✨ Step Inside My Minimalist Home: Calm, Cozy, and Clutter-Free!

I once was told that there's only three places in the world that you're going to feel like you're at home. While I don't know if that's true or not, what I will say is that minimalism has taught me that it wasn't that I hated this 1960s home that I still live in today. It was that I had stuffed it so full that there was no room for me. Today we're going to take a fun tour of my house. I'm going to show you some of my favorite things and a few of the simple changes that I've made over the past eight years. It's been a long time since I've done one of these. Today I thought it would be fun to do a walkthrough around my minimalist house. The home that we have right now is from the 1960s. She's getting up there, getting a little bit old and showing her age. We have poured in as much love as we possibly could afford and time allotted for. Today as I walk you through my home, I'm going to be showing you my favorite areas either of organization or just the natural feel of the room. Whether you get inspiration from it or not, I hope you enjoy this journey. I couldn't start any house tour without starting with my favorite place in my home, which is my entryway. It's the first thing that we walk into and it is the most useful place that we have in our home. There's a couple reasons why. Right behind me you can see the hooks that I hang my bag on. You'll also see my daughter's book bags on there and my husband's bag when they're not at school. They have a home and they have a visual home for me so that I'm not constantly forgetting to grab my purse on the way out the door. The other big things that I really like about this area in particular is where I put my keys and my mail and also this little basket that holds a lot of our essentials, but also it's just a great dropping place for those things that we might find in our pockets, but we don't know where to put them. They're no longer just laid everywhere around our house. In this area, my husband and I both have ADHD, so we need all the visual cues to put this little whiteboard on the door that tells us when to take out the trash and the recycling and honestly, it really helps. The other thing I love in this space is the wet shoe container rack mat that we have right next to the door because we use it almost every day. It is constantly raining here in Virginia where I live and so having a place to put those wet shoes before we put them away in the closet means that I'm not having to go through a million towels in order to dry up and clean up the floors every day when we come in with wet shoes. In our entryway closet though, we have done something that I love and that is we took out the main big coat bar that was in the middle and that's done a few things. In putting in hooks around the outside of the closet, it always makes the closet feel a little bigger and you might not be able to tell, but this is a really small closet and so we try to put our own jackets and coats on each side of the closet so that when you open it up, you're not bombarded with coats, but also when we have guests over, there's always a place open to put their jacket. We also have shoes down at the bottom so whenever they're dried off, we put them right here by the door. So that defeats the whole running around in the morning looking for the right shoe, which used to happen to us all the time, especially with my daughter's shoes, but we created a very specific home for our shoes to go and then over here at the top, we have three baskets. Now these baskets are really important. One of them, because we love our games in this house, is our game bin. That gives us a limit to the amount of games we can have because we have a box or container for it. Then we also have a catch-all. You know those things that you need when you need them and you might need them every couple of days, but not every day? That's what I call zone two. This is basically my zone two area and in that basket, I'll have anything from our jump stock to our travel bag that we use whenever we're camping or we're going at St. Dominion. We also have our dog leashes in there and my older dog's diapers. He's 14, so he needs those now. And so those are all right there in that basket, easy to access, but also in a container so it reminds me when it gets too full that I need to do something about it. And the last one is just for all of our hats, our gloves, our scarves. And I'll say in the beginning, I had a basket for each one of us when it came to hats and scarves. It was too much for me to keep up with. So one basket actually can contain all three of our things. And like I said, again, gives us a limit. All right, so I'll give us a couple of different angles so that you can see my living room a little better. Love this couch. You guys asked me about it, but it was from Wayside Furniture in Virginia. I don't think they have them everywhere. I think it's kind of a local thing, but that's where this white couch is from. And I love this couch because you can take all of the cushions off and wash them. Even though it is a light color, they do wash out pretty well. And I actually got one of these lint things that catches the lint and it has worked really well on this couch. Then I also have this chair right here, which was gifted because my parents didn't want it anymore. They had upgraded the chair that they had. And I don't know if I'm in love with it. I've only had it for a couple of months, so we're kind of feeling out if it works in this room or not. But it is actually really nice