One of the most popular categories of minimalism YouTube videos are long videos with titles like “50 THINGS I DON’T BUY | The Minimalista,” but I’ve noticed that minimalism bloggers, especially on Medium, have not given this topic a lot of love.

Not anymore. Minimalist Medium, here is my contribution. What follows is a list of things I don’t buy or own anymore in no particular order.

1. Jewelry

We think of jewelry as being a feminine-dominant cash sink, and it’s easy to imagine spending lots of money on jewelry as a woman. We all know I’m not so feminine, but nevertheless, a masculine jewelry habit can be a money black hole of its own. …

“That’s insane.”

That’s usually the response I get when I tell people in real life that I read nearly 80 books a year.

“I can’t even finish 3 books,” they say, a bead of sweat appearing on their forehead. “You must be really smart.” Or it’s cousin, “You must read fast.”

Intelligence has nothing to do with it. Neither does reading fast. I know unintelligent people who read a lot, and I know slow readers who read a lot. The only difference between people who read a lot and people who do not is their priorities.

People who read a lot make reading a priority. They have good reading habits, and they make doing these habits important. People who don’t read a lot don’t have good reading habits and they don’t know how to manage their reading habits, and as a result, they don’t read much. …

For a long time, new year’s resolutions weren’t something I bothered with. My thinking was if you’re going to commit, you’re going to commit, and the time of year at which you make that commitment doesn’t matter in the slightest.

And after a few years of making new year’s resolutions every year… I still feel that way. We make a big fuss about new year’s resolutions, but 96% of all new year’s resolutions fail — 80% of them by February — because the people making the resolutions care more about telling themselves a story than they do achieving their goal.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that kind of year for you. You can pick a resolution and be one of the rare people that stick to it, changing their life forever. …

Minimalism is one of those things every personal growth writer talks about. It’s also one of those things every personal growth reader knows they should be doing something about but haven’t quite gotten around to doing yet.

Even if you are a minimalist, it’s easy to look at your environment and see there’s more you could be doing. You could finally get around to sorting all those papers, for instance, or take that excess kitchenware to the donation center. It’s easy to look around and see what you haven’t been doing. (That’s okay, of course. That’s life).

I’ve found one of the best ways to tap into some motivation for minimalism is to read about how minimalism has transformed the lives of others. Even though I’ve been a minimalist for years, I still love to curl up with a good book and read about how minimalism has helped others see past purchases and live lives of true meaning. …

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”

― Benjamin Franklin

One of the things we all do when faced with the new year is to reflect on how this one is gone and use the information to make better choices going forward. But so often, these reflections remain just thoughts.

To really make next year different, you need to back these reflections up with real change. Identify what’s going wrong in your life, and do something different.

If your life has been off the rails for some time and you would like to put it back together, these changes are a great place to start. …

In 2020, I set a goal to read 75 books. But in March, thinking the shutdown would give me so much more time to read, I raised my goal to 80 books. Perhaps I should have left it at 75 because, in 2020, I read 72 books.¹

Last year, I read 80 books. When I wrote about which 5 changed my life the most that year, the world wasn’t being crushed by a global pandemic, a Mr. Potato Head President, and what may become the next great depression.

But despite all that, what I wanted to read about didn’t change much. It was influenced much less by global disasters and more by basic human experiences: how to love, how to be loved, how to live well, and why we are here at all. …

Clothes shopping is a normal part of being a person, especially in 21st century America. Women plan girls' night out with a stop to the mall, and parents plan shopping days with their children. A shopping spree is considered one of the most fun things a person can do.

That we feel this way, though, is fucked up.

The clothing industry is one of the biggest polluters on the planet. The clothing supply chain supports slave labor and dangerous working conditions. Clothing manufacturers use psychological tricks to make us think we need ten or twenty times as much clothing as we do and then offers us ways to eradicate our savings and go into debt to buy them. …

Sunday night before last, I was lying in bed and looking at my Screen Time stats as I do every Sunday night. This weekly review is meant to help me keep an eye on my phone use and identify problems before they balloon out of proportion. My stats for that Sunday night were the same as they have been for many Sunday nights in a row: average time 1 hour 50 minutes, average pickup count 85 per day.

Those stats have always frustrated me. There is no reason to spend two hours per day on my phone when there is an entire world full of friends and loved ones and fun to enjoy. And since I’ve deleted all my social media accounts, games, and everything else off my phone, there’s not even anything to do on my phone. …