furniture – The Weight Of My Worlds

Hello my lovelies! I hope you’re having a good Saturday and weekend so far and are staying safe if you’re venturing outside social distancing. It seems weird that everything is very slowly feeling a bit like we’re getting back to what normal used to be, but it’s refreshing being able to have a bit more freedom. (That being said, I’ve still not left my house even with the lockdown restrictions being loosened a bit!). Speaking of refreshing, over the last two weeks I’ve had a big change of scenery; and all of this happened because of a conversation with my younger brother.

You see, I still live at home because I’m saving to buy my own place in a few years (thanks UK house prices..) and because I’m the oldest of the three of us that are still living at home, I have the biggest room out of the three of us, with my youngest sister (13) having the next biggest and the my younger brother (17) having the smallest because he’s never had a lot of stuff or need for a bigger room. Well, my brother asks me quite a lot about when I will be moving out because he is desperate to have my bedroom and long story short, I was feeling generous and decided to just left him have it since he’s never had a big room before and he is going on 6ft+ so he needs the leg room at the end of his bed at the very least haha.

The look of shock on his face when I said to him lets just switch rooms was absolutely priceless.

Then the next day came along and it was decided that we desperately needed to paint my brothers room in prep for me moving in. So, we spent the entire day taking everything off of the walls and filling in all of the holes ready for painting the room white to give it a new lease of life and brighten it up. That evening I had to start going through everything in my room and have a big clear out, because even though I’ve paired my belongings down dramatically over the last few years to combat my hoarding tendencies (thanks ocd! Haha) I still had a lot I needed to go through in order to fit everything into a tiny room.

I’ll be honest, I completely forgot to take really any photos of the process which was my bad, but the day after filling all of the holes my brother and I moved everything out of his room except his bed (incase we didn’t get everything done that day) and then I painted the entire room white which really brightened it up and gave it a nice refreshing look. Then that evening once the paint was dry we managed to move all of the furniture out of each others rooms and into our new spaces.

So, although I completely forgot to take before pictures of my brothers room, and during the painting process, and my room beforehand, I have dug out some old photos where you can see small parts of what my room was like before and during!

Here’s what we were dealing with before:

So those are before my I moved rooms, now here’s for the small number of photos I took during(thanks to my brother Joe for the shaky camera shot – at least it’s something from during the process!). And for reference, my old room is probably three times the size of this one with slanted walls on one side:

And finally, here’s what my room looks like now that I’m all moved in! It’s super small, but I love it and it is so refreshing to be in a new space and it’s super cosy and light!

As you can see from the photo I took from above, the room really is pretty small! And as you can see there isn’t a huge amount of storage in my room, close to none really, except a short gap under my bed; so by changing rooms I’ve had to go pretty minimalist compared to what I used to be like. I’ve decluttered and tried to go minimalist a couple of times in the past, but somehow the clutter always begins to build up again after a few months. So this is a great opportunity for me to really commit to the minimalist lifestyle.

Now I’m two weeks into living in this new room and I can safely say that I absolutely love being in this smaller room, it feels exactly like the kind of reset I needed. And it’s so nice to have a simply shaped room! My old room was a disjointed ‘L’ shape with parts taken in and out of it with slanted walls across the longest side so low you couldn’t use it! But my brother loves his room and loves the weird walls too! And lucky for me, I now don’t get asked ‘When are you moving out?!’ 5 times a week.

My family have no idea how I’ve managed to make my teeny tiny room cute, cosy and appear weirdly bigger than how my brother had it, but they think it’s a great fit for me too and love how I’ve decorated it.

I have to favourite parts of my room, number one – my windowsill. Weird I know, but in my last room I didn’t actually have a windowsill, not sure why, but I didn’t. Plus, I’ve made myself a little succulent and cacti garden with my incense burner, buddha and crystals, which I find so calming and relaxing to look at. These succulents and cacti were less that £10 in total from B&Q for anyone who’s wondering – bargain!

My second favourite part of my room, is my wall art. My walls are completely covered in art and it just brings a smile to my face. I love art, and I love being creative and it’s such a great way to express yourself. I’m currently working out what other images and artwork I want to add onto my picture wall so if you have any ideas or recommendations let me know in the comments or tag me on insta @theweightofmyworlds!

