Odds are you’re reading this while multitasking. Whether it’s cooking and listening to a podcast or watching TV and scrolling the web, we’re a generation of multitaskers. But is that a good thing?
One person decided it’s not — and their migration away from constant busyness changed their life.
They wrote about it on the subreddit r/minimalism, saying: “I suffered from a burnout earlier this year and it really made me reflect on my life. I used to multitask from the moment I woke up until I fell asleep. This reflected severely on my environment too, as there was always chaos that took me ages to tidy up and brought even more stress.”
They started by “clearing my schedule and limiting the apps on my phone.” And along with their mental decluttering, they looked at their home. “I started to declutter and I threw away 5!! bags of stuff,” they wrote. “I’m living pretty small so it’s baffling to think I even got so many things in here.”
“Might be the biggest change I have ever made,” they shared. “I still have a long way to go, but I am already so relieved I could cry from happiness.”
Commenters congratulated them. “Well done you!” one wrote. “I decluttered hugely and then painted my front room a nice pink, solely because I needed to feel safe and calm. It worked.”
Adopting minimalism doesn’t mean tossing everything you own. Instead, consider whether something is serving a purpose. That plate of your grandmother’s that you don’t often use but makes you smile whenever you see it? That stays. The shirt you haven’t worn in two years but “might need” one day? That can go.
And much of what you declutter can be repurposed. As one commenter shared: “I give usable items I have purged to a friend who runs a Buy Nothing/Mutual Aid group. Everything gets re-homed to people who can benefit directly. It makes decluttering that much sweeter.”
Other than giving to your community, choosing to be even slightly more minimalist means that you’ll save money by buying and wasting less — which has the added benefit of reducing your carbon footprint.
“I never thought that idea would sound appealing to me but defeating the ‘What am I without possessions’ notion of consumerism has been one of the best things I’ve done for my mental health,” one commenter said.
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