When I moved into my dorm room last year, it took two cars to drive all my stuff from Minnesota to Colorado, and I soon realized that everything I had packed and wanted in my life at that time wasn’t going to fit in my tiny, little dorm room. I shoved things in drawers and I pushed things far into corners and pockets of space to make everything fit and I still had to send boxes of things home with my parents that just weren’t going to fit. Sharing a small room with someone really made me realized how much stuff I actually had. I never thought about it before because I always had a room to myself for as long as I could remember and I always remember having enough space for everything, but that wasn’t the case anymore. I misunderstood how much I actually needed, I needed something that I didn’t know even existed. I needed minimalism.

Minimalism is a lifestyle choice that has blown up in popularity in the past couple of years. It’s a lifestyle in which someone lives with the smallest amount of things they can and they only own things that serve a purpose to them. I noticed about halfway through my first year that it was so hard to put things away in my closet, whether it was in a cubby or on a hanger, everything was so crammed together that I could barely look at anything I owned.

I’ve recently started to go through this change, but I wasn’t really sure what it was when I started doing it. I just said to myself, “Andi, you have too much stuff, get rid of some of it.” So I slowly started to get rid of clothes and apps on my phone and old documents on my laptop I didn’t need anymore. When it got really hard to keep getting rid of things, I started doing some research, and I slowly realized what I was doing, I was becoming a minimalist. I looked up ideas on Pinterest and Youtube on how to do it better and faster, until I had another realization, it wasn’t going to happen that quickly. I was starting too big, which is why it got hard so quickly.

I started from square one and took care of all the pictures on my phone. I deleted pictures from times so long ago I couldn’t remember them anymore and people I haven’t talked to in years. I discarded everything that had no meaning to me anymore. After that, I took some time to reflect on why I was doing this, and what it was going to do for me. That’s when I started taking care of what my major problem was, my clothing.

I was a shopper in high school, I was living paycheck to paycheck because as soon as I got it, it went straight to new clothes I didn’t need or that didn’t fit me right just because I thought it was cute and I thought I needed it. Well, I didn’t. That’s when I found out what a capsule wardrobe was. Every item of clothes that I owned needed to match a color scheme I had made for myself and specific styles I made for myself. Earthy, neutral, athletic clothing, with the few pairs of jeans in there every now and then. By this time I was working two retail jobs, one at an athletic clothing store and the other at a regular, run of the mill clothing store. That’s when I started shopping again. I got new leggings and new sweaters and tops that I thought I needed just because they matched all the other colors of things I owned and the style I had made for myself. That’s when I started taking minimalism very seriously. I made a few little tips for myself to keep everything on track:

If I ever went to Target or anywhere I needed to go but I would be tempted to buy something I didn’t need, I gave myself one free item I could buy that I didn’t really need, but then I had to get rid of something I already own. If I wanted a new sweater, I had to get rid of one. That wasn’t something I wanted to do, so I never end up buying anything.

I would think of everything in terms of how much it was or how many hours of work it would cost me to get this item. So instead of thinking, “Oh I really need this Nike training shoes,” I would think of it as, “Oh I really need this $95 pair of shoes,” or, “I really need this nine hours worth of work pair of shoes”. It really made me think how much I was really spending and that I really didn’t need it. Putting the price tag right in your face when looking at items really puts my hard work, time, and money into perspective.

If I was buying clothing, which I really wanted to do, I would carry the items around the store and think about five outfits I could make with that item out of things I already own. If I couldn’t think of five or I ended up not liking the item anymore, I would put it back and leave the store. It made it clear to myself that if I spent that money on that piece, it was just going to go to waste in my closet until in six months or a year, I would just get rid of it, which was a waste of money.

Living this way makes it so much easier to clean my room or to get ready in the morning because there’s nothing I don’t need around me. I don’t own any clothes I don’t wear. I don’t own things that are on my desk that I don’t use. It’s easier to do things because I never have to clear off a space to fold clothes or to do homework because there isn’t stuff to clear off. My head is so much clearer as well because I’m not thinking, “Where is this shirt,” “Where is that one paper I need for this class." Everything has a place and everything stays in its place. Everything I own means something to me. From the canvases on my wall made my boyfriend and my big to the pens I have in my cup on my desk when I’m doing homework. I’m still a work in progress with this, but I’m no longer defined by the clutter in my life.