to have one extra place to sit in this room because this is the place that we normally meet our guests and have everyone over. So it's been nice to have one extra spot. And then table, flat surface areas in here. I have taken out so many side tables, so we don't have any anymore. And all I have is one small circle table. Now I've heard from you guys before. I know it's not the perfect table. I know it's not the perfect color. I kind of wish it had a color to it so it doesn't match the floors, but what I have. So that's, you know, remember that this is not a million dollar home. This is a very average home. So I'm working with what I have. And the table behind that my husband actually made because he is extremely talented when it comes to woodworking. And so we have this beautiful behind the couch table that I'm sure will stay with me for probably the rest of my life because I absolutely love it. All right, moving around my room. Honestly, I don't love having this massive TV right here. That wouldn't have been my choice, but I do live with other people and that's my husband's choice. And so what you'll have to realize is that this house is always a collection of compromises. And so he really wanted that. But I love the shelving. And actually, some of you guys gave me a great idea to paint the silver hardware black. And I think that's a great idea when I have the time and energy for it. Probably this summer I will go ahead and do that. I really like that idea. But I love these shelving. And I know there are parts of the shelves that have nothing on them. And I don't mind that because for my brain, it's kind of a resting place. When I have too much going on, when it comes to decor on the walls or on the shelves, my mind is constantly racing. But I love this bottom shelf because it does hold the stuff that we want to keep out. When it comes to holiday stuff around Christmas, we always use it. So I keep it and I like it. That's basically the only reason I have for it. Decor-wise, I'll give you a recommendation. So something that I really like doing is the decor that I keep out is all very sentimental to me. So it's either things that I've gotten when we travel, like this came from Copenhagen, or the pictures that I have, this one was from when we went to Naples. And that was my daughter in Positano. So all things that are giving me these happy, joyous memories, reminding me of things. I also have, one second, so I recently had asked Jordan's aunt to do a portrait of my daughter. And so I gave her a picture, which this is my favorite picture, and she did a beautiful drawing of my daughter. And so of course, that is going to stay out in a very special place in our living room. And this is where Biscuit spends most of his days, sleeping right here in the corner. Day-day! He doesn't hear very well anymore, so he probably won't ever get up. So quickly before I leave this area, I have to tell you guys that this is one of the best things in this area, and that is my decluttering bin slash catch-all. If you don't have one near your door, I highly recommend it. Right now it's holding two gifts that I need to get out this weekend, so parties we're going to. But it also holds anything that I find around my house during the day that I realize I want to declutter, I have a place to put it. But also if you ever have to return anything, or you have something that belongs to someone else that needs to go back, I always put it in that bin. And so because it's by the door, it's that constant reminder I need in order to not just walk out the door and forget it time and time again. All right, I wanted to bring us down here where the lighting is still okay, because this area can get kind of dark. But over here is kind of the office central area for my husband. And I really like it now because it is so simple. We used to have this huge oversized desk that we really weren't using. And I love this much smaller desk that holds everything, but it keeps it very simple in one small corner. And it leaves us this big open space in the middle, which I know it just seems so weird to have this big open space, but it's actually really nice. We end up playing soccer down here sometimes. And over here, of course, we have our dehumidifier because it can get gross down here. It's kind of like a basement, this is a tri-level, so it can get sticky down here. So this thing works for us most of the day, but my husband is a bit of a computer person, so there are two screens, there's a bunch of technology going on over there. And this is the perfect place to thank today's sponsor, which is HOGO, the app that basically protects your privacy, your credit, and your money. And listen, I know I'm a mom with ADHD, so I need things to be simple and rewarding, and HOGO totally gets that. 