7 More Things I Will Never Buy as a Minimalist | Frugal Living

I've spent the last 10 years of my life trying to become what I consider minimalist. This meant going through various stages of decluttering, focusing on the essential, and coming across things I've decided I will never buy, or in some cases, buy again. Either because they go directly against what I want out of being a minimalist, like mental clarity, or being able to save a little bit of money. I made a list of a few more things I will never buy as a minimalist, and I wanted to share them in a video, as well as the reasons why they go against the minimalist lifestyle I want to live. Here are a few more things I will never buy as a minimalist. But first, if you're new to my channel, thank you for stopping by. Here we talk about minimalism, frugal living, tech, and things of that nature. So if that sounds good to you, and you end up liking the video, be sure to like and please clip your toenails in the subscribe button's bed. Let's get started. The first thing here is routine upgrades. I actually feel like we're moving into a time where a lot more people are rejecting routine upgrades, specifically with things like technology. And I feel like that's usually because the technology itself is either underwhelming or, more often, too expensive. But this absolutely goes beyond technology. Way before adopting minimalism, routine upgrades, to me, meant routinely replacing things I probably could have got more time and use out of. And more often than not, I only ever felt like I needed to upgrade because companies made me feel like I had to. Or because I was way more concerned with my image than I should have been. Whether it's technology, clothing, or even something as expensive as a car, I've permanently cut out any unnecessary routine spending or upgrades out of my life. And a huge part of being able to do that was seeing past the initial hype of new items, and more importantly, stop comparing myself to what others have. The next thing here is anything I can see the end of ownership with. I think this is something that can save anyone who sticks with it a lot of wasted money and a constant rotation of decluttering or replacing things. I made the decision a long time ago I will usually choose the higher quality option when I can, even if that meant paying a little bit more money in that moment. This means for any purchase that I'm thinking about making, if I can see the end of me owning it, whether it's the item breaking, a piece of clothing I see myself getting over eventually, or just not seeing it as a good long-term investment of my money or a place in my life, I'm usually not making that purchase. And having this mentality has led me to getting years, sometimes literally a decade of use out of some items. The overall point here is to just be a little bit more mindful and exclusive as to what you decide to purchase and keep in your life because every purchase is a commitment in one way or another. The next thing is items that cater to creating clutter. And I'll explain exactly what I mean by this, but honestly the first thing that comes to mind are those YouTube shorts where you just see an arm wearing an oversized sweater sleeve opening containers just to put those things into new containers and calling it organizing. But don't get me wrong, I do like to stay organized in my spaces. There were some purchases I made a long time ago that helped me with organizing when what I really needed was to just declutter. Even just having plastic bins for storage was sometimes enough to encourage me to buy things to store in those bins because maybe I felt like I was being more organized. Because I figured if I was at least organized, it wouldn't be cluttering my spaces. Just these items existing in my spaces made it a lot easier to justify keeping the clutter around because the odds are while it was well organized, if it was stored away somewhere, it is not something that gets used often or enough to be worth keeping. Investments in a new hobby. This might sound rather niche when I say it, but let me explain because I feel like this might be highly relatable for the lot of us. I can think of at least a couple times in the past where I was so sure I was going to love and commit to a new hobby or activity that I planned on trying out, so much so that I would actually invest in things related to or that I would use during that activity. Whether it was going to the gym, trying out a new sport, or even a hobby that you do at home like drawing, there's always going to be companies or people that claim you need some sort of accessory or tool before you even try out this hobby. And you could argue that it's a double edged sword because in some cases, buying something related to this new activity could sort of force you to actually commit to it. But for myself, I've learned the lesson to absolutely try something a few times to see if it's actually something I like before making any purchase that caters to it. Because if I bought some expensive piece of gear for every new hobby I decided to try, I'd probably be bankrupt. Single use items, mostly. I say mostly for this because I'm not entirely sure I can go completely without single use items, but we try to as much as possible. In the areas of my life and home, we avoid using single use items as much as possible to avoid the waste and of course the money. My Italian ancestors would hate me for using this. This meant single use disposable things that are an easy and useful replacement, like switching to rechargeable batteries instead of disposable ones, and investing in a simple water bottle can literally stop a daily purchase of water or cases of water. I would even go as far as to say that these types of purchases encourage a lot of mindless spending because it builds the habit of just grabbing another pack or replacement every time I would shop, making the shopping a little less intentional. Not to mention the mental space that these single use items actually took up. Having to remember to stock, replace, and replenish added to the cycle of maintenance that minimalism was trying to simplify. The next thing here is anything I won't use weekly. And I can absolutely say there's a little bit of nuance here, but for the most part I really do try to make an effort to only make purchases on things I will use at least once a week. In the past I've talked about how I won't buy clothes for a one-time event or any just in case items. And being this exclusive with my belongings has absolutely kept the physical clutter down to a minimum because now when I'm deciding whether or not I want to bring something into my life, this is just one of the questions I will now ask myself. How often will I actually use this? This means everything I'm bringing into my life and my routines has a clear intention behind it, and it's just another threshold everything has to go to before I actually commit to it. And by proxy this keeps the clutter down and there's intention behind every single item. Things that try to solve a problem I don't have. And I think this is a good talking point to sort of sum everything up. I'm no business professional, but it really seems like one of the most popular strategies to get people to buy things is to create some sort of urgency or bring up a problem that people don't know that they have. But the truth is, if I've been living 31 years without this specific product, I'm probably going to be okay. I can remember at some of my lowest points, I would sometimes make purchases to try and find some fulfillment in whatever that item was. But since then, I taught myself to be able to tell the difference between an actual problem I may have or one that was manufactured by some marketing team of a company. And at the end of the day, most of these products are just solutions looking for problems. They take up money, energy, and mental space without actually making life easier. If I don't really have a problem in the first place, then I definitely don't need to buy a solution. Anyways, these were just a few more things I will never buy as a minimalist. If I missed something you thought could be on this list, please feel free to let me know down in the comments. I read every single one of them, including the occasionally hilarious mean ones. And as always, I really, really always appreciate you guys here watching. And if you did like this video and you like this type of content, be sure to like and consider subscribing to my channel, and I'll see you next time.