Woman Living as an Extreme Minimalist to Save Money & Simplify Life + Small Apartment Tour

I've been a minimalist from being quite young and I've been more of an extreme minimalist the past few years. Living this way on a day-to-day basis does make your day-to-day life run more smoothly. It definitely alleviates stress and it creates a simple, easily tidiable home but perhaps the main benefits for me are the feeling of freedom, the freeing up of time and perhaps more financial freedom. I'd actually like to think that I am quite minimal with everything and currently we actually do only have a bed and a sofa and one little Japandi table but we've got rid of sort of every other piece of furniture that we have. Looking back to two years ago when we first moved into this property, I thought it was incredibly minimal with very few possessions but considering the journey that I've gone on in the past two years, you could say maybe it was quite a lot more possessions but it's always by whose yardstick, you know, what are you comparing it with. When I was younger, growing up we moved quite often and even as a child I got sick of having to pack every time so I think that was probably the foundation of living a minimalist lifestyle unknowingly but my partner has also been a big influence. For instance, when we met and then he came to move in with me, he just brought one bag and I've sort of always liked the idea because of all the moving in my past that you can just sort of get up and move at the drop of the hat and that feeling of freedom of being able to move more easily. So it's been a slow process of getting perhaps more and more extreme and that's definitely been perhaps affected by my environmental concerns as well and it's influenced me to really think about what I consume even more and to do the research about what the impact of that item is, where it's come from and where it ends up because often the stuff has such a large impact that we're not aware of which makes me want to be even more minimalist and think about all the materials I use in my home and that is a really big important part of my minimalist journey. I live in this apartment with my partner, we've been It is 343 square feet and 32 square meters. I live in such a small space because in general the smaller your home the cheaper it is but having said that I think that even if I wasn't in a place of trying to save I would always want to have the most spare income possible to be able to travel so I think I would always be quite frugal there. Our kitchen is only about two meters by two meters and it's really required us to absolutely make the best use of space so it's about making what has to be displayed look nice at least so it doesn't feel like visual clutter and just really orchestrating everything in a way that is sort of visually less clutter to look at. Our living room is for entertainment. I absolutely love and have always loved film and we do have a projector that so even though for many people this sofa as a minimalist seems very huge in such a small space it's perhaps the main focal point of our living room for us as a couple watching films together but I think if I ever was given the chance I would like to give no furniture a go completely. We're not really into formal dining hence not even having a dining table rather we have the little Japandi table which is great for dining from for just two or three people but if we have more guests over than that we have platters in our kitchen which are really chopping boards slash platters and they are great for finger food and little things that people can just snack on and also luckily to do with sort of crockery we pick things that are multifunctional to use like jars that can double up as glasses and cups. We do have a lot of mirrors and it's not because we're walking around vain looking in the mirror all the time it is really to give the illusion that this space is bigger than it than it really is and to reflect light around the space a lot more. Now our bedroom there is not much natural light in there so we have to do our best really and again we have to make the best use of space. We at one point had just a futon on the floor but having limited storage meant that we then had to have other things and sort of rails for storage but recently we've gone back to having a bed so now we can have under bed storage and that is actually our only storage system now it's where my partner and I keep all our personal possessions, clothing, shoes, we have no other furniture at all and rather annoyingly which I often joke about we have a very clumsy water heater in the corner of our room which just houses a water boiler otherwise it would visually look like in our bedroom we had nothing other than a bed and a salt rock lamp. For a while I think an area that I really struggled to become more minimalist was my clothing because living in England obviously we have four quite very different seasons but because I like to travel a lot I also keep things for when I travel but just lately I have really gone down a tangent of really trying to pare things down even more. How do I avoid collecting things? Several ways. I'm often tempted to get things quite a lot but I question first of all where it would go in this very very small home of ours. I question whether I am contributing even more to the consumerist cycle of things. I question whether I really need it and if I think I really need something the strategy is definitely to wait and often I don't need that extra thing and very very occasionally if I am tempted because I'm only human I absolutely have to live by the one in one out rule and I will swap the item for something else. I do actually have quite a lot of hobbies and it's a question that I do often get asked because people are like well where is all the equipment? For instance I absolutely love the Japanese art of Kintsugi. It is when perhaps a piece of ceramic is broken and rebonding it with gold lacquer and you can get just a little pack and I absolutely love doing that for people that have perhaps broken something that they really love and enjoy. I also do quite like just hiking, walking, keeping fit so I actually don't need to keep a lot of equipment for the hobbies I enjoy because they're either things that involve very small things or going out of the house for work. I am an academic writing coach but I also do creative writing and I do work from home. I also am very careful about how I sit, sort of sitting on the floor sometimes and making sure I shift around a lot throughout the day to keep my back in the best possible situation. I also make videos about my lifestyle on YouTube. I have two YouTube channels currently. One is Sage Life Minimalism which is directly about minimalism and decluttering and the second channel Bare Necessities is a little bit of everything. That is a very new channel that I've only just started. This is a long-term lifestyle for me. When I originally embarked on this decluttering journey I thought it was just a means to an end to get down to having less possessions but also so that we could go traveling and emigrate but I've just come to really enjoy having less stuff in my space, feeling like there's more space to move around and now I can simply never imagine going back. Subscribe to Exploring Alternatives and check out our playlists for more videos like this. You can also follow Sage Life Minimalism on YouTube. Thanks for watching!