Millennials' collective slide out of minimalism

We could all use a return to living with less.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the act of decluttering, and how removing things from my home makes me feel. Usually, I feel a little bit lighter after getting rid of bed sheets that have literally never been used but I’ve insisted on holding onto for the last six years, or when I finally dispose of a ceramic plate with several chips along the edge. Sometimes I feel productive or pleased with myself.

But most often, I associate the experience with freedom.

Everyone deserves to live in a functional, peaceful, and beautiful home. For me, home is really about creating a sanctuary where I can relax, recharge, spend time with my family, and feel truly at peace. There is so much stress inherent to life already — work, relationships, the political climate, the actual climate. The last thing I need is to come home and feel even more stress looking at an overwhelming number of belongings that take up space and get in the way. To live in a home that feels peaceful is freeing.

Millennials really took to minimalism, in theory. Scandinavian interior design styles thrived in the 2010s, in part as a reaction to the homes we grew up in in the ’90s and ’00s. When we were coming of age, shabby chic was popular with its visually heavy furniture and frilly fabrics, as was the classic Tuscan-inspired kitchen complete with a brick-covered vent hood and dark reds and oranges everywhere. Of course, this was also the era of the Nancy Meyers aesthetic, which has come back into the zeitgeist with enthusiastic gusto.

Both of these spaces are clean and tidy, but the Scandi apartment focuses on reduces visual clutter and heaviness. The Tuscan-inspired kitchen includes a mosaic tile stovetop backsplash, an iron chandelier, wood floors and cabinets, and yellow walls. Meanwhile, the Stockholm living room features minimal furniture, wall-mounted shelving instead of heavy bookcases, a compact coffee table, and few wall hangings.

It’s very easy to be a minimalist when you’re in your early 20s. You’ve just moved out of your parents’ home or your college apartment, you don’t have a lot of stuff to begin with, and you don’t have a ton of money to buy new stuff to bring into your home.

But I’ve noticed in recent years that many of us have more and more things. After all, millennials are older now, with the top end of the range entering their mid-40s while the youngest millennials will turn 30 next year. We’ve been in the workforce for a while now, and we’ve brought a lot of products into our home as a result of both time and disposable income.

All the while, we’re humans. And humans have this uncanny ability to collect. We really know how to hold onto things. If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a few desk drawers that serve as holding zones for items that you never use but aren’t quite ready to get rid of yet. And when you’re in your early 20s and you don’t have a ton of items in your dinky little apartment, it’s kind of easy to start holding onto things just because you have the storage to do so. One day you’re taking in some extra wine glasses that your friend who’s moving out of town is giving away, and the next thing you know, you have an overflowing cup cabinet in the kitchen.

So it doesn’t really surprise me that so many millennials have sworn off minimalism, whether intentionally or not, and have found themselves immersed in stuff.

I don’t consider myself a minimalist by any stretch of the imagination, neither in practice nor interior design preferences. But I recognize how I feel when there are too many things in my house. I notice how annoying it is to locate an item among many in a drawer, or how difficult it is to retrieve a pan from the cupboard when there are other pans (maybe some of which haven’t been used in 6+ months?) blocking its way.

Extreme minimalism might mean you only live with the very few items you need on a daily basis, like literally just a couch and a table for your coffee mug, shown in the living room on the left. Alternatively, a minimalist approach, live the living room on the right, demonstrates living with less but still owning a fair amount of furnishings and decor.

Constantly being frustrated and angered and annoyed is challenging on the body. But when you’re experiencing these emotions from the state of your own home, it can easily lead to resentment for the physical space that you occupy.

I think this is part of the reason that I find it so important for my mental health to live in a tidy home. I don’t like the experience of being overwhelmed by belongings, especially ones that I never use, or ones that, as Marie Kondo would say, don’t spark joy.

I think it might be time that millennials consider a return to minimalism. Most people could probably benefit from implementing some form of minimalism in their home, if not only to maintain a reasonable number of belongings. This doesn’t mean swearing off all excess writ large, but instead questioning your own space with regularity and getting into the habit of interrogating your household’s needs for certain items. (Do I need this large platter gifted to me from Aunt Fran ten years ago that I’ve only used once? How many novelty coffee cups do we use on a regular basis? What does this cord even belong to in the first place?)

There are lessons to be learned from minimalism, even if you don’t go all-in on the lifestyle. Mostly, we could all learn to live with less stuff.

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What I’m reading: The White Album by Joan Didion, and sometimes The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, revised 2006 edition.

What I’m baking: Babka bread. Lots of it. I have been using Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipe from his cookbook, Jerusalem.

Best recent purchase: A 2026 planner that’s making me look forward to the New Year.

My latest beauty obsession: Cocolab floss, per a recommendation from my hygienist.