Managing a home doesn’t have to mean being constantly exhausted. It might mean that for you right now, but I promise you can create a system that allows room to breathe, time to rest, and the space to truly enjoy your day rather than running yourself to exhaustion.
And let me tell you: The problem isn’t you.
It’s the volume. Too much stuff, too many tasks, too many commitments, too much pressure.
The good news is, I also have the solution: Minimalism.
Minimalist principles can make your home life smoother, saner, and genuinely enjoyable. Let’s talk about it.
Why traditional home management systems often fail.
Most methods assume unlimited time and energy! None of us have either of those! It seems that these traditional systems often focus on doing more, rather than on creating routines that give us less to manage.
Another issue I’ve noticed is that mental load and emotional labor go wholly unaddressed. There are many layers–physical, emotional, and mental–to be considered in daily routines and home management. Ignoring the emotional toll doesn’t make it go away.
The minimalist approach to home management.
The minimalist approach to managing a home focuses on making things easier. Instead of piling on new tasks to “perfect” our home, we work to simplify things.
Instead of “organizing” everything that’s here, or buying hundreds of dollars worth of “storage solutions,” a minimal home management system aims to reduce first and organize later. Organization becomes miles easier by simply reducing the number of items there to organize.
A (good) minimalist approach also focuses on creating routines that work with your energy, rather than working against it or assuming you have an unlimited source of it.
These systems are flexible–not perfectionist. They’re malleable to form around you and your lifestyle, rather than demanding you to swim upstream. Swim against the current long enough, and you drown.
If you’ve decided that you’re ready to have fewer things you don’t need, a peaceful living space, and a dining table you can actually eat at, then minimalist living might be for you.
Key areas of your life to simplify.
In most households, these are the four main areas that we can aim to simplify. These will help you to keep a clean house easily, with less clutter, fewer maintenance tasks, and more time to spend on fun and family.
Physical clutter.
When we have less physical stuff around us, cleaning and maintaining the home become SO easy. Most people are completely amazed at how easy a clutter-free home is to manage.
Another benefit of reducing physical clutter is that we stop feeling the need to buy so much, too. This saves time and money!
Routines.
Managing a house involves many moving parts–meal planning, laundry, cleaning schedules. Add on top of that childcare, maybe you homeschool, maybe you’ve got backyard chickens.
Some people go about this blind–they jog through their day and do whatever is in front of them that needs to be done.
Others plan ahead with specific times and days they do certain tasks.
A routine can be simple, or it can be complex. Each additional child ups the complexity. A limited budget ups the complexity. Pets, a strained relationship, a physical or mental disability, food or housing insecurity… Every household is so unique in its challenges, that it would be impossible for me to create a routine for you that meets all your needs. That means you have to do it.
But you don’t have to do it alone! The resources at the end of this article will guide and support you through this transformation.
Paper clutter and digital overwhelm.
Paper clutter is its own special little nightmare. I find that it takes the average person several days just to deal with the paper clutter that’s already in their home. It’s essential to create a system for dealing with paper as it enters the house. The longer you let it pile up, the more daunting the task becomes.
Similarly, we’re overwhelmed in our digital spaces, too. Managing files, photos, apps, contact information, educational content, and much more is easy to put off–again, creating a pile that’s too intimidating to deal with easily.
Family systems.
And the last area to focus on is your family system. This could include morning and evening routines, chores charts, teaching your children vital skills, learning to collaborate, and more.
A household is easier to manage and happier to live in when everyone pulls their own weight, rather than dropping all the burden on one person.
Mental load and invisible work.
Moms (in most cases) have an incredible ability to strategize, plan, and execute household operations on several levels. They also, unfortunately, have a disease where they think other people should notice the effort that goes in behind the scenes.
I understand the struggle of juggling cooking, cleaning, keeping the children alive, keeping flowers blooming in the front yard, remembering to get the oil changed, and everything else under the sun. It’s a lot of work, and that work is mostly thankless.
