benefit #18 – own higher quality things
i’ll admit that this benefit of minimalism hit me by surprise when we chose to become minimalist. for some reason, i didn’t combine owning fewer things and owning nicer things in my mind. but the truth is, they go hand-in-hand and are directly related. when we made a commitment to buy fewer things, we opened up our lives to the opportunity of owning nicer things.
this can be seen most clearly on the hangers in your closet. if you are like most, you have 25 mediocre shirts hanging in your closet – even though you really only wear 10 of them and truly love even less. a much more sensible approach is to have 10 shirts that you truly love hanging in your closet rather than 20 that you just “kinda like.” based on the budgetary reality that we only have a certain amount of money that we can spend on clothes, you can either purchase 20 shirts at $20 each or 10 at $40 each. minimalism allows you to purchase higher quality items. remember, more is not better… better is better.
i’m seeing this true in my own life right now. i have needed headphones for my ipod for about 2 years. the problem is, i have been purchasing cheaper, less-quality headphones trying to meet my need. i have purchased headphones for $5, $7, $20, and $25. i now have 4 sets of headphones/buds and i don’t like any of them. far better thinking would have been to do the research and spent the $50-$60 right away. i’ll get it right this time.
one unseen benefit of becoming minimalist is that you get own nicer, higher quality items… and value them more.
related posts:
more related posts:
Yes. Furthermore, lets assume for a moment that you set a $100 budget for shirts per year. You decide to replace two of them- now you get two $50 shirts!
you get what you pay for. definitely a satisfactory biproduct of minimalism. leigh and I, too, have been thinking about minimalism as well.
This is only in relation to clothes, but the book titled ‘The Magic of Thinking Big’ by David Schwartz sees the author stating the following:
“Pay twice as much and buy half as many.” This results in better quality and less clutter, plus items tends to stay in fashion for longer and last a longer time.