As a college student, I remember my stress levels reaching all-time highs.
There were papers due, big projects coming up, and multiple presentations that needed to be finished.
There seemed to be a never-ending cycle of finishing work and starting a new project.
During this time, I began to research ways to improve my life and be more productive. I came across many articles and videos talking about a minimalist lifestyle.
My Dad had also watched the documentary: Minimalism A Documentary About the Important Things and had recommended that I decrease my wardrobe.
When he initially told me this, I didn’t really take the recommendation seriously and didn’t really care to be honest.
Fast-forward to the present and I swear by a minimalist wardrobe!
The articles about minimalism and decluttering gave simple tips that helped me to start to get rid of all the junk I owned at school.
This really had an impact on my college experience and there was a drastic difference in my apartment room my freshman year compared to my senior year.
After making this change, I can 100% say that there are many many mannnyyy benefits of a minimalist lifestyle…
In this post, we will go over some of the best benefits of living a minimalist lifestyle while studying in college!
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1. Decrease Your Stress Levels
As a former college student, I know the stress from school can be overwhelming.
I get it!
Switching to a minimalist lifestyle helped me reduce my stress exponentially.
There’s something about clearing your personal space that brings a certain type of calm and relaxation. Even now you may feel it. If your dorm room or apartment room is messy, you may feel even more stressed.
But after cleaning, you immediately feel less stressed.
With all that physical clutter comes mental clutter and sometimes your outer space reflects your inner space.
When your space is clean and orderly, you feel a sense of being in control and “on top of things”. This is essential when it comes to hitting deadlines for assignments!
The student that has their assignments and schedule organized usually does well.
The same should be applied to your lifestyle and living space!
2. Easier To Move
This is by far one of my favorite reasons to live a minimalist lifestyle as a college student.
This is because essentially a move that I made in college to a different apartment made me realize just how much junk I had that I never used.
Moving all my stuff from the second floor and making all of those trips from my room to my car was simply no fun haha.
Now, even though I stayed in an apartment for all four years of college, most students will move into an apartment when they become upperclassmen. Some students may make a move sooner than this though.
This is where the minimalist lifestyle comes into play…
A simple move to another apartment on or off-campus will be so much easier when you downsize your belongings and develop a minimalist mindset.
Plus once you graduate, you will be able to relocate for a possible career that may be far from home.
3. Easier To Do Laundry
Raise your hand if you hate doing laundry…
Yeah, my hand is raised!
Laundry can be annoying sometimes but especially in college, it can be quite a chore.
However, if you downsize your clothes and create a minimalist wardrobe, you will be able to finish your laundry much faster!
What does this mean?
It means you’ll have more time for:
- Studying
- Homework
- Spending time with friends
- Spending time with a boyfriend/girlfriend
Ultimately, with fewer clothes in your closet, you may only have a few loads of clothes instead of multiple trips to the washer. This results in laundry becoming less of a chore and saves you time and headaches.
In addition, a double laundry hamper can make laundry even easier by separating clothes beforehand.
As a college student, you’ll definitely take that extra time if you can get it!
4. More Control of Your Finances
As a college student, unless you’re working…
You’re most likely 95% broke.
Don’t try to hide it lol.
Even though your parents may pay for some things, it doesn’t change the fact that your financial situation in college is most likely less than ideal (and probably gonna get worse with student loans).
Adopting a minimalist lifestyle can have a huge impact on your finances in college.
The most obvious is the fact that you will be able to save more money. If you’ve developed your minimalist mindset, you most likely will be trying to get rid of stuff and limit your spending.
This will come in handy not only in the present but also in the future if you have a large sum of student loans to pay off once you graduate.
Saving more now will enable you to pay off your debt faster and will set you up for a better financial future!
5. Can Help With Decision Fatigue
I didn’t really know decision fatigue was a real “thing”, but apparently our ability to make decisions isn’t as strong as we’d like to admit.
What Is Decision Fatigue?
Decision fatigue can be summed up as the weakening of our ability to make “good” decisions as we are faced with more and more decisions throughout the day.
