Things I Like Watching Lately

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Today's post is about some of the things I've liked watching - mostly on YouTube - recently. As I mentioned in my last reading reflections post, because of all the things going on in the world right now, I seem to have very little mental energy for anything after work. After I get home from the office, I can't even muster up the brain power to read for fun, even though I'm currently working through some books that are quite well-written and not particularly heavy or sad in subject matter. 

My current favorite YouTube channel is Mejoo and Cats, see a post from their Instagram account above. Mejoo's family of cats: Monji, Bongji, Hyuji, and Yoji, all have big personalities, and the videos are very relaxing and soothing. That's Bongji and Monji in the Instagram photo above. Bongji, in particular, is quite a character. (Make sure closed captions are turned on if you need the English subtitles for their videos.) 

I've also been enjoying some YouTube day-in-the-life vlogs that have no or minimal talking, mostly just ambient noise and some added background music. Most of the the channels I watch in this genre are run by women based in Japan or Korea, most of whom live alone in fairly small studio or one-bedroom apartments. Many of them cook often, making meals that feel fancy and a bit complicated because they make several dishes, some of them carefully plated. I find these videos very calming and relaxing. 

My favorite creators in this vlog genre are Usako Style and Nami's Life. I also like Yuireu (she often uses more lively background music than the other day-in-the-life vloggers I've listed here) and deemd. Because many creators in this genre are internationally based and English is not the primary language they post in, I'm completely dependent on the YouTube algorithm to show me other similar channels. I have no sense of whether the people I follow are some of the more popular ones in this space, or if there are a whole world of other, more famous ones out there! 

Link List: Stuck at Home

I haven't done one of these "link list" posts in nearly six months!

This photograph, like others I've shared recently, was taken in more normal times. It's the red snapper with sea mustard pot at ON, which specializes in Korean-style hot pot dishes. I desperately yearn for the day we're finally able to safely eat in at restaurants again.

1. // Refinery29 recently posted a biglaw attorney money diary from someone who appears to be a seventh-year associate and who, based on her stated age, likely went straight from college to law school. Biglaw attorney money diaries probably aren't that interesting to anyone but me, but I can't get enough of them. 

Out of all the biglaw-ish money diaries over the years, this recent one and this 2018 one are the only ones I've thought especially representative of typical law school student loan repayment experiences. Many of the other biglaw diaries are from younger diarists who either claimed to have unusually generous law school scholarships (sizable scholarships like my 1/3 cost of attendance one are not uncommon, but true full-rides are rare) or who apparently finished paying off their loans within two or three years after law school. (Paying off a typical post-law school student loan balance - $160,000 on the low end - in that quick a timeframe is difficult, even for the especially frugal biglaw associate. Four to five years is more common amongst my peers.) This diarist reports that, at 32, she has fully paid off her law school loans, though their household is still paying off her spouse's student loans. 

What isn't as typical here is that the diarist normally lives in NYC (in a one-bedroom for $4,250/month, which is a fair bit more than K and I pay, but isn't too unusual for a one-bedroom in a newer "luxury" building), but has rented a house in the Connecticut suburbs to socially distance in. Based on my experience, that's an outlier choice for a NYC biglaw associate, whether they have a child or not. The only associates I know who left NYC due to COVID-19 - like this diarist, they generally departed well before March 12, more than a week before New York officially shut down - all moved in with their parents. Biglaw attorneys are well-compensated, but not enough to comfortably pay rent for two separate homes simultaneously over several months! 

2. // Apartment Therapy's YouTube channel has a series of videos touring various apartments and other small homes, many of them in NYC. I particularly loved this tour of Ashley Ford's (iSmashFizzle on Twitter) apartment in Brooklyn. She's so cool! And they're such a sweet, absolutely adorable couple.

A lot of the older videos in the series don't quite show the entire living space, particularly for the slightly larger homes. Many kitchens and bathrooms are omitted, or only a small slice of them are shown. But it's still interesting to look at the wide range of decor styles.

3. // I enjoyed the recent NPR Planet Money podcast episode, "J.Screwed" (hah!), about the J.Crew bankruptcy. They focus on the Jenna Lyons period at J.Crew, noting that the brand's profile and "cool factor" rose significantly after Michelle Obama wore J.Crew on The Tonight Show in 2008. That pretty much lines up exactly with when I first became aware of the brand. I found that late 2000s and early 2010s J.Crew aesthetic completely irresistible and super aspirational when I was in college.

I confess, although much of my attorney work experience is focused on complex commercial transactions, I don't actually understand this story very well. I gather that the relevant business story begins with a leveraged buyout of J.Crew by a private equity firm back in 2011, something to that effect, but that's about it. (Attorneys are trained not to claim claim a full understanding of anything until they've analyzed the relevant contracts and other documents, which are typically voluminous and dense reading when it comes to complex commercial matters.)

4. // I also enjoyed Anne Helen Petersen's recent piece about the potential impact of COVID-19 economic disruptions on American consumer culture and about the role of consumer spending in the American economy at large.

Part of why I'm so attached to Marie Kondo's first book is that I credit it with being the primary factor that allowed me to reevaluate my personal relationship with consumerism. I had many other influences in that "journey," but in the end, the biggest single thing that made the change stick was using KonMari method to see that, no, I never again want to accumulate so much stuff I didn't even actually want, or even particularly like, in the first place. This paragraph from Petersen's recent article is a pretty accurate description of how I used to acquire things unthinkingly:

We’re trained to buy often, buy cheap, and buy a lot. And I’m not just talking about food, which everyone has to acquire in some capacity, or clothes. I mean all the other small purchases of daily life: a new face lotion, a houseplant holder, a wine glass name trinket, an office supply organizer, a vegetable spiralizer, a cute set of hand towels, a pair of nicer sunglasses, a pair of sports sunglasses, a pair of throwaway sunglasses. The stuff, in other words, that you don’t even know that you want until it somehow finds its way to your cart at Target or T.J. Maxx.