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If you're ready like I was to protect your privacy, clean up your credit, and actually get rewarded for being smart with your money, click the link in the description or scan the QR code on the screen for a free trial. Go declutter your digital life today. So this area of my home, like our den, our hangout area at night, and it has slowly improved over time. Like I said, this is not a huge mansion. This is a very normal-sized house, and we do have to change things over time when we save that money for them. So the couch is relatively new. We really wanted something that would fit all of our family and our friends when we had people over. And the couch we had before had a massive rip in it, and so it was not functioning in the way we needed. And this has been a huge bonus for us. We really enjoyed having more space. My husband, again, built a little coffee table in the middle, so we have a place to put down our drinks and things like that, but not any excess furniture beyond what we really need because flat surfaces, I found, are my enemy. They're just one more thing for me to have to keep up with and dust. We have a couple things over here that I really like, like the basket in the corner that's supposed to hold all the dog toys, but as you can see, it's not something that I've been able to teach them how to put them away yet. So we're going to get to that hopefully one day, but that's over in the corner. In this chest over here that actually was my husband's grandfather's, we have a bunch of things in there, but mainly it holds our very important documents in a fireproof box that we have that fits perfectly down there at the bottom. Real quick before we go, I told you I'd tell you my favorite things, and one of them includes this electric plug-in fireplace kind of thing. If you have a fireplace and you're like me and you can't use it right now for whatever reason, this one plugs in and it's great because it does put off some heat and it also has this little glow at night, so if you don't want the heat, you can still kind of see the glow of the logs and that's just really, really interesting and fun. So unfortunately in the bathroom, it is so dark at this time, so I'm going to stand out here, but don't worry, I'm going to show you all about the bathroom right behind me. It's basically like my husband's bathroom. It's where he normally showers and does his stuff, but it's also the bathroom that we did the most renovations, which I absolutely love. So when we first moved into this older home, somebody had thought it would be a great idea to do all of the tile like different colors of doo-doo brown, which if you know anything about a bathroom, not exactly the colors that I think most of us would like to have in a bathroom, so the fun part is that we ended up ripping out all of the tile and I absolutely loved it. I did AmeriCorps when I was 17 over the summer and I went to Louisiana right after Hurricane Katrina and I got to demolish the inside of all of these homes that were destroyed to help out the people down there and so I knew already going into it that I was going to love the demolition phase and I did, but Jordan ended up putting up this beautiful white billboard, backboard, backing board, I don't know what it's called, but anyway, this beautiful white board and then a really nice trim. We actually just used wood and then we painted over it and then one of my favorite things that I got were these little knobs that we used for our towels that are in there. The bathroom just looked really, really cute, I think. Even the mirror was not originally there. My husband did a built-in so that we could have some storage and then that mirror was just a regular mirror that I think I got really, really cheap at a thrift store and he put some slides on it, which you can do the same thing if you just go to like your local hardware store, they have things like those little slides and it works perfectly and so you probably are getting a pretty good vibe of what our style is right now and the fact that we do most of our jobs ourselves over time when we can save the money, which I think is probably the best idea for a lot of us. It's amazing the things that I have learned over this process of owning a house and now the things that I can feel really confident in doing myself or with a little bit of help, but the curtains that are in there, I wanted to mention real quick because I also have the same curtains upstairs in my bathroom, which I'll show you, but I love these curtains because they're just, I think my grandma calls them like flower cloths or something and they're very, very cheap. You can find them everywhere, but these have been the best curtains in this bathroom. I think I got all four flower sacks for under like five dollars and so they're very economical and then the little clips I just got online, they were also very cheap and those I've had for years now, so they have lasted a really long time. I just throw them in the wash whenever we need to and so what I do recommend is that if you are having to put any kind of curtains or blinds into your bathroom, make them the easiest possible to clean and you might actually clean them and you'll see this same theme in my bathroom upstairs when we go up there in just a minute, but I don't have any decor in my bathroom. I used to have a lot and then when we redid this bathroom, I realized that I was already starting my minimalist journey and I knew that more decor wasn't going to help the situation, so that's why I wanted to add like the little beautiful knobs and make the whole space as pretty as possible without having to add any kind of decor that I was then going to have to go back and clean or take care of when I never really want to be in the bathroom anyway, right? This, friends, is my dining room. I want to talk to you a little bit about some changes I've made to make my life easier. First thing that I changed when I decided to become more minimal was I took a lot of the decor down on the walls. There used to be some big mirrors. Every wall had something, so when I came in here, I was constantly reminded of having to do one more thing, straighten something, dust something, fix something, and so I didn't feel the ease and peace in this room that I thought I would and the decor I ended up