These two words are contradictions to each other.

A Minimalist life is a chosen life of function over fashion. With that being said, all the elements in our lives that are there for looks, for image, should be kept too a minimum. And even more important, they should require next to none of our resources to (time and money) to acquire and maintain.

You see …… fashion is not a real purpose. It’s an image, and therefore an illusion. Image alone is a means to no end. Now obviously we all want to project a positive impression to others to improve relations, but doing this does not require a tremendous amount of our resources.

“Class is not something you buy. Look at you, you’ve got a $500 suit, and you’re still a low life”

Nick Nolte (48 hours)

Always, do I see people wasting enormous amounts of time on looks, on fashion:

• A man spending two hours washing then waxing his car.
• 10min for a woman to apply makeup in the morning.
• An expensive hair cut where the barber has to do the edging just perfect. Edging and etching.
• Re-painting the home when the old paint has not faded or gotten dirty.
• Cosmetic surgery

Whenever I see these things I think “Who cares? What insecurity are you feeding? And if there are people in your life that apply a lot of value to the details of how your car/hair/home/face/boobs look, then these are the toxic people you should be ejecting from your life in the first place.”

Focusing on image too much drains intention/purpose from our lives.

Often have I found that people that always look amazing, well polished, cut, chiseled, and fresh out of a magazine, spend so much time on that look, that the image, that it is all that they are. That’s it! I will be 10 minutes into a conversation with them and realize that there is nothing there. Nothing behind the look. An empty space where ambition, drive, prospects, humor, and character should be.

On the flip side, the most stimulating conversations I have ever had have been with people who appear to have slept in their clothes last night. They don’t have time or interest in changing their clothes. They’re focused on a project right now.

In the event that we need to go shopping for something specific, it is good practice to get the item that fits our need or desire most perfectly without any of the extras we don’t need or want; extras costing us more money or space. This is what we call “shopping efficiently.” Most of the time this just means “Get the smallest one.”

As consumers, we are often easily tempted into making purchases that are more extravagant than we originally intended. Much of the time it’s not even because the “extras” we are purchasing are anything we have a specific desire for. It simply stems from the mentality that “bigger is better”, or “more is better”; and this is simply not true.

1. Quantity doesn’t have a direct relationship with quality. In fact, many times it is the exact opposite. Often times the reason the maker could produce a greater quantity, is because they could do it in half the time, or with half the resources. Unfortunately this so often makes for a lesser quality item (but it all depends on the product in question). In essence, the maker spreads their resources thin.
2. There is not just the quality of the item to think about. There is how this bigger/better item effects the quality of our life to think about. The questions we should be asking our self is:
   1. “Do these extras (that I didn’t initially desire) validate the extra space they’re going to take up?”
   2. “Is the extra cost associated with these extras really worth the gain, considering I didn’t have a desire for this extra until I saw it?”

Instead, let’s opt for the philosophy “Less is more”, and choose quality over quantity. Scrutinize not just on the quality of the item to be purchased itself, but also on how the item effects the quality of our life in general. Choose efficiency. Because in then end, that is what minimalism is really all about; Efficiency.