Up through 2015, I was definitely no stranger to the random T.J.Maxx knickknacks that somehow got added to the shopping basket, in addition to the towels or cutting board I was actually looking for.

And that's it for today's link list post. Have you been reading any particularly good online articles or watching any interesting YouTube videos recently? 

About the Alison Roman Thing...

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By now you've probably heard that Alison Roman recently did an interview where she said some rather unkind things about Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo. Among other things, Chrissy Teigen was originally going to be an executive producer on a television show that Roman had signed on to do. (No official word yet on whether recent events have put an end to that.)

About Chrissy Teigen, Roman had this to say:

Like, what Chrissy Teigen has done is so crazy to me. She had a successful cookbook. And then it was like: Boom, line at Target. Boom, now she has an Instagram page that has over a million followers where it’s just, like, people running a content farm for her. That horrifies me and it’s not something that I ever want to do. I don’t aspire to that. But like, who’s laughing now? Because she’s making a ton of fucking money.

Roman's tone was quite vicious as to Marie Kondo, who isn't even a direct competitor to Roman in the food writing and cooking space, which makes this turn even more bizarre to me: 

Like the idea that when Marie Kondo decided to capitalize on her fame and make stuff that you can buy, that is completely antithetical to everything she’s ever taught you… I’m like, damn, bitch, you fucking just sold out immediately! Someone’s like “you should make stuff,” and she’s like, “okay, slap my name on it, I don’t give a shit!”  

That’s the thing — you don’t need a ton of equipment in your kitchen to make great food. “For the low, low price of $19.99, please to buy my cutting board!” Like, no. Find the stuff that you love and buy it. Support businesses and makers. It feels greedy. Unless something just simply didn’t exist that I wish existed, but that would make an inventor, which I’m not. 

There's been some confusion about the "please to buy" wording and why it was there. It was also briefly edited out of the interview by the publisher, but then replaced (see the editor's note at the end of the interview). Roman herself indicated it was not a typo, and claims it was an inside joke about a cookbook titled Please to the Table. 

This is all happening, by the way, in the context of an interview where Roman promotes an upcoming product tie-in that she herself is doing: 

I have a collaboration coming out with [the cookware startup] Material, a capsule collection. It’s limited edition, a few tools that I designed that are based on tools that I use that aren’t in production anywhere — vintage spoons and very specific things that are one-offs that I found at antique markets that they have made for me.

So, you know, on top of all the other issues, there's a distinct lack of self-awareness. And by the way, this is what Roman said when Gwyneth Paltrow's "Goop" brand was brought up by the interviewer in the same interview:

And I do sort of have ambitions to figure out how to channel everything into a site. But I’m really sensitive to oversaturation, again. And does the world need another Goop? It also requires so much money that I would have to take from people that I don’t know. 

Oh and Roman says that she singled out Teigen and Kondo, and not any male chef with a mega-brand and various licensed products (despite the existence of the likes of Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse, and so on) because: 

So yeah, big yikes all around. I found this Twitter thread to be the most complete accounting of why I found Alison Roman's interview so upsetting and why racism is likely at least part of why she singled out Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo, as opposed to someone like Ree Drummond or Rachael Ray.

This incident has also inspired discussions about larger issues with some of Roman's recipes and how she approaches ingredients and recipe inspirations from non-Western cultures. I thought this article did a good job explaining that angle. 

Longtime readers might know that I'm kind of a die-hard Marie Kondo fan, all the way back to January 2015. As such a huge fan, I naturally get quite upset about wrongheaded and racist criticisms of Kondo and her ideas. Remember that hullaballoo last year right after her Netflix show premiered, which included the extraordinarily spurious claim that she apparently wanted all of humanity to limit themselves to the ownership of 30 books at the absolute maximum? (That particular claim had no basis in her actual writing or anything she actually said on her Netflix show.) Around that time, there were also instances of rather explicit racism and xenophobia in some of the criticisms of Kondo's show.

There are so many things wrong with what Alison Roman said about Marie Kondo that it's difficult to know where to start unpacking it all. That I was able to learn about and become interested in Marie Kondo's first book all the way back in January 2015, after reading a New York Times profile of her that had been published way back in October 2014, certainly shows that the growth of Kondo's brand did not happen overnight. (This was years before her Netflix show eventually debuted in January 2019, and before "The Shop at KonMari" opened on her website in November 2019.) Roman's accusation that Kondo "[expletive redacted] just sold out immediately" clearly has no basis.

Plus, it's really quite obvious that, whatever else one might feel about it, the official Marie Kondo shop offers an extremely curated set of products. Given the current selection at the shop, it's probably also clear that there will likely never be a $19.99 cutting board sold there. (A carefully-selected $199 cutting board might be more consistent with the kitchen products currently stocked.)

ETA 5/12/20: Approximately 14 hours after I published this post, Alison Roman issued a new apology on Twitter and Instagram, addressing both Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo, unlike her initial attempt at an apology on Friday night, which only addressed Teigen (and only after it became clear that Teigen was one of the executive producers for Roman's upcoming show). I believe this apology meets a minimum bar of professionalism that was not apparent in Roman's initial reactions on Friday. The new apology is also close to comprehensive in that it at least tries to address how (1) she chose to call out two Asian women in a space filled with white women and white men with larger, more longstanding product lines and (2) her use of ingredients and inspirations from non-Western cultures. A cynical person's interpretation would be that while Roman professed to not have a "communications person" before, she's almost certainly working with one now.

It's hard for me to accept this apology as particularly sincere, given how unprofessional Roman's initial handling of this situation was, but well, I had never actually bought anything of hers before - only watched some of her YouTube videos and used her cookie recipe from online - and I will probably not be buying anything of hers in the foreseeable future. The real test is whether she changes her behavior going forward. 

Reselling with TheRealReal

The four items I dropped off at TheRealReal, three of which they accepted. 