keeping are both sentimental. When it comes to sentimental items for me, I like to have those things out as much as possible. If I have something that I want to keep in my house, I want to make sure that I'm able to enjoy it on a daily or weekly basis, so I'm really seeing the use in the objects that I'm keeping. But another thing that I had to learn was my husband made this beautiful table behind me, and while I absolutely love this big table that can fit all sorts of people around it, what I found is that it often became very cluttered with a bunch of stuff, and because of that, we often ended up eating in the living room. But when I started to think about this table as a barrier island, it helped me to pay more attention to the fact that I was just dropping things here because it was a large flat surface, and when it came time for dinner, it was too much for me to have to come in and clear everything off or ask my family to clear everything off before we would eat because we would just get way too hungry to do all of that, so you might be the same. And so when I started to constantly reset this table throughout my day, I find that it's much more pleasant at the end of the night to have our dinners here, to have our game nights at this table. The other big thing that I had to change, even within this last year, was I had gotten some chairs for free, and wishful thinking, I thought, for sure I'm going to go and I'm going to sand them all down, I'm going to paint them, and I'm going to reupholster them. Well, guess who didn't do that? And finally, after a few months, I just realized it was not in the cards for me. It was beyond my threshold for the things that I was going to be able to do, and so I got rid of those. I researched the best quality and the price range that I could afford, and these have actually held up really well. I love that they have wooden bottoms. I love that they have a little cushion, but the cushion can easily be wiped off. It's not like fabric like the other chairs I had, so I'm not having to worry. If we spill things on these, I don't have to have a panic. And on the spill train, I will say the other big thing that I really like about this room is that I no longer have a rug in here. We are so fortunate that I have beautiful 1960s hardwood floors, and I was constantly covering them with rugs, and where I don't hate rugs, the dining room was such a headache for me to have a rug in. If you have a rug in your dining room, you can probably relate to what I'm saying, but I didn't have one of those easy washable rugs even. It was a rug that I constantly had to scrub and clean after almost every meal. If you have little kids or even you're a sloppy eater like myself, you know the struggle. And so removing that rug was just one more very easy way to simplify my life. And so now it is just a quick wipe down, and I'll set my vacuum to go, and that's it. I'm so excited to show you guys my kitchen because we do have some new upgrades, so let's go check it out. All right, we're going to start with some things that I don't necessarily love and work our way up to the super positive. That's where my brain is right now. So in this kitchen, we have much older cabinets. These are a Ridge 1960 cabinet, and if you live in an older home, you know all the feels about it. And where these are solid wood, so I'm not complaining at all. When we first moved into this house, we did paint them white, and we did it ourselves. I don't necessarily think I would ever do that again. It was quite the process. For me, they're just really not my style, but on the list of things that need to get done, these are not even close to the top. And so we're just going to be living with them and grateful that they're at least here. The inside of the cabinets, we also didn't paint because we were not there. I was so late. I think I was like seven months pregnant when we were painting these cabinets, so it was not going to happen. The upgrades that we have done that I absolutely love are the countertops and our sink, and we recently just put in new flooring, and I could not be more grateful. Now, what I will say about this whole process in our kitchen is that I think a lot of us will watch these beautiful minimalist YouTube videos, and they're so inspirational. That's why I still like to watch them, but we forget the fact, because nobody says it, that most of us, this has to be a process. Most of us are not living in million, multimillion-dollar houses, and so we can't just flip everything in one day. Keep that in mind. This was an eight-year process of saving, doing it ourselves, and taking our time. The countertops, I love. I wasn't sure about butcher blocks. I thought it would be really complicated to deal with, but they're so simple if you just take care of them and oil them. And then the sink, honestly, I don't know. The snob came out of me, and I don't know if I could ever live without my beautiful farmhouse sink again, and I love it because it's big. It's open. It's so easy to wash all your dishes all at once or do those big pans at night, and so that completely spoiled me, but more recently, we upgraded some of our appliances. We had an original fridge. We had a very, very old microwave from I think when we got married years ago, and then the dishwasher was broken. A couple months ago, there was a big sale, and we ended up being able to buy all of these. So grateful for them. I've realized with minimalism that I think I just appreciate the small little things so much more than I ever did when I just bought and bought whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Yes, it was fun, and it was easy, and it was a nice dopamine hit, but the satisfaction of researching what you really want, taking your time to save for it, and then when it finally gets there and you get to see it all in place gives me so much more satisfaction than when I was just buying without ever thinking about it. So moving over here, I wanted to show you underneath my sink because that is something that I changed probably six or seven months ago, and I love it. I used to have these baskets, which did work, and that's why I kept them for so long, but now I have this under the cabinet, two drawers that are on top of each other. I love it. It turned a basket, which often was just jam-packed with a bunch of stuff, into feeling much more organized and put together. At the top, it's kind of my basic necessities, scissors, tape, the lighter for our candles, and then at the bottom is all our cleaning supplies and the trash bags. So everything has a place and a space, and it's easy for me to just pull it out and grab exactly what I need. And comparing my old kitchen to today, it has been a drastic, huge change, but it wasn't overnight. There was no massive declutter day that changed my life. It was simple things that I did over time, like taking all of the dishes out of the cabinet, only leaving enough for the three of us plus one, and putting everything else up in a closet upstairs, and then slowly bringing things back that I found that I was looking for. That process really helped me to better understand why I cling to things like extra dishes, extra plates, fancy plates that only come out at Christmas. There's nothing wrong with that. I just found that I was clinging to things that even when the opportunity came, I very rarely remembered that I had them because I had so much that I couldn't find those things anyway. I don't know if you can relate to that at all, but that was how my brain was working. This is our family bathroom. This is the heart of every morning and every evening. And so when it didn't function, it was a misery to be in here. So I'm going to talk about some big highlights, things that I really appreciate about this bathroom that have nothing to do with the fantastic aquatiles or the original tub that's still in this bathroom. One of the main areas that was not working in this home was the bathroom, and it was mainly this area. All the flat surface because it was constantly covered with stuff. Everything from toothpaste to lotion to my makeup, everything was just left on top of this flat surface. So it made coming into this bathroom to clean it or do anything else that we might need to do an absolute misery and very overwhelming. One of the things I ended up doing was taking everything off the flat surface and putting them in the two drawers that are attached to this original feature here in our bathroom. And simplifying that storage space. So when I started with a bunch of small baskets, it wasn't working. It was too hard to know what basket should have what and what things should go together. So I did something I like to call lazy organization. Use the one larger basket to hold my medicine and lotions and my makeup. And then one more basket holds my husband and I's toothbrush and our toothpaste. Taking them off this flat surface meant that when I came in here, it was very easy to keep it clean and to wipe it down. This is another thing that I like in this kitchen bathroom, and that is this tray. Because a tray does something really magical that I had no idea about before. But a tray makes a bunch of smaller things look like one big thing to our brain. So that magic allows us to take a few things that would feel maybe a little overwhelming to us visually and make it look like one thing, which makes the things that you need to keep out look much more put together and organized. In my closet, I did something really special that I wanted to show you in case it helped you as well. And that is my closet is full of closed baskets. Now, I don't use this idea everywhere, but it helped me in the bathroom because it was a place that I was constantly over buying things and then not realizing that I'm not using them because I pushed them to the back of this big closet. And so the first thing that these baskets helped me to do is not to lose those things that I was looking for digging through the back of the closet. And the next thing that it helped me to do was to have a limit for the amount of things that I can keep. So the medicine cabinet, the toys for my daughter's bath, the hair products, everything has to fit in a basket. And I put a lid on it, which is completely optional. But the lid helps my amazing ADHD brain to remember that when the lid doesn't fit anymore, it is time to do a declutter. It's time to look through these things. The baskets also do something else that's kind of magic for me, and that is allows me to recognize my threshold for clutter. And that basically means for me as a human, how much clutter, how many things can I be in charge of and still feel like can keep up and take care of all of these things. And where my threshold for clutter probably is a lot lower, especially than I used to be. Not everyone's is the same as me. This idea has allowed me to live in my threshold because I found my comfort zone. And so I do not buy any more baskets than what I have. And it's an amazing feeling to feel like you are in charge and you are capable of taking care of your things. So this is my office area. Plus, it is an area where I keep things that