- I personally have had times
where I became attached to all my items,
and my closets were overflowing
with stuff that I didn't really need.
Every item was painful for me to throw away,
because I've always imagined a future scenario
where I might need it or really miss it.
Now imagine going through every single item
that you have with a very critical eye,
and getting rid of any item that isn't a 'Hell yasss'.
Lately, I've been inspired by Marie Kondo.
I read her book, 'The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up',
where she teaches you that every item that doesn't elicit
joy in your life can be removed for a much cleaner
and happier existence.
When I first read the book I got rid
of six garbage bags of stuff.
But slowly it's been building up over time,
and it's time for another reboot.
Watching other YouTubers like Matt D'Avella,
it's super inspiring to see how far minimalism can be taken,
and the beauty in having less.
So this month my challenge is to simplify my life
and be minimal.
I want to build a life of instead of always wanting more,
I'm cutting back to having less and really appreciating
everything that you have in your life.
It's time to minimalize.
(upbeat electronic music)
I'd consider myself to be a pretty neat and tidy guy.
During my morning routine challenge I really took
to cleaning my room and getting my space really clean,
and I loved it, and I felt more productive.
And now, 'cause it was New Year's Eve
I did do a little bit of partying.
I went to a music festival, and so the state of my room
is even worse than it usually is.
Which is even better to be doing this minimalism challenge.
I've got these drawers
filled with drawings, photos, memories.
I just have stuff, a watch that I got for my birthday,
a present from my Mom.
A VR headset, that's pretty cool,
got that for Christmas last year.
I bulk-buy greeting cards because you never know
when you need a greeting card.
My closet is pretty messy.
This is a lot of stuff.
I try to throw out things,
but somehow I have a lot of things.
Bathroom is in a bit of disarray.
Got a little bit too many things going on.
I got juggling balls from my juggling challenge.
Some more stuff.
Don't even know, 'Max's Interesting Things'.
So, this is old toys.
This is funny.
At school I was like, a bit silly,
and I thought it would be funny
to bring only one pencil to school
and it was this giant pencil.
And it'd be like, we can't confiscate it,
'cause I can't take any notes.
I once accidentally took the spoon
that you use to serve lollies from the cinemas.
I just accidentally took it, so I just thought,
well I've got it now I should keep it.
Sticky hands, how good are these?
Sticky hands are so good, 'Snapper Koala'.
A pen with an FM radio in it.
(laughs) A phone that clearly is gonna get used a lot.
Pretty cool stuff, not gonna lie.
I'm excited to go through all of this stuff.
So you might have seen in previous videos
some of the stuff in my house.
This huge basketball game, which gets used,
but I don't know if it's the best use of space.
We have a ball pit.
We threw a party once, we thought it would be cool
to have a ball pit, so now we have a ball pit and it just
sits there taking up a lot of space.
We've got just random things.
Inflatable swan, a cupboard that's just overflowing.
Let's keep going through. Kitchen.
This is our lost and found.
So you can see that there's a lot of things in my house.
The goal this month is just to remove, remove, remove.
Oh look, this is another thing from a house party.
A big spinning wheel.
A lot of things you acquire,
you might use a couple of times.
Hopefully, that gives you an idea of where I'm at currently
and where I can get to.
So let's start minimalizing things.
The first thing that I did
was just tidy up my environment.
And I tried to put every item in the place
where it's meant to be.
But I was aware that it was probably gonna get worse
before it gets better.
Three, two, one (finger click)
(triumphant organ) Ta-da!
So I'm gonna start off with clothes.
I'm just gonna pick an item of clothing,
bring it all out on the bed, and then start moving stuff.
This is every T-shirt and singlet that I own.
Seems like a lot.
I'm gonna go through everything and figure out
how many do I actually need?
Fold them up, make it neat, and then go from there.
So with the KonMari method
she suggests to go over an entire category
and not necessarily a location.
I started with all of my T-shirts.
But putting them all out in-front of you,
you can see how many T-shirts do you actually have?