As I mentioned in early June, after letting certain more pricey unwanted items in my closet (which I knew that neither my sister nor any of my close friends would like) collect dust for years, I finally decided to try reselling them in the only sufficiently low-effort way that would suit me: I took them to one of TheRealReal's brick and mortar shops here in NYC and dropped them off for consignment in the last week of May. Now that all the items they accepted from me - three of the four things I brought in - have been sold, I am writing about my experience reselling with TheRealReal. 

Overall, I was very satisfied with my TheRealReal consignment experience. My only real goal was to resell these items after having spent as little of my time or effort as possible to accomplish that goal. I didn't have a specific price in mind for anything I sent in. The most important thing to me was that each of the items would find a buyer, and if I only got paid a nominal amount, that was fine by me. Hopefully, the buyers of each of my things will get far more use out of them than I did. Like I did with one of my items, these buyers may even someday send the items back to TheRealReal for another round of resale when they're done with them.

Some of my items were extremely old - I purchased two of them, the Rebecca Minkoff Morning After Bag and the Ferragamo Varas, nearly a decade ago - and I didn't think there was much of a market for anything I gave to TheRealReal. I had no interest in continually listing or re-listing the items myself on places like eBay or Poshmark until I found a buyer. (I was actually shocked that my items sold out so fast, within a month or two of being posted for sale!) Plus, I find the chore of shipping things out far more annoying and tedious than most people would, so that was something I preferred to avoid, which left me with basically no other practical option besides dropping off these items for consignment in person. 

In terms of whether my experience is a representative one, keep in mind that the items I sent in are probably some of the most modestly priced ones in TheRealReal's entire product catalog. Just from my limited experience, I could see that they take longer to scrutinize and process some categories of items than others. And as you'll see, the pricing of your items by TheRealReal will affect the commission rate. Among other bloggers I read, Elaine (part one, part two) and Kathy have also posted in some detail about their experiences selling with TheRealReal. Both of them seem to have more experience than I do with sending in items from a wider range of categories, so their posts might be more helpful than mine, if you're thinking of consigning something.

Please follow the link below to read a step-by-step account of my TheRealReal reselling experience! 

On Free-Cycling and My (Really Slow) Minimalist(ish) Journey

When we first moved in to our current apartment...

Despite all my years of closet decluttering, both via KonMari method and otherwise, I've never tried reselling any of my unwanted clothes or shoes by listing items individually on eBay, Poshmark, or what have you. I'm sheepish about this too, because I know full well that there are many reasons to try reselling, from both the frugality perspective (potentially recouping part of the cost is a good thing, even if, in many instances, one's used things don't have much value) and the minimalist-ish perspective (among many other things, from a waste reduction standpoint, it seems logically sound that the best chance for an unwanted item to have a meaningful second life is by reselling it directly to a buyer who specifically wants it, rather than donating it for a highly uncertain outcome).

Regardless of all the reasons why I really should make more of an effort to resell my many items that are still in reasonably good condition, but won't get any further use in my hands, it's simply not possible for me to routinely find the time or energy for high-effort resale attempts. If, in my current line of work, I can't even reliably make time to cook a Hello Fresh meal (~20 minutes of active work and ~20 minutes of passive waiting time in most instances), I won't be finding the time to continuously keep re-listing my (not particularly exciting or desirable) items on eBay.

Plus, as someone who is semi-regularly in the secondhand market to buy the kind of clothing I'd have available for resale (mostly Ann Taylor or J.Crew-type items I barely ended up wearing), I'm well aware of how little my used things are worth, even when in excellent condition (which isn't a given; I generally tried to wear them for a while, and not all of them laundered well). If I wouldn't buy these pieces used for much more than, say, ~$35/dress, I could hardly list them for more. It just wouldn't sit right with me, I always roll my eyes so hard when I see eBay listings for unrealistic or unreasonable prices. To be blunt, the amount of money we're talking about (especially after factoring in how poor the chances are for actually reselling many of my rather unexciting things) simply isn't likely to be worth my time or energy to actively list individual items for resale.

And the things I'd want to sell generally are far less desirable or interesting than the very specific items I've previously been in the market to buy. The market for the type of run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen secondhand clothes and accessories I'd have to offer is oversaturated and competitive, both from other individual sellers and from ThredUp. Furthermore, given the near-constant 30% to 40%-off reductions on new merchandise and the more aggressive discounts on sale merchandise available at the stores in question (Loft, Ann Taylor, J.Crew, etc.), I'd even be competing with the retailers themselves! Incidentally, that's what makes me roll my eyes at some of those eBay listings, when people try to sell their used things for more than similar new items are going for in the stores right now. The stores even have the added advantage of mostly free shipping.

Those low prices and constant sales are, of course, symptoms of undesirable trends. These are all brands that are undeniably fast fashion in their manufacturing practices (seen partially in their frequent drops of large volumes of new products), and ones that have likely been undertaking ever-increasing cost-cutting measures (based on comparisons of the traits of current merchandise to those of typical offerings in years past), likely due to their generally well-publicized financial woes. The low prices are not, in any way, something to aspire towards. But, well, that's the market my listings would be competing in, if I made them.

