s a lot less stressful than driving. It’s easy to fit into your day to day life too – in fact, why don’t you go for a walk right now? This blog will still be here when you get back.

2. Starjumps, squats, pull-ups, press-ups

I know. I hate repetitive, routine exercises too. So the easiest way to work the jumps, splits, squats, pull-ups, press-ups and other bodyweight exercises is to vary it up. Combine different movements. Make it playful – remember when you were a kid, and you used to just randomly run around and jump on things? Moving is fun, and playgrounds are great places to go if you just want to climb trees, have a go on the monkey-bars, and play ‘lava-monsters’.

3. Dance

Dancing is amazing. Okay, it’s not quite minimalist in that it requires a source of music, but I’m going to assume that if you can read this post, you can get onto youtube. Go find some upbeat music, and dance like you’ve never danced before. Nobody’s watching, so just let yourself go crazy.

As a variation, try some martial arts. Pretend you’re Bruce Lee being attacked by a hundred ninjas, and get those high-kicks and super-quick punches flying.

4. Yoga

You might want a mat. But you don’t need one, really. I can’t praise yoga enough, it’s one of those things that always makes me feel better, even if I just find five minutes to really stretch. I don’t need to go into much detail here, as the famous Everett Bogue has already written the best guide to minimalist yoga around. I should note that I’ve been using his routine very successfully for the past few weeks.

5. Play with some kids. Outdoors.

Children are whirlwind dynamos of energy, and keeping up with them can be hard-work. So do your local stressed out parents a favour, and take their kids for a day out somewhere. Go to a park, and play football or frisbee. Explore the woods or some caves. Play old playground games, like ‘stick in the mud’. Or just chase them around until they or you collapse!

Now here’s the catch. To make it worth doing, you need to keep doing it. So slow down. Make it a habit to walk to work. Agree to take the kids out once a week. Make Tuesday night the night you put on your sequins and turn the volume to eleven. Make yoga part of your nightly wind-down routine.

Now – wasn’t that easier than you thought it would be?

Related posts:

1. The Whole is Greater than the Parts
2. Simplify, simplify!
3. What are you passionate about?

We are encouraged to believe that working relentlessly until we are 65 is what life is about. School has become increasingly like the world of work – where endless exams, projects, paperwork and uniforms take the place of play and exploration. Work has taken over more and more of our lives, with salaried workers regularly putting in more hours than contracted for, and those with part-time, minimum wage jobs frequently having to take on two or three jobs just to make ends meet.

Meanwhile, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has widened so that in 2006 the top 2% of the world population owned more than half of the worlds wealth. In order to afford the ‘standard of life’ that advertisers tell us is both normal and desirable, we are forced to take on debt, work overtime, and pay most of our income towards the upkeep of an unsustainable lifestyle. A few talented people make millions, a few lucky people inherit millions, and the rest are left to lurch from financial crisis to financial crisis.

The other day, I had to repot some of my plants. I went to the garden centre, and I paid for a few sacks of dirt. Yes, dirt – the very stuff this planet is covered with. Others pay for bottled water. It won’t be long before someone figures out how to sell us oxygen.

My very simple solution is:

• Spend less.
• Work less.
• Have more fun.

Spend Less

Downsize your house. Better still, get rid of your house. Live out of a van, or a tent, or a spare room. Learn to see the true cost of things – a £200 washing machine is nearly 30 hours of work at £7 an hour. A £400 iPad is nearly 60. A £200,000 house is 3.2 years of non-stop, 24 hour work.

The places to cut your costs are the places where you spend the most. Your rent. Your food. Your entertainment splurges. Eat more lentils. Is that chicken tikka take-away really worth spending an extra hour at work?

Work Less

Once you’ve cut your costs to the bone, you can afford to work less. Take a single part-time job. Start a minimalist business. Work from home. The less you spend, the less you need to worry about earning.

Have more fun

When you’re not working, what are you going to do instead? You’ll finally have the time to travel. To learn new skills. To cook properly. To have long, silly conversations on the telephone. To take long walks. All the things that you don’t have time for now.