And of these, how many do you actually use?
What's the total number of T-shirts
that you need in your life?
So these are all of the T-shirts that I'm keeping.
These are my grey ones, these ones are white,
these ones are black, these are gym ones.
And then these T-shirts are sentimental to me
because I actually used to design T-shirt designs.
So this is one of my designs, very faded out.
This is another T-shirt design
that I sold to a T-shirt company.
I just like to have a couple of T-shirts to go to sleep in.
So these ones are all being kept.
And then all of this is being donated.
So a lot more stuff than I would have thought.
And this is only T-shirts.
So using that same method I started going through
all of my clothing, and I started
getting each category-by-category.
And it was great to just see everything
and start discarding, reflecting on really how much stuff
that I truly had, and how much do I actually enjoy.
So I've basically gone through all my clothes now.
I already was relatively minimal with clothes.
Clothes were something that I'm pretty good at.
Yet I still had quite a lot to get rid of.
These two bags are being donated, giving one jumper away
to a friend, and this is trash.
So three garbage bags, pretty good.
I think clothes is gonna be one of the easier one for me.
It's gonna start getting harder when it comes into, like,
sentimental, and stationery, and bathroom, and kitchen.
For my 21st birthday I had a dress-up party
and the dress-up was mixing formal and fun.
You could wear a shirt with thongs,
or something formal and casual at the same time.
I dressed up literally 50-50 down the middle.
Like, T-shirt and shorts on one side,
and then tie and suit on the other side.
And my Mum and the girl that I was seeing at the time
helped stitch this together for me.
We bought a suit from the op-shop
that we completely dismantled.
I kind of love this costume.
It's absolutely ridiculous,
but it's kind of beautiful at the same time.
This is one of those, I'm gonna think about it.
Maybe I just need to give it one more wear
and then kiss it goodbye.
A lot of costumes, a lot of costumes I need to get rid of.
Each item has its own unique story
on how it came in your life.
And one of the big things Marie Kondo speaks about,
is, "does this item spark joy?"
By actually touching the item you can determine
if this is an item that's really important to you.
You can see there was so many items
where I had to reflect on, I wanted to reflect
on the story and really think,
does this item really truly serve me
and spark joy in my life?
Or is it something that I really don't need
and I'm just holding onto it, because I have guilt
about throwing it away.
This is a finger board, and it's something you can hang off
to improve your grip strength.
Because I'm renting this place that I'm in,
I couldn't put this up anywhere
so my friend who's an engineer, thank you Cadence,
she attached this with some hinges to a chin-up bar.
And the idea was we hang this over a door opening
and then I could hang from these.
It was an awesome idea, we spent a few hours,
a lot of time and effort went into constructing this.
We put it up, I hang on it, and then I just ripped open
this huge hole into the wall.
So I had to patch up the walls.
And then I never really used this again.
So, it's a cool device, I don't know what to do with it.
These shoes I bought from Nike.
I could put my name on it, so you can see a little 'Max'
on the back of this shoe.
And I kind of liked the style of this shoe.
But the problem is it's very uncomfortable.
As a result of that, I have worn these
very few amount of times.
I either need to wear them this month,
and see if they're any better,
or I just need to get rid of them.
So these are definitely a maybe?
But probably leaning towards donating them.
So this is everything to give to the op-shop so far.
So you can see there's a lot of stuff.
One odd boxing glove that I found here.
Costumes, a lot of costumes.
Let me show you guys the wardrobe.
It's come a long way, and I definitely
come into this space now and it just feels
relaxing and nice and I can find things
and everything in here I like.
Every single object I've thought about, so it's pretty cool.
One of the things that I wanted to do with minimalism
was simplify how I dress.
If you've noticed in other videos
I dress pretty simple as is.
This month I've basically worn a black T-shirt,
and either green or blue shorts the entire month.
It just makes things so easy.
In my closet I've got all my black shirts lined up,
got my green shorts always out.