Almost as though we have a certain number of “good” decisions that we can make in a day.
Decision Fatigue as A College Student
This can clearly hinder your ability to focus and get work done in a timely manner.
Minimalism can help to alleviate this by simplifying your environment.
Here’s an example…
Many CEOs of big companies like Steve Jobs from Apple were famous for wearing the same shirt every day.
This strategy was implemented by these intelligent men & women in order to reduce the number of extra decisions that they needed to make in a day.
Having a simple wardrobe was so important to them because picking out clothes in the morning is one of the first things that we do.
CEOs like Steve Jobs simply don’t have the mental energy to waste picking out an outfit.
This is a bit extreme, but it shows the value of simplifying your wardrobe and the positive effect it can have on your daily life.
Just find a nice balance of clothes to create a capsule wardrobe from and go from there.
I definitely don’t recommend college students wear the same t-shirt every day haha…
Your classmates may look at you funny lol.
6. Minimalism Gives You More Time
A minimalist lifestyle will no doubt give you more time.
As mentioned above, you’ll spend less time picking out clothes in the morning and less time doing your laundry.
Another big one is the less time you will need to spend cleaning. As a college student, those dorms and apartments can get filthy pretty quickly.
If you don’t own that many possessions, naturally your living space and/or room will be neat and organized most of the time.
Now that these tasks take less time, you’ll have so much more valuable time that you can use to be more productive or to relax from those damn papers you had to write last week.
7. Helps With Organization
Furthermore, with less junk around you’ll be able to not only have a cleaner living space but also be able to organize your belongings more efficiently.
Whether it’s organizing your workspace or maybe even your backpack and worksheets (do they even give those out anymore?), you’ll be much neater and have much better organization than before if your school supplies were a mess.
This neater workspace/ environment can lead to more productivity and peace of mind.
When I was in school, I used packing cubes as a way to organize my clothes when I would make trips back home.
This was my way of packing and it’s a great way to be organized when traveling!
8. Helps Minimize Your Junk Now Rather Than Later
This may be the most important reason why you should live a minimalist lifestyle now while you’re young.
This is because most people downsize later in life and get rid of a lot of their stuff (junk).
Now, this doesn’t seem that bad, but from seeing the homes of my family members, I know for a fact that it would be a nightmare trying to get rid of all that junk!
I personally can’t imagine having so much stuff (like big furniture) that isn’t even used anymore and just sits there in the basement.
Essentially this section is my advice not to become a hoarder or modern consumer and end up with too much junk later in life!
So instead of downsizing your junk later in life when you have a family and responsibilities, downsize and declutter now!!
9. More Joy And Contentment
Finally, a minimalist lifestyle can bring you closer to joy and contentment.
Instead of buying all of these “things” to make us happy, minimalism encourages us to be content and thankful for what we already have and this in itself brings about more peace.
On the contrary, when we are always anxious and concerned with what we don’t have, we are never at peace. We’re always trying to add something. When we decide to put a stop to all the unnecessary “wanting”, we can save more money and spend it on vacations or experiences with friends and family.
These overall experiences will be worth more to you in the long run than the silly iPhone that you insist on upgrading even though you bought the new one last year already lol.
But in all seriousness, a minimalist lifestyle will enable you to travel freely and go on adventures or enjoy the peace and quiet in your living space with less clutter around you.
Summary
Here are my key takeaways:
- Minimalism can help reduce mental stress and decision fatigue
- A minimalist lifestyle can give you more time
- A minimalist wardrobe can make your life so much easier
- Minimalism can give you more peace of mind
- A minimalist lifestyle can get you up for a good financial future and prevent you from obtaining too much junk in the future.
Closing thoughts
Adopting a minimalist lifestyle is one of the best things that you can do for yourself as a college student!
Right now you’re in the driver’s seat of life!
Minimalism can set you up in a positive direction for the future not only with your finances but can bring tons of benefits that may not even be mentioned in this post.
One of my favorite aspects of the minimalist lifestyle is how much easier it makes my life and how much easier it is to move and travel!