I'm not sure if I should declutter yet or not. So it's kind of like my maybe bin area as well. And the great thing in here is that I've done little upgrades. I even did a whole video about how I did a small upgrade in this room, and I love it. But it's not anything big, overwhelming. The bed right now, unfortunately, the sheet is being washed. So it's not on there right now. But really, it's just where my dog likes to hang out a lot. And something that I really like that I've done in this room is I have a basket for all of my things for my work. And I love having everything contained in one specific area. Where I used to have everything kind of scattered out on this desk, I no longer have to do that. Everything at the end of the day when I am done working can go in this basket. So if you either work from home or you find an area that maybe have a lot of craft supplies, things that you like to work on, and you just find it to be very overwhelming, try one of these baskets. The great thing about this is that it has handles. So if I want to work downstairs or in another room, I can just easily pick it up, grab it, and move it with me. But it also gives me a boundary again, right? A boundary of I don't want to have so much that explodes out of this basket. And when it does, I'm getting that visual cue that it's time to declutter it. So right now, my daughter is thinking about decluttering these two things right here. And so they're still in this bin until she's ready to declutter them. And then we have our camping stuff, our travel gear. And then up at the top, we have a bin that has all of our birthday bags and tissue paper. They all have to go in that bag. And then there's some of my work stuff again in that other basket. So we have reached one of my favorite rooms in the house, and that is our bedroom. And the big reason why this is one of my favorite rooms is because it has so little in it. And doesn't that sound weird? As a previous shopaholic, somebody who loved decorating every back of my house, it is so weird to say now that when I have less decor, I have so much more peace. I have my favorite plant in the corner. For my birthday, my husband and daughter bought me these baskets, which are drawers for all of our clothes. So we don't have any kind of dresser in this room. And the bed, I know it is big, but we are in love with it. My husband actually built the bottom area of our bed. So it's gorgeous. It was exactly what I wanted. And then the side tables, a lot of you guys have asked before. Those were also built by my husband. But honestly, I could probably ask him how he built them. And he could tell you because I think he built both of them in like a day or two. It was a very simple design. I love that they don't have any drawers because I am the queen of just stuffing a drawer and then forgetting what I have in there. And so I have to pay close attention to what I put in this side table. And it allows me to be more cognizant of what I'm doing. So I always have a hair scrunchie for my hair at night. And I always have a chapstick and then, you know, the charger for my phone and my watch. And that's it. I don't go beyond that because I'm being constantly visually told not to. And I think that is fantastic. Now in our closet, no, it is not absolutely perfect. It could probably use a little more help. But I really like that all the baskets go together. I like that they're a calm color. And my husband likes to hang all his ties right there. And then we have a couple of hooks for some of our basic essentials we use all the time. The other thing that I do really like about this closet is that we had one really long bar in here. And instead of that, which was not working for us, my husband put two poles on either side for us to hang up our clothes from top and on bottom. And so we have plenty of room to hang all of the things that we want. And another suggestion that I really like in my home in particular is that we use all the same hangers. And so over time, this was not an overnight thing. But over time, as our old ones didn't work anymore, weren't functioning, we ended up replacing them with just these wooden ones. But they don't have to be wood. They could just be all like the velvet or all whatever you happen to like. But I have found that visually it looks a lot more pleasing and it works a lot better when they're all the same design and look. You can see currently Blue is sleeping. Hello, Blue. Oh, he's really out. We have the dog stairs that we got from my old dog that you guys saw downstairs. He's 14 now. His name's Biscuit. And then, you know, my closet is not perfect. We have done small things over time like this closet that have really improved the way that it functions. Putting in these shelves has really helped. I also keep the majority of my jewelry in this basket right here. I can link those baskets if you're interested in them. And then, yeah, that's it. That's our closet. All right, friends. So those are the big hot areas around my house that you will see if you watch any of my videos. And so I hope that you've enjoyed this little walkthrough. If you have any questions about what I use or why, please put them down below. I know I love talking about it and love hearing y'all's ideas. By no means do I think that this is a perfect house, but it does work and function a lot better for my family. And that's really all that matters, right? So if you've enjoyed this video and you want to learn a little bit more, then please click on one of these videos right here. And I wish you guys all the very best.