Tl;dr – I’m going to complain about minimalist wallets for a couple of paragraphs and then show you mine.

I get mildly annoyed with minimalism for superiority. It’s easy to spot, generally if you have to buy something to show how minimalist you are, then you’ve missed a point somewhere. If you are still confused then I highly recommend working your way down Erin Doland’s list of unitaskers, which is entertaining at any time.

My particular irritation today was will minimalist wallets. Wallets designed not to hold very much. But oddly, enough, that cost a lot of money (leaving you less to put in the wallet presumably, and thus being a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy). I keep seeing page after page of ’20 minimalist wallets that X’

It’s not the price that irritates, its the utter specialization:

‘Slots for three cards’ – not two, and definitely not four, but three.

‘holds X bills’ – which is great as long as you don’t live in, or ever intend to visit, well any other country with different shaped money.

and my very favorite….

…space for exactly three pound coins. Given I don’t think that a 50p piece could fit in there I’m not sure how change is supposed to work (I don’t think coins normally go in a wallet, but what do I know?).

Sigh.

So what’s my alternative you ask? Well I don’t care about fashion really so I bought a half dozen of these from eBay

…and attached them with a handy key ring.

It’s great. Cards go in them, so does folded money. I can always easily find my Oyster card, or my bank card. I can hang them up next to my keys at night. If I find that they don’t hold enough cards then I go and get another slot from the cupboard and the problem is solved. (Also, for those who pay attention to such things, no animals were harmed in the making of this wallet).

Minimal, you want minimal? For comparison, my old fairly minimal wallet, centre, and the wallet of the first housemate to walk into the room when I was taking a photo.

I just wanted to point out that maybe if you are trying to reduce the amount of stuff you have, you should think about all you really need. And to also rail a little bit of the idea that minimalism is having the same amount of stuff, just in a really specialized tiny space that becomes useless as soon as circumstances change. I don’t think being minimalist is achieved by just putting everything in a very particular place. I think its achieved by getting rid of it.