The result is that things have only been leaving my closet in other ways these past few years. Even though I try to be as responsible or as ethical as I can when sending off my unwanted things, I'm very realistic and aware about how imperfect my efforts are: 

1. My best items that I think would suit my sister are saved for her. Because I know her tastes well, the things I send her way are generally put to good use for a long time after. Some of them even become staples in her wardrobe, which is a particularly gratifying outcome. (This is one of the many reasons why having a close-in-age sister is a wonderful thing.) If I had any friends who had remotely similar tastes in clothing and accessories, that'd be another place for my nicest, but underutilized, things to go. 
2. Over the years, I've sent many items to ThredUp. Back when it was easy to track how my things were selling, they even tended to do well! That being said, payouts for my items, mostly a mix from Ann Taylor, Loft, and H&M-type retailers, were never great for what they accepted (which was ~50% of what I sent over the years), maybe ~$4/item max, mostly less. Though frankly, I was so thrilled at how easy it was that I did not care. ThredUp's intake and payout policies have changed in the many years since I started reselling, so I'd expect significantly lower payouts now. I also have doubts about whether their business model will work long-term (if they've cut payouts significantly since they started, and are also pricing many items too high to sell, those can't be good signs) or whether they're actually better for the environment by significantly reducing waste (they started making and selling new items, which is bizarre), so I'm not sure I would continue with them as a reseller now. And anything they don't accept likely ends up in the same type of donation or textile recycling situation as item 4 on my list. 
3. This hasn't fully played out yet, but for some of my potentially more valuable used things that my sister wouldn't like, I recently dropped them off at a TheRealReal physical store for consignment. Previously, these items had languished for years on my list for possible future higher-effort resale. Most of them I already knew I wanted to resell before I even started this blog, and I certainly haven't worn or used them since, which means they've been sitting around collecting dust for a half-decade or longer!
4. Everything else has been going to the donation and textile recycling collection points closest to wherever I've lived in NYC. And yes, I'm painfully aware that donation is generally not a route to used clothes being put to good use by someone else, due to the extreme volume of donations constantly being made in the US. But I may be at a loss for a better solution for what remains after I've exhausted the other options. 
5. For the relatively few things that are in such poor condition that I know they truly have no chance of being a usable donation (like, say, the Wolford tights I shredded by accident), I do put them in the trash. Obviously, there's nothing redeeming about this, but I'm not sure I see another solution. 

Would you believe that I haven't even gotten to the main point of this entry yet? What I actually wanted to discuss today is another method I've added to the mix in recent months, though, as I'll explain, it's had little real success: free-cycling.

I last engaged in a significant bout of free-cycling when I moved out of student housing after law school, in order to send off furniture, kitchen items, and other home goods that would be made redundant when I moved in with K. I loved free-cycling back then, and a university campus is certainly an ideal place to do it. Other students took practically everything I listed, and I was pretty sure they'd happily and enthusiastically put all my things to good use, given how restrictive students' budgets often are. It felt like a great thing to do, to give away as much as I could!

Take What's Useful, Ignore the Rest: On "KonMari" and "FIRE"

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Back in December 2014, when I started writing here, I first encountered both Marie Kondo's book and the Financial Independence, Retire Early ("FIRE") movement at about the same time. Although one wouldn't necessarily know it from my writing (I started writing about "KonMari"-style decluttering immediately, but my first mention of FIRE by name was not until early 2018, though I did link Frugalwoods in mid-2016, so one could infer I had become familiar with FIRE by then), I was thinking about, and learning from, both schools of thought simultaneously, since the beginning. Both sets of ideas were major influences to me at the start of the money-conscious minimalism-ish journey that I've been documenting here all this time.

In my personal interpretation of KonMari method and FIRE, the two have significant traits in common. Although I don't think think this is clear from the Netflix show, Kondo's book explains that when a person goes through her "tidying up" process and learns what physical objects "spark joy", it often causes them to think about more abstract things, including how they want to live their life and spend their time. "The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life." To me, KonMari is about keeping the things (both physical and intangible) that you want in your life, that you like and need, or that you value, and then leaving the rest behind. And some of the ideas associated with FIRE are similar. Because FIRE is, to a large extent, about increasing one's savings rate, which often means reducing expenses, many adherents recommend aggressively cutting spending on things one doesn't need or value. Furthermore, the theoretical end goal is the "dream" of not needing a traditional full-time job, so it's very much about being able to spend one's time living the life one wants.

On my initial reading of these ideas, I thought of both as being the sort of flexible and relatively "friendly" type of self-help and advice that I favor. As a general matter, I prefer to be gently cajoled into doing things with light-hearted, supportive words and reassurance. I find any judgmental language in minimalism and personal finance discourse, anything harsh and lacking empathy for different people and their situations, extremely distasteful and off-putting (i.e. suggestions that if you ever wear or buy any "fast fashion" ever, you must be a decadent clotheshorse who hates the planet, or, that if you ever buy a latte or a more expensive piece of clothing or makeup, you're a profligate spendthrift). And to me, when one isolates the actual, required fundamentals of each concept, it seems clear that various important and helpful elements of each can be adapted to a wide range of lifestyle choices and circumstances.

Thus, when it comes to both theories, KonMari and FIRE, I've always thought it easy to take and learn what was useful to me from each and ignore the rest of the pieces associated with them. If there's something in either set of ideas I find unhelpful or unproductive, then that's fine. The ideas are flexible enough that I can continue on with the rest.

On Adulthood, (Not) Having it All, and the Marie Kondo Show

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In some ways, 2018 was the first year I felt like a "real" adult. Although I graduated college nearly a decade before, and had been financially self-sufficient since, the path I've taken since graduation has also been rather circuitous, full of arguable fits and starts. I went from school to short-term academic fellowship; to law school; to what was technically a full-time biglaw job of open-ended duration (but because of the known end date to start my clerkship, combined with the firm's reluctance to staff soon-to-be clerks on long-term projects, it sometimes felt artificially like a short-term gig); and finally to the clerkship, another short-term job. For nearly a decade, everything had a definite expiration date that I knew about well in advance.

It's not that I wasn't technically an adult, or that I didn't act like one. In all that time, I made many big, grown-up decisions, some of them with huge financial implications. Going in to law school, I felt very certain of myself and what I wanted from life, and I felt quite grown-up as a result. I knew I wanted children someday (hopefully two, as it's wonderful, especially now, to have a sibling close in age, though we fought like cats and dogs as children), that I wouldn't like to raise them while living in the city (because I just couldn't imagine that, being a lifelong child of the suburbs), and that I'd like to continue working after (far and away the most common scenario for my peers and professional role models). I was fairly sure of all these things back then, and remain fairly certain about them now. 