Kids are selfish. That’s just developmentally appropriate for growing humans. It helps them to survive. Empathy is learned behavior, and it can take some people decades to learn it.
Many stay-at-home moms/homemakers have husbands, and husbands are talented at being completely oblivious of things, even if you say it out loud, to their face, alongside a PowerPoint presentation.
My point is: Your mental load won’t lessen unless you name it, share it, and offload it where possible.
Unfortunately, this probably means explaining what “mental load” even means to your family. It might take several conversations, but you have to have those conversations. And for some, maybe you also have to have a divorce. If that’s where you end up, that’s also what needed to happen, and (in my opinion) it’s better to get that over with sooner rather than later. Holding things together “for the kids” is a myth. Children are more perceptive than you think, selfishness considered.
So step one to lowering your mental load is to explain and express yourself to your family and housemates. Give them the opportunity to scoop up some of the burden.
Step two is decluttering. It’s a great way to reduce the decisions, mental noise, and visual stimulation in your home. How you approach it depends on your home, family, and situation–but if you do it, you’ll feel better. I promise.
And lastly, give yourself permission to not “do it all”.
Is everyone fed? Are the kiddos physically, emotionally, and mentally tended to? Do they have clean socks? Great, you did it. Sometimes we leave the house a mess. Sometimes we let the kids drop out of soccer because they hate it and you hate driving them to practice.
You don’t have to do everything. Come to terms with that and give yourself permission to not feel guilty about it.
Simple systems that SUPPORT you, not punish you.
Often, I find my home organization clients think a system/routine is a thing that is awful. They may willingly employ and stick with them, but the systems they create don’t make their lives gentler.
A home system should HELP you. It shouldn’t just add something to your chore list.
Examples of light-touch routines.
You can implement easy, helpful routines that keep a minimalist home functional without sapping all of your energy. Here are a few ideas and tips.
A 15-minute daily reset at the end of the night can keep your house clutter-free and nice to look at. If you’ve got other people leaving stuff out in common areas–like toys and art projects–this could be a household routine. In just fifteen minutes, you can clear the coffee table, dining room table, kitchen counters, and floors of clutter. Maybe you even have time for a quick wipe-down of those newly cleared surfaces. That will make a HUGE difference waking up the next morning.
Weekly resets are simple chore lists for those weekly tasks that help you stay on top of things so you can avoid the hard work, like scrubbing the bathroom for two hours, or soaking and re-washing clothing because you forgot them in the washer.
You can use visual cues to help yourself out. In my house, the kitchen trash gets put out on the same day that the garbage bin is supposed to go to the curb, so I have a visual cue in my kitchen and never forget trash day.
Checklists help, because you can make (or download) them in advance so you can follow the same routine instead of reinventing it anew.
Batching tasks helps things run smoothly and get done faster. The key benefits of task batching includes less decision fatigue, fewer task-switching costs, and more effective focus.
Establish your “just enough” standard vs. perfection. Effective home systems reset your house to less-stress functionality. It doesn’t have to be ready for Instagram from any angle. Determine where you feel comfortable.
Supportive tools and resources to create a minimalist home.
Now here are those resources I mentioned that will help you on your journey to creating a more minimalist house and routine.
Reading materials.
- The Minimalist Kitchen: 23 Beginner-Friendly Ideas & Tips
- Beginner’s Guide To Minimalism
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
Comprehensive guides.
- Home Heal: De-Stress Your Space (a 30-day course designed to tame a chaotic house)
- Clutter Busting Chore Charts (don’t worry about making your own chore chart–we’ve done it for you!)
- Ten Minutes To Minimalism (ten-minute missions to effortlessly transform your home)
Taking the time to simplify and declutter your space serves multiple purposes–it gives you fewer things to organize, less stuff you need to shift and shuffle to clean around, and just less to think about. I truly recommend a minimalist home for individuals and families who feel stressed and overwhelmed by daily functions.
And I want to support you however I can, so here’s a freebie you can download now: 30 Day Guide To Minimalism–checklists, instructions, and a decluttering calendar.
