Organizing Medical Records and Expenses

It is precisely because I hate administrative paperwork so much that I am insistent on keeping it organized. However, for the past few years, my file drawer has absorbed a crazy number of medical and insurance documents, and this has been getting in the way of other things, so I finally sat down the other […]

Good Spending as a Value System, Not a Dollar Sign

Late last year I sat down to ask myself what it actually meant to be “good with money”, and following an approach that takes various ideas and attacks them, was able to kind of see that most of my hunches were wrong. After all, one might think that somebody who spends very little is “good” […]

Creatively Small Appliances: Their Advantages and Disadvantages

Several years ago, I learned about the existence of mini-washing machines. I thought they were super cool. I had spent several years volunteering with refugees, and one issue with the apartments they lived in was the lack of washer and drier hookups. To avoid the cost and hassle of going to a laundromat, many would […]

Minimalism: Stuff Quantity vs. Stuff Size

Well, it finally happened: I ordered a PS2. Of all the things I’ve gotten rid of over the years, the PS2 is one of very, very few things I have regretted getting rid of. Downsizing the collection of video games wasn’t bad in itself, but I ultimately blocked myself from ever playing certain games normally […]

Additional Media Thoughts

Due to the flexible usage of DVDs and the inflexible usage of Blu-rays, as mentioned in my last post, I kind of wish I had focused on buying DVDs instead. However, maybe half of my Blu-rays include both, but these are strangely unpredictable. For example, I have The Hunger Games on Blu-ray only, but my […]

Media Rant

I ventured back into the world of Netflix last month, after probably a 4 year hiatus. There were a few series I had been wanting to watch for years, but for whatever reason I had been too lazy to get around to. I have access to Netflix through the account of my friend who owns […]

The Shop Press is Gone!

The big news of this week is that my shop press sold at my parents’ garage sale! I apparently feel the need to tell the world. The shop press was one of those purchases of overreach. I have a few other purchases like that, too, but they are at least cool. The shop press was […]

Protecting Your Data in the Mess of Old Web Accounts

I have over 120 online accounts, which is insane. I’m not even the sort of person who signs up for things on a regular basis – I have a natural aversion to opening these accounts. But all it takes is switching insurance every few years, applying to a handful of jobs here and there, or […]

Too Many Projects

There are at least 3 people in this neighborhood who collect old cars. One person has about 3-5 domestic cars from the 70s, another has a few French cars from what looks like the 60s, and another has around 4 French or European cars from the 70s or 80s. All but maybe one of these […]

The Cult of Minimalism

Back in the early 2010s, there was a wave of popular articles about people who owned oddly specific, low numbers of things, like 75, or 200, or whatever. At first I was kind of fascinated by this, but the fascination wore off, and years and years later I would see this made fun of as […]