Except that, looking back, I was also rather willfully not thinking about some of the practical realities associated with those things I wanted, as I started reflecting on last year. I still want these things nonetheless, but I hadn't really thought about just how hard it might be to have all of them at once. Heck, I've been known to get driven slightly to tears by the prospect of cooking a poorly-designed, highly inefficient Blue Apron meal after a long day at the office, in a week when my hours were biglaw-ish (and K's even more so, so if anyone was going to cook and avoid wasting food and money, it had to be me), and we don't even have kids yet!

2018 was the first year of my adult life spent entirely in a job or other pursuit with no clear, built-in end date. Because of that, it also felt like the first year I truly had an opportunity to begin thinking concretely about the type of life I wanted in the long term, that I would choose for myself. Do I want to stay in the private sector, or do I want to someday go into public service? Will I want, at some point, to make the tradeoff of taking a significant pay-cut for fewer working hours and greater scheduling flexibility? If and when I have children, will I be able to go to school events that take place during business hours? How much childcare and cleaning help do I expect our household to hire*, exactly, give that we are both likely to continue working full-time?

This isn't meant to be a sad post, by the way. By now, I think most women around my age have long since realized they probably can't have it "all", both a high-powered career and everything else they want at home. Nine times out of ten, "leaning in" probably won't work as well as one might have hoped. And in biglaw, new associates, men and women alike, quickly realize it's a tough industry in ways they didn't fully understand as law students, and that the hours and expectations might not be compatible with a lot of what they want from family life. That's if there's even room at the top for them to stay in the industry in the long, long term. (Let's not even talk about the particular challenges for women and minorities, that's a story for another day.) One has to be prepared for tradeoffs, that's just part of life.

And even after thinking about all these questions for a year, I (predictably enough, for someone who is likely still a few years off from starting to make any of those big decisions for real) don't have any clear answers. I would imagine that working through some of these questions is a lifelong process, one for which the correct answer, and the work-life balance or compromise captured in it, is constantly being revisited. Circumstances will inevitably change from month to month and year to year, and with that, one's position regarding all these concerns (amount of hired help; what salary one is aiming for; what expected working hours one can, or needs, to accept, etc.) will need to change too.

I maybe feel a bit silly writing all these paragraphs of introduction when I truly have no answers, only questions. Actually, the only thing I feel particularly sure about sharing today was my thoughts regarding episode three of the Marie Kondo show, about the Mersiers (a charming family of four struggling to downsize from a multiple-story house in Michigan to a small, two-bedroom apartment in the Los Angeles area). Specifically, the episode illustrated something I found painfully real about some of these questions surrounding housework, emotional labor, and the gendered dimensions of those things.

Podcasts I Like Lately

Oh my, for the past few weeks, things turned out far more hectic at the office than I originally anticipated! I was working on a large, urgent project, and the pace of it really took me by surprise. But the finished product turned out well, and I was glad to have the chance to play a sizable role in that. I always do enjoy legal research and writing, regardless of the topic or issue at hand. 

For today, here's a fairly low-key post while I ease back into writing here. There's so much that I want to discuss recently, but because I have so much to say about every little thing, it'll take a while to get all my thoughts down about any of the other ideas I have for new posts. Topics that have interested me lately include: (1) some utterly bizarre and unfair reactions to Marie Kondo, ostensibly from people who are really into books, but perhaps not enough to actually read her book and comprehend it; (2) a... situation... that arose in the minimalist-ish and slow fashion space, primarily on Instagram; and (3) that "millenial burnout" thing, and how it looks very different for different demographics. For that last thing, I certainly have my own take on it and how it plays out in my own life. And, of course, I always have a gigantic backlog of other post ideas, many of them months or even years old, that I've never gotten around to. 

Today, though, the focus is on something smaller, on a few podcasts that I've enjoyed recently. Maybe these are all very obvious recommendations that practically everyone in the world is already familiar with, but I myself am quite new to the world of listening to podcasts! Over the years, I'd listened to episodes from some of the most popular ones, mainly the first season of Serial and some of This American Life, but other than that, I'd never really been interested in anything else. It was only in the last few months that I decided I wanted to expand my podcast horizons a bit, to find some new ones to listen to while commuting. 

In no particular order, here are the podcasts I've listened to in the past few months and that I thought were particularly well done, and some thoughts on why I recommend each:

Dr. Death: Holy moly, this was a wild ride, and I couldn't stop listening! It's a shocking and absolutely horrifying story. (Be warned, there's quite a few descriptions of botched surgery, which I found rather graphic and, for lack of a better word, squicky). As the podcast tells it, a perfect storm of bad things (including some deficiencies in how the medical profession regulates itself) came together, and multiple patients paid a high price. Wondery does an excellent job telling this story, and it was engaging the whole way through. I've been trying to get into their other famous true crime podcast, Dirty John, but I don't find that one as compelling. 

Limetown Season One: And my recommendation only extends to the first season for this, unfortunately. This was my first experience listening to a fiction-based podcast, and it was really fun! They did a great job setting up the mystery and revealing just enough in each episode to keep me intrigued and eager to listen to the next one. Alas, as they revealed more and more, the story started sounding silly, and I couldn't keep listening after the first episode of the second season. Because of the cliffhanger on which they ended season one, there wasn't much momentum going into season two. It just felt like a very abrupt and clumsy transition. 

Believed: Out of all the terrible things we keep learning about these past few years, one of the things that struck me the most was the Larry Nassar case, and what it revealed about the culture of abuse in USA Gymnastics. I have such a hard time comprehending how so many adults can turn a blind eye for so long to harm that is being done to children under their care, to ignore allegations of serious abuses, and to fail to investigate or report. That breach of trust, that failure to protect people who are vulnerable and to whom one owes a duty of care, I just- My words fail me. Few other things make me so angry. 

I remember, in 2016, listening to an interview with McKayla Maroney on Gymcastic and feeling like there was something under the surface, there was something darker or heavier going on there, but that seemed to go unstated or unexplained. And to know now about what had happened, I'm just so horrified and sad, and so angry at all the adults who should have known better.