I'm thinking about minimalism not only in terms
of tidying up and creating a great space to be efficient in,
but also simplifying some of the routines and processes
that you do on a daily basis,
so you don't have to have the energy
into actually thinking about, 'What am I gonna wear today?'
'What am I gonna eat today?'
You've just got a set process and a system,
and if you're happy with it and it works for you
then you can just do it every day.
One of Marie Kondo's tips for cleaning the kitchen
is create a kitchen for the type of cook
that you actually want to be.
And for me it's all about simplicity and efficiency.
I have so many different devices that do different
specialty things but I never really need them.
And so it's about letting go of your guilt of those
unloved kitchen stuff and just getting rid of it.
("In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Grieg)
So I'm on my way to the op-shop to donate my life away.
I've got my entire back seat and boot filled with stuff.
It feels good, like, there's some items that I'm like,
'Oh yeah what if I want that item?'
But I actually feel like, overall, I feel excited.
I feel like it's a cleanse, I feel like it's something
that I should have done ages ago,
and that so many of these items have just been sitting there
for six months, a year, two years.
Some of these items are gonna get used by someone else,
and maybe they're going to be cherished by someone else.
Which is really nice.
They're going to make money for charity.
And they'll stop taking up space in my life, so,
I'm excited to get rid of them.
(uplifting music)
So something really important with minimalism
is actually maintaining it.
And so Matt D'Avella, the amazing minimalist YouTuber,
has a lot of different tips.
Firstly, make sure you set up a system.
Know where every items goes and how it's meant to be.
Is is meant to be wrapped up?
Is it meant to be in this place?
How should it look?
Control the flow of new stuff.
Really be aware of purchasing extra items
now that you've gotten rid of things.
Start curating your social media feed,
so you stop wanting more, and start leveraging that time
to do other things like reading books and socialising,
and working on side projects and things like that.
Lastly, create a routine.
Maybe in your morning routine you make your bed
and do a quick bedroom tidy-up, and at nighttime
you do the dishes and make sure your kitchen is clean.
But actually implementing it in a routine will make sure
that you stay on top of your new decluttered environment.
You can really enjoy it for the long term.
So I've been living minimal now for 10 days
since my room has been cleaned,
and I've gotten rid of a lot of the things
that I just really didn't need in my life.
And a lot of these items that I thought I really wanted,
I think in a lot of ways they were causing me anxiety
and stress, because they were there in my life
but I didn't actually need them or love them.
But I spent money on them, and I felt guilty
about throwing them away.
Maybe they were a present, and I just didn't need the item.
Or maybe there was something that I bought
that was expensive, that turns out I didn't love.
And by removing that I'm removing some of the baggage
and negative emotions associated with that.
That's what Marie Kondo really teaches in her TV show
and in her book.
It's about finding the items that really elicit joy for you.
When you touch an item, you're like,
'Yes, I love this item.'
I've got only a few pairs of shoes, but I've got these shoes
and I love these shoes.
They're really good for gym and when I put 'em on
I get excited for them.
The things that I've chosen to keep, they're things
that I really appreciate and I'm thankful for.
And so following her principles I really feel
like I've created an environment where I'm happier
and just clear-minded and a bit more productive.
I love this idea of not creating a life
of always wanting more.
Creating a life of wanting less.
Everything that you have is something that you truly love.
It's been an amazing challenge.
And I'd recommend that it you want to try this one
it's a fantastic 30-day challenge.
It's the start of the year, why not cleanse your environment
and create a really productive place for you
to have an amazing year.
So that brings me to my next challenge,
which is something that I'm super nervous about.
It's going back on the skateboard, and it's trying to learn
a 360 flip in 30 days.
It's actually less, 'cause it's February next month.
My most popular video to-date has been
learning to skateboard and I haven't really touched it
too much since, so it's gonna be crazy
trying to jump back on it.
And learn a very difficult trick.
I want to thank you guys for watching,
and as always, happy learning.
(uplifting music)