So, what do you think of my new room? How do you like to decorate your space? Let me know or show me your spaces on insta or twitter, I love interacting with you on there! Now that you’ve seen my new space in my tiny room, I’ll leave you with these photos of me and my brother Joe! Can you guess how tall I am?! Hahaha!

Have a great weekend my lovelies! Stay safe and look after yourselves!

Lots of love,

So, what is minimalism, and why have I decided to go minimalist?

Minimalism is usually defined as the process of identifying what is essential in your life and eliminating the rest, so less is more.

So, why minimalist? Well, I’ve always loved how minimalist rooms look, and it seemed like a nice way of leaving stress behind and away from your personal space/stuff. My head has felt a bit scrambled, more than usual recently and in order to de-clutter my head I thought a good way to do that was to physically de-clutter my possessions. You see, I’ve always been a bit of a hoarder.. Never mountains and mountains of stuff so you can’t move around in your own home, but just generally not throwing away silly little things for some reason, which gradually built up over time.

Going minimalist isn’t something that I would suggest doing over night. It can take a fair bit of time. For me it’s taken about two weeks to get my space cleared out, and I think there’s still some more stuff I’ll throw away in the coming weeks. If you’re thinking of going minimalist, I would suggest you set yourself a plan before you begin. Because I’m a person that likes writing lists, I made two. The first one was:

Get yourself some inspiration.
Pick a time-frame.
List what areas you are going to clean out and sort through.

If you’re thinking of going minimalist and wanting some inspiration, here’s a Pinterest Board I made for inspiration:

Once you’ve got your inspiration and set your time-frame, it’s wise to write a list of what you want to sort out and throw away. I set myself a time-frame of two weeks to do the initial clear out; I decided one area per day was feasible for me. If you’re struggling for where to start which clearing out your stuff, here’s my clear out list:

Clothes and Shoes. (I created a Capsule Wardrobe – post coming soon)
Underwear, Bags and Purses.
Toiletries, Makeup and Nail Polishes.
Papers, Books and Magazines.
DVDs.
Electronics and CDs.
Receipts, Bills and Important Documents.
Stationary and Hobby Stuff.
Junk Drawers and Random Boxes.
Workspace.
Emails, Subscriptions and Phone Apps.
Photos and Sentimental Stuff.
The Car.
The Mind.

By going minimalist, I’ve been able to stream line getting ready for everything, all because I know and can see exactly what I own. I also feel less stressed, can find anything I need quickly and I now have more space.

I found it easy to fall into the trap of organising instead of purging, so I would recommend having an image that was your inspiration or write down why you’re going minimalist so you don’t just organise and keep unnecessary things. I’ve decided that if I don’t use it and it’s not an important document or sentimental then I need to lose it.

Something I’ve learnt from this is to stop bargain hunting. This one is a big one for me, I love a good bargain, but that’s part of the reason why I needed a good clear out in the first place. So I’ve started avoiding meaningless impulse shopping, which has been pretty good for keeping my room clear and my bank account fuller.

When I decide to buy something, I try and think of how it will be used in my room in six months time. If I think it will be no longer useful then, I have to think if it was really worth my money right now? Is it something that I am willing to swap/replace another item I own.

As I was sorting through everything I made a few different piles of stuff:

Keep.
Bin.
Check back in 6 weeks.
Charity.

Putting everything into different piles allowed me to sort through everything without any guilt. I decided to have a ‘check back in 6 weeks’ pile because some things I was not ready to give or throw away. Becoming minimalist is going to be a bit of an ongoing project of mine, I plan to go through everything every 6 months to make sure I don’t re-clutter and keep everything streamlined.

Just a pre-warning, when you start clearing stuff out, it will look worse before it gets better. So don’t worry if your space looks like a bombs hit it!! Here’s my room before and during the clear out!!

I ended up finding that I had 200 DVDs, about half a wardrobe of clothes & shoes that I didn’t wear or that didn’t fit which were donated to charity and I had roughly 11 bin bags full of just general rubbish that I used to hide away in my wardrobe. I realised that having 200 DVD’s was taking up a large amount of space and just didn’t look great on display and
I had no space for them anywhere else; then I had a flash back to the 90’s where we all carried around CD books with us everywhere. So that’s why I then ordered a big DVD case that holds 208 discs from Amazon, which can be taken anywhere and it’s nice knowing all my films are in the same place.

Here’s some pictures of my space now it’s all cleared out!!