Link List: The "Subtle Horror" of Women's Media and KonMari Branded Boxes

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Random question, has anyone else ever experienced hours of tingling, stinging fingers from chopping and handling hot chili peppers? It had never happened to me before this week, despite having cooked with fresh chilis on many occasions before. And the pepper in question wasn't anywhere near as spicy as some I've used in the past with no ill effect! I'm very careful about washing my hands immediately and not touching anything else until I've washed the knife, cutting board, and my hands. This time, I got a persistent stinging and slight burning sensation that lasted for hours, through several hand washings and a shower. How very strange! It wasn't actually painful, but was odd and persistent. 

1. // After that Refinery29 money diary about the intern who claimed an income of $25/hour (but was supported by her parents and grandfather paying her rather fancy rent, and a generous monthly allowance on top of that) went viral, I guess someone wanted to capitalize on the resulting buzz with some silly, overblown clickbait about how "women's media is a scam" and Refinery29 presents some unique "subtle horror"? Because it's apparently shocking that they derive advertising revenue? Because most other media isn't also financially supported by advertising and never, ever publishes advertorials? Good golly, I found that New Republic piece and its headline ridiculous. 

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty to criticize about media and advertising, and the often fuzzy line between advertising and journalism in the fashion and women's lifestyle space. See, for example, the fawning "news" coverage of Everlane's underwear launch, when it was rather obvious on its face, that the product was not particularly new or revolutionary, and certainly would not suit all women. I was probably an outlier in actually feeling a bit angry about their faux-feminist ad campaign, but either way, I think it's obvious that most of that "news" was either paid-for editorials or, at the very least, heavily cut and paste straight from their press releases. In terms of Refinery29 specifically, one side effect of that viral money diary was that I've seen whispers here and there alluding to their bad labor practices, which I could totally believe, and that would be something worth criticizing. 

2. // Now for some blog entries I've been reading recently: Leigh wrote about her experiences with discrimination in the tech industry, which sound just awful. I've been working through my own  feelings about discrimination in my own industry, which has been sneaky and pervasive. Both forms take a lot of strength to endure, and I'm one of those people that feels pushed out of biglaw much sooner than expected. Jess wrote about her wedding budget in the Bay Area, and it sounds like a lovely day. Breath of Fresh Wear wrote about the process of trying out pink hair, which sounds very time-intensive, and turned out looking cool! Sophie wrote a helpful review of several items from Vetta Capsule, a brand I only recently learned about and was interested in, though it sounds like many of their items are a bit fussy, and not too practical as a result. If I actually want to try them out, I'll need to think carefully about which items could be useful to me. 

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3. // Wasn't it one of Marie Kondo's "rules" to avoid buying items solely for storage? Both because buying new things to wrangle what you already own won't actually help solve the clutter problem and because she recommends re-purposing things such as cardboard boxes you already have lying around as trays and drawer dividers. The latter tip, in particular, is something I took to heart. Those white "trays" in the bottom left of that photo were the box from an iPad mini, and I still use old candy and cell phone boxes as trays on my dresser and desk now. So the upcoming rather fancy and expensive set of KonMari branded boxes ($89 for 6, purportedly), which appear to be cardboard, is... an odd direction for her brand to go in. I had thought the same thing when she collaborated with Cuyana to make a set of small, color-coordinated leather storage cases (pictured at the top of this post) to nest into Cuyana's larger leather jewelry case. I had also secretly thought the Cuyana x Marie Kondo cases were really cute (though too expensive and impractical for me), so I didn't think about the contradiction with her actual written methods that much.  

Only time will tell if the upcoming set of KonMari boxes will be a successful product, but it did remind that it can be difficult and expensive to find well-designed, functional storage items. I totally overpaid to get some Ikea Skubb Boxes from Amazon  once (because I am so not making the trek to Ikea by subway and ferry for something that small) on the belief that they'd fit perfectly into my dresser and allow me to use all the space in an organized way. Spoiler alert, they did not take up the entirety of the drawer as I imagined, or allow me to use all the space efficiently, so I felt cheated. 

Dd you see that New Republic piece about the women's media "scam"? What did you think? (It's probably not an intelligent, novel, or deep enough a take to be dignified with much of a real response, however.) In terms of responses to the original viral money diary, I thought Jia Tolentino's take at the New Yorker was great. (She's such a wonderful, thoughtful writer!) 

Ideal Wardrobe Outcomes

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Recently, quite a few of my favorite bloggers wrote about their approaches to building their wardrobe and, through that, some described what their ideal wardrobe looks like, what qualities it has and, possibly, what ideal quantity of clothes it would contain. These are themes that almost all of my favorite blogs talk about sometimes, actually, everyone who writes about clothing and shopping with some regularity, at least! 

More broadly, I also enjoy when people discuss the limits of minimalism for themselves and their lives, and either feeling like or being told "you spent too much" or "you consumed too much", whether to be a "proper" minimalist, or a "proper" frugal person. Those are definitely thoughts I relate to.

One of the recurrent themes to my writing here is anxiety about not being a good enough minimalist because (a) many things I buy (especially for work) are from mid-range mall brands with fast fashion production practices, and (b) I shop a lot, by both minimalist and frugal-person standards. One could very reasonably argue that I have plenty of money to make better consumption choices than I do, from an ethics perspective, but well, that may not be fully compatible with some of my personal finance-related values, which I'm increasingly finding might not easily allow for the big distant future designer splurges I used to dream of saving my way to earning, because those values put a ceiling on the price points I'm willing to consider in many shopping categories. Also, the biggest factors in all my spending decisions are my still gigantic and scary student loans ($2,500+ a month!), for at least the next four to five years or so, most likely, which can be expected to take me right up to when financial obligations to family, especially to the kids I hope to have, really "get real".

Then there's the anxiety about not fitting in to my particular segment of my profession, which sometimes feels dominated by people from wealthy backgrounds, because of those same more affordable mid-range mall brand clothes I stick to, even if I'm pretty sure I'm not actually being judged for that.

