The Minimal Monthly from Tidymalism 🌱

August 2023 Minimal Monthly Hi Reader, There are loads of mindfulness gurus out there who proclaim happiness is a choice. That can feel as if they're cheaply discounting the real challenges that real people face. As if one wakes up one day and decides to be unhappy or overburdened by problems, ha. When things get to be too much, running away and joining a circus isn't the answer though either. There's an old saying: wherever you go, there you are. You can cancel everything and everyone, pack...

July 2023 Minimal Monthly Welcome to the end-of-month newsletter from the home organisation blog Tidymalism, with introspective rhetoric, post recaps, and interesting links for simpler living with less clutter. Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here. Hi Reader, The other day so uneventfully came and went, had I not looked closer at my phone and noticed the tiny ticker of my day-counting app said "365," I would have missed my own remarkable anniversary: I had stayed sober for...

Hi Reader, What do you want to do when you're retired? Where would you like to live? And when will you even be able to retire? Answering these questions is not all that easy, as everything is shifting when it comes to retirement planning. From the age pensions are paid out, to our evolving work ethic and the impact of inflation on retirement. I've been trying to get more organised with my own retirement planning and since I like playing with AI, I made a prompt that can generate a rough...

Hi Reader, The cellar of our building was burgled again. It's a common occurance in my city. I've never quite understood what on earth they hope to find in our musty dungeons. Because who, as a city dweller at least, keeps anything of value down there? My compartment was turned upside down and I spent an hour putting things back while the locksmith fixed our doors and the police did their paperwork spiel. The whole time I had a feeling something was missing, but I couldn't figure out...

Hi Reader, I did it. I sold my car. Talk about going all in on minimalism, huh. I've been driving since I was a kid and have pretty much always had my own wheels. Yet during the pandemic, I began using the car less and less. It got to the point of ridiculousness where I had to ring the automobile club to come give me jumpstart help every time I did want to take a spin. The battery was always drained from not driving for months at a time. Loyal readers might also recall I've been dealing with...

Hi Reader, The work week used to be 68 hours. In the early 1940s it was slashed to 40 hours. Since 1950, our productivity has increased by 253% (source) and the gains from that productivity have been pocketed by the upper echelon whilst wages for the middle class have stagnated (source, source) and the minimum wage became a misnomer. For years we've been talking about the distribution of work in the household. How about a discussion on the distribution of labour per se. Like, pronto. Because,...