8 Easy Steps to a Minimalist Bedroom

All rooms convey a certain vibe or feeling. Some rooms can be quiet and relaxing. Other rooms can be stressful or add anxiety or activity to our days. So today I want to talk about how to declutter your

bedroom

, because if there's one room where the feel or vibe of a room is important, it's the

bedroom

. I can't think of any place in my house that I would want to be more calm, peaceful and rested. Let me walk you through the eight-step process for decluttering your bedroom. Now, the length of each of these

steps

will certainly depend on how quickly you work, how much you want to declutter, and how much you need to get rid of.

But I think if you follow these eight

steps

, one by one, you will love how your bedroom will turn out. So, here we go. Step number one: clarify the purpose of the room in your mind. It's a bit theoretical, but this advice will be very useful to you: that each room in our house serves a certain purpose. It's supposed to accomplish something for us. So when you think about the bedroom, your bedroom is actually there for two reasons: it's there for rest and it's there for privacy. And so I think with that as a thought before you start this process, you can start to ask yourself what items in this room don't contribute to rest or intimacy, and then this is a great place to start getting rid of things.

The second step is this, and it is the most important first step in any room you are going to declutter. Number two: relocate things that don't belong in the room. So what things do you have in your bedroom that don't actually belong there? And I don't know what that's like for you. Maybe you have old boxes stacked in a corner, old books lined up on your nightstand, weights in a corner, computer equipment. I don't know what has accumulated in your bedroom, but if it's not supposed to be there because it doesn't contribute to the purpose of the room, then go grab those items, just grab them and move them wherever.

They are supposed to go in their place. The third step is this: start by cleaning the floors. Then start searching in visible areas. What's on the floor besides furniture? Which I'm even going to mention in a minute, but just look around. Where are the boxes of things that have piled up, the clothes that are lying on the floor, the toys that should never have been there? Start by cleaning the floor. Fourth step: clean surfaces. So, countertops, dressers, shelves...what has accumulated there that doesn't need to be there? Maybe we have decorations, knick-knacks, or a pile of coins, receipts, and keys piled up on the counter.

What are some of these things on surfaces? Now we have done the floors; We have made surfaces. The fifth step is to decide how you are going to use your storage spaces. So, cabinets and drawers. What's going to go in this drawer? What's going to be on this shelf in this closet? And   again, go back to your purpose mindset. What items should be in this drawer? This drawer is for my underwear... this drawer is for my sports clothes, this shelf in my closet is where I'm putting my pants or my sweaters. Be very specific and think carefully: how much space do I need for any item?

How much space do I have in this area? And map your cabinets and drawers to what you're going to put there, and then start sorting items as needed. Number six: scale back your room decor. I know interior design is very personal and everyone wants it to be a little different from everyone else, but let me at least challenge you to consider if there are some things hanging on the walls that don't need to be there, or if there are some things that are hanging on walls that don't need to be there. some decorations that have been collected, I know when we started minimizing our room we had like, um, in one of the corners of the room there were like some shelves, and we had a bunch of stuff on top of the shelves, and I don't know, we got them at Target or something.

Like they didn't mean anything to us and we were like, "I wonder what it would be like if we took them away." So we reduced a lot of decorations and that brought a lot of calm and peace to the bedroom. Number seven: Let me really challenge you to consider getting rid of some furniture. When you move furniture out of a room, it frees up a lot of space and a lot of area. We started minimizing our possessions and decluttering our bedroom (this was 12 years ago) when we first did it and got rid of a ton of clothes and other items, to the point where we had this entire closet in the corner of our bedroom It had a TV and it was full of my clothes.

Well, when we took the clothes out of the closet and drawer, suddenly the clothes that were in this piece of furniture could be put in other spaces in the bedroom. When I was watching TV and thinking, "Well, that doesn't contribute to rest or intimacy in my life," we took out the TV and suddenly we had this big piece of furniture that barely took up any space. So we took it out and I loved how open it made our bedroom feel. We even got rid of the nightstand on my side of the bed for many years, until I got a little older.

But I challenge you: there is probably a lot of furniture in your bedroom that you can remove, so think about doing so. And then the eighth and final step is this: consider how you're using the space under the bed. It doesn't have to be empty, nor does it have to be full of trash. It shouldn't be full of stuff that just collects dust for years and years and years. I often keep the books I read under my side of the bed. I think my wife also has some boxes of sentimental things under her side of the bed.

And then we can be wise and thoughtful and we can use that space well. I hope these steps have been useful to you. We have a comprehensive app called Clutterfree that you can find at clutterfree.com and it offers a step-by-step approach to each room in your home: how to declutter, check off tasks as you go, and track your progress. It's something fun and quite useful. But your bedroom should be a place of calm and it should be a place of peace. You don't need to hire an expert to do it for you. You don't need a complete redesign to make that happen.

Often, just by owning less, you can achieve this. I know you can do it.