What would my own ideal wardrobe look like? 

First things first, I definitely don't have an ideal total number of items in mind. I got into minimalism blogs back when capsule wardrobes just started gaining traction (Un-Fancy was still a fairly new blog back then, for instance), and most of my biggest influences were bloggers who had done most of their fashion and shopping-related posts quite some time ago, and who were winding down their interest in fashion and shopping, or even their blogs entirely (think Assembled Hazardly and La Nife en L'air) by the time I started reading. So capsule wardrobes were never really something they discussed, and I wasn't primed to look in that direction as the idea got more popular.

I find the capsule wardrobe idea appealing as a theoretical matter, how clean and uncluttered a closet would be if it contained only a small, discrete number of well-loved pieces, every one of them comfortable and that one is thrilled to wear. I also agree there probably exists an optimal, "perfect" number somewhere, at which one doesn't "need" anything more (and that it's a surprisingly small number, relative to what advertisements say or imply). I'd feel a genuine sense of "everything as it should be" accomplishment if I could find that number, but realistically, I just didn't think it was practical for my needs or my habits. I feel like capsule wardrobes generally have their biggest shortcomings for people with a lot of different wardrobe "needs", whether that's from a job with a restrictive dress code, extreme weather patterns (who really ever derives KonMari-esque joy from a puffy down coat and snow boots? not me, at least, but they're definitely necessary in some parts of the country), or for sports, things like that.

For me, the primary sticking point that ensures a numerical limit-based approach would never work for me is my business casual, sometimes business-formal office dress code. I like to joke that it's "casual business casual" because, in most NYC biglaw offices, there's room for women who enjoy fashion to try and wear some trendy things that aren't traditionally seen as conservative enough for work, but make no mistake, there are also tons of unspoken rules and expectations still. Lots of people out there are secretly mean and judgmental about these things, there exist judges at prominent federal courts who think black skirt suits are the only appropriate courtroom attire for women, court staff definitely are snarking about inappropriate shoe or other attire once they're in private, etc. etc.

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I don't enjoy conservative business formal attire at all, neither the heels nor the suits, but understand that it's absolutely necessary for court and interviews, so that's several pieces of my work wardrobe I dislike, but that need to be in there. I also don't particularly enjoy most business casual either, but it's necessary and gets the job done.

I've sometimes commented, over at JENKR's, who also discusses this theme, that it can be really wonderful to find something that's good for both work and weekend, to start making that work wardrobe feel more "me" and create some overlap between it and my "for fun" wardrobe, but that's an extremely rare thing (seen most vividly in the J.Crew Open Sweater Blazer and the J.Crew Factory version). (That's an idea I think fellow law-person A at Posts Factum also touches on.) Because so much of my total wardrobe is necessarily taken up by all these work clothes I just don't enjoy, the idea of trying to refine the numbers (either of my whole wardrobe, or even just the work portion) just doesn't appeal, even if it is probably possible to create a streamlined "work capsule" and a separate very small "weekend capsule" for each of the seasons.

Having so much of my week taken up by dressing for work probably leaves me free to come up with a remarkably slimmed down and super minimalist-seeming tiny wardrobe for casual wear, actually. If I did laundry for my light-colored clothing often enough, I'd be perfectly happy with just the above set of clothing, two tops (both from Uniqlo ages ago, they've only stocked more traditional-looking breton-striped tops since) and a single standard pair of dark skinny jeans (mine are from Gap now), for all my spring and fall weekends. For summer, two or three short-sleeved or sleeveless summer dresses in some combination of linen, cotton, silk, or rayon (currently the older design of the Grana v-neck silk slip dress, an Old Navy tie-neck rayon shift dress, and a Madewell silk-cotton blend dress I bought secondhand) and a pair of FitFlops is all I really need and actually wear. Because temperatures have been all over the place sometimes, that long Uniqlo linen-blend open cardigan I bought mainly for work has also been seeing tons of weekend wear (it looks great over dresses).

Please follow the link below for some additional thoughts about ideal outcomes for new purchases!

Sunday Reading: On Shopping Bans, Fasts, and Freezes

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By now, almost everyone has likely read Ann Patchett's New York Times piece on her "Year of No Shopping". My reaction to the piece was initially more skeptical than I expected, given that it aligns perfectly with my interest in "minimalism-ish", as well as my fondness for lighter, more accessible (and not necessarily comprehensive) introductions to bigger, difficult topics. For instance, I love Marie Kondo's first book, even if, by most standards, it's a "baby steps only" introduction to only a portion of the ideas that fall under the minimalism umbrella. In the personal finance area, I'm fine with beginners' books, and I'm not sure most people, myself included, need much more than that. 

First things first, there's nothing wrong with the piece itself. It's well-written, not at all annoying or preachy, and by introducing a broad audience to the idea that less is more, and that we likely all need  far less than we currently consume, it's doing positive work. At the same time, I was taken aback by just how... easy she made it seem. It wasn't even just a fashion shopping ban! By late January, she had made it broader. As she says, "while I couldn’t buy clothing or speakers, I could buy anything in the grocery store, including flowers. I could buy shampoo and printer cartridges and batteries but only after I’d run out of what I had. I could buy plane tickets and eat out in restaurants. I could buy books." Sensible enough, not the most restrictive, but far more than just a fashion shopping ban. 

I suppose my main reason for skepticism is that I'm not sure a shopping ban or shopping fast, any set of what's likely to be somewhat arbitrary rules for an arbitrary period of time, is going to be the best way to get the benefits that she describes.