I should make it clear that I’m not there yet. Unlike the many people out there that have succeeded in quitting their full-time jobs and spend their time doing what they love I still work 37 hours a week or so, and I still have a large rent payment and a lot of stuff.

But I’m determined. I’ve spent the last year reading amazing blogs. I now know that it is possible. In a year, we’ll be heading to a place we don’t have to pay rent. In that year, I’m going to work on getting rid of as much of our belongings as possible, so that we don’t have to pay to move it or store it, and so we can start with the wonderful possibility that empty space creates.

I’m working towards a balanced life. What are you working towards?

Related posts:

1. The Two Types of Sustainability: Eco-Living and Minimalist Living
2. Backpacking: Why Location Independence Was Not For Me
3. Let’s talk about money

How to make an upside-down tomato planter
How to make an Upside-Down Planter
Go Green: Upside Down Planters (re-uses plastic bottles)
Upside Down Gardening

Related posts:

1. Permaculture – Simplifying by Zone: Zone 2
2. Permaculture – Simplifying by Zone: Zone 1
3. Kitchen Composter

Zone 2

Zone 2 is generally considered the garden. It’s an area that we still go to on a regular basis, and that requires our attention in order to thrive. It doesn’t need to be the patch of land to the back of your property – it could be an allotment, or a roof garden. Generally speaking, it’s going to be where the bulk of your food is grown – fruit trees, vegetable plots, chicken huts, and medicinal plants will all be put here. If you don’t have a garden, it might be the deeper pots on your balcony, the window-allotment, or similar. Zones don’t have to be a particular size or shape, and it’s important we don’t prevent ourselves from growing due to a preconceived idea of what a ‘vegetable patch’ looks like.

We can simplify this zone in the following ways:

• Pay attention to the shape of the space, the levels of light, the average temperatures and amount of rainfall, and the type of soil – before you start growing. Grow the types of foods that have always been grown in your area, and don’t try and plant your favourite exotic fruit tree that is going to take lots of time and water to look after.
• Garden to your own level of experience. Start small. There is nothing worse than spending a lot of money on seeds, plants, trellises, pots and special soil and then watching everything die. A tomato plant and some herbs is a garden, and you can make food from it.
• Develop your knowledge of companion plants. Get the plants to do the hard-work for you!
• Share the hard-work with others – start a community allotment, or get the kids involved in the back-garden.
• Perform maintenance work ‘little and often’.

Think about Wildlife

Humans share this planet with a massively diverse range if other life-forms. Due to our overwhelming dominance and cultivation of land, we have driven a lot of these life-forms to the margins, shrinking their numbers daily. Some we outright kill, through serious pesticides that poison far more than just insects. For others, we simply alter their habitat until they starve to death.

Your garden can and should provide a place where wild-animals, insects and birds can live. Encourage the diversity of life, by planting things designed to attract and nourish bees, butterflies, birds, hedgehogs, bats and so on.

Attracting the right sorts of bugs can help keep other bugs in check. For example, ants keep termites away. Ladybugs eat aphids. Birds and hedgehogs eat slugs. Let a natural ecosystem exist, and you won’t have to worry about pesticides and fumigation.

Saving your crops

Of course, if you attract lots of insects and birds, there’s a chance they might devour your hard-won fruit and herbs. Having had last years cabbage plants eaten in their entirety by a hungry pheasant, I know how quickly things can get decimated.

The quickest and easiest way to stop them is to do the following:

• Put netting over young fruit trees and bushes.
• Use physical barriers like raised beds to get them away from birds like ducks and pheasants.
• Grow lots of honeysuckle, and put out bird feeders. Give the birds other things to eat, and they’ll not bother with the fruit.

If anybody else has suggestions, please let me know! Managing pests and predators is one of the biggest challenges in outdoor gardening.

Related posts:

1. Permaculture – Simplifying by Zone: Zone 1
2. Permaculture – Simplifying by Zone: Zone 0
3. Kitchen Composter