First, there were some lessons on "wants" versus "needs", how "If you want something, wait awhile. Chances are the feeling will pass" and "Once I got the hang of giving shopping up, it wasn’t much of a trick. The trickier part was living with the startling abundance that had become glaringly obvious when I stopped trying to get more. Once I could see what I already had, and what actually mattered, I was left with a feeling that was somewhere between sickened and humbled. When did I amass so many things, and did someone else need them?" This is where the enthusiastic KonMari fan in me comes in, I suppose, because by early 2015, having gone through a round of KonMari decluttering (which worked for everything but my closet, which I had decluttered many times before, and from which I still haven't let go of everything I don't actually wear, much of which I haven't in fact worn since 2015), I felt like I'd already learned that lesson, as to everything but the things in my closet.

Post-KonMari, I gave away the majority of my furniture and various other non-closet things when moving out after graduating law school. Since then, I've been careful and deliberate about new acquisitions of furniture, kitchen tools, all those sorts of things. Heck, I sometimes go too far. After our wooden cutting boards got permanently warped due to improper maintenance, I agonized over whether to buy replacements, and which replacements to buy, for more than a year and a half before I felt like I knew what the right choice was, and how I'd care for the next set.

Second, she derived a related personal finance lesson from the experience, how, "[t]he things we buy and buy and buy are like a thick coat of Vaseline smeared on glass: We can see some shapes out there, light and dark, but in our constant craving for what we may still want, we miss life’s details. . . . I came to a better understanding of money as something we earn and spend and save for the things we want and need." That sounds like what I experienced when I started budgeting, and tracking every single transaction, around the time I started blogging, using You Need a Budget (software that is now subscription-only, but the approach is simple and could be replicated in Excel). I wasn't always using YNAB properly, but that "better understanding" of money was there.

By tracking every transaction I quickly learned that some of my money was disappearing into a void, being spent on things I didn't want or need, a combination of (a) Sephora purchases as stress relief, often rounded out with an extra add-on item to get to the free shipping threshold, (b) Amazon purchases every time I thought of a new vague thing to try, and (c) Amazon and/or Drugstore.com (they had reliably great prices compared to brick and mortar drugstores in NYC) purchases to stock up unnecessary and excessive quantities of cleaning products and other household items, some of which I gave away when I moved out and some of which, in the case of more compact items like dish soap, I only finished using nearly two years later. So I stopped those things almost immediately, and it was easy because the purchases weren't adding real value to my life.

I suppose the other main reason for my skepticism was, in the end, that it sounded too easy. Given how long I've been reading minimalism blogs, it's probably not surprising that I've read tons of posts about shopping bans, fasts, and freezes over the years. Many of them were "no shopping" for months at a time long before KonMari was cool. And actually, over time, it often proves extremely difficult to simply stop shopping for any extended period of time. I've tried no less than twice, just as to my closet, with no success, though I have an occasional month of no shopping, once in a long while, usually because I was busy with something else (at that time, final exams). The most common "success" scenario I've seen is when someone looks back and realizes, several months on, that without even trying, they hadn't shopped for a certain length of time because they hadn't seen anything they liked, or because they were otherwise occupied.

Maybe there are lessons there, though, in how "easy" Patchett's essay made it seem. The way she writes it, she was much more gentle on herself than many of us tend to be, when there are slip-ups or exceptions made, which she describes as happening a few times. She didn't dwell on it, just moved on and continued working on the larger goal for the rest of the year. That's a useful mindset. Also, for the USA-dwellers among us, American society may be more consumerist, at least when compared to the other societies I'm familiar with. We have more in the way of "big box stores" or places like Costco, where we buy in bulk to save and, in the suburbs at least, more in the way of space to store the excess. If one's starting point is an average American consumption habit, then of course it'll be easier to scale down the shopping, and work on the backlog of soap, paper towels, and dental floss that's already in one's pantry or bathroom cabinet.

What did you think about Patchett's piece? When I started this entry quite a few weeks ago, I thought I'd have more to say, but as I kept reworking this draft, I realized I wasn't able to add much that was new to the discussion. Oh well! 

Friday Link List

I had a relaxing and low-key Christmas holiday with my mother, sister, and my sister's dog, a shiba inu, in the D.C. suburbs. 

I hope that everyone has been having a wonderful holiday season! I'm back at the office, after having taken off a bit earlier for Christmas than most, though I have New Year's Day off, so there's a long weekend to look forward to.

1. // By now, I think everyone has already seen Grechen's post about being increasingly disappointed with Everlane. It's a good post, so if you haven't seen it yet, go check it out! I may be biased, as a few months ago, I wrote about my own mixed feelings about Everlane, about how some of their products were weirdly big misses, even as there were also a few, mostly older items that I still quite like. Their "traditional retail" price comparisons have always been odd, most obviously with the Petra, which I like, and found fairly priced, but for which the idea of it retailing elsewhere at $1300 is laughable.

2. // And here's another instance of lawyers behaving badly, though not in the same way as now-retired Judge Kozinski. David Boies, who is extremely prominent in the industry and was maybe a bit too involved in representing Harvey Weinstein, apparently also did something else in that general vein, with his representation of novelist Emma Cline's ex, in making salacious accusations against her. It sounds like a gross complaint. I'm mainly wondering how Boies's firm, where a partner of his stature definitely bills more than $900 an hour, and the firm's most junior associates almost certainly bill at least $400 an hour, ended up with the case. 

3. // Michelle shared this Racked article on "Menocore", the Eileen Fisher-esque comfortable clothing-centric aesthetic, a while back. I don't have anything thoughtful to say about it, except that, in recent months, there's a large part of me that really wants to embrace that look, though I feel a little too young to actually shop at Eileen Fisher. Nor could I wear it to work. Still, I just really love the idea of wearing comfortable, fairly relaxed-fit clothing in natural fibers and more muted colors all the time. In somewhat related reading, there was also this New Yorker piece focused on Eileen Fisher the brand, and the resulting r/femalefashionadvice discussion.

Did you do anything fun for the holidays? Are you also feeling the Eileen Fisher-esque "Menocore" thing? The only thing I own that's unequivocally in that vein is probably that very boxy olive-green and gray linen J.Crew sweater I got from Thredup a few months back, though I have a few other pieces that can be combined to get that sort of look.