Hey, guys. It's Chelsea. And this week's video is
brought to you by our own stuff. So it is officially 2023. And if, like us, you don't
love the pressure of New Year's resolutions but still
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alternative investing categories. Start building wealth
by clicking the link in our description. And this week, we are
kicking off the new year by talking about
all of those things that I left behind in
2022, like this queen who makes an appearance
every single year. I have seven things
to cover, and I want to give a little
detail on each of them. So let's cut the bull-bull-[BLEEP]
and get into the seven things that I got rid of
for good in 2022. Number one is about
60% of my clothes. Now listen, I can already hear
you squawking in the comments. Like, aren't you always on
a clothes-purging journey? Correct. I am. Listen, I am always in the
process of unplugging myself from the matrix that is consumer
culture targeted at women. I have bought too many things
throughout my life, things that I didn't end
up wearing nearly as much as I thought I would. Lord knows I've talked at length
on this channel about things like my Robin's egg
blue faux fur coat. But I still find that on most
season-to-season changes, I am confronted with the reality
of a good number of clothes that I just didn't
end up wearing. And I think part of that is
because in the past when I've done purges, I have done just
straight-up I take things from my wardrobe,
and they end up getting sold, donated,
recycled, et cetera. And because it goes
directly from my wardrobe into gone forever,
I typically tend to be fairly conservative
when it comes to the things that I'll get rid of. There have been a lot of
items in each round of purging where I'm like, oh, well, I
didn't wear that this season, but maybe I will. I like it enough to keep it. And lo and behold, I
didn't end up doing it. So I created a new
system this year, which is my now
forever system, which is partially
inspired by the fact that we do have a storage unit
now in this building, which is for a Manhattanite
the ultimate luxury one can experience. But I think this would work
just as well if you have some like overhead storage or
areas that you don't really use that you could fit a few
Tupperwares, where instead of getting rid of
clothes immediately, I take everything that
I'm pretty sure I'm not going to need, and I put it
into storage for three months. And if after three months
of full season basically I don't find myself missing
it or wanting to wear it, then I know I can
get rid of it safely. And that has allowed me
to be way more ruthless. And we also talk a lot on this
channel about fast fashion specifically, which is something
I do generally stay away from, but which for many people is the
most accessible or affordable option when it comes
to buying clothes. And since a lot of these
clothes are literally made to be disposable
at some level, it's totally understandable
that you would be constantly in that cycle of accumulation,
and then ultimately purging. Now, I am not being paid
to say in this video. It is generally just my
actual feelings on the matter. But as some of you
guys know, we've been doing a partnership
on the channel with the clothing
rental service, Nuuly, which has honestly
been amazing for me. And I'm just like keeping
going with it even after the campaign is done. And if you're
interested in Nuuly, I do recommend that
you use our discount code in the description. But you don't have to,
but it would be amazing. And like I said, it's not an ad
I'm being paid for either way. So do with it as you will. But clothing rentals,
I think, if you are someone who,
like me, does tend to be tempted more
than some when it comes to buying clothes,
it's actually a great option. I found that pretty much my
entire desire to just buy stuff has evaporated with the fact
that I know that every month I get to pick six new items from
their beautiful online shopping and just test them out. And if I like it, I can
rent it again the next month and so on, or even buy it. It just really scratches
that itch that a lot of us have when it comes
to shopping, which is more about the experience
and the imagination and the searching. It's the same reason
why a lot of people like to fill up their online
shopping carts and then not actually check out. And there are actually
some environmental benefits to renting over just buying
a lot of items of clothing. I've been wearing a lot of
new clothing in my videos and on my social media. And if you're out there
wondering is this [BLEEP] always shopping? No, I just rent [BLEEP] now. All right. Another thing I got
rid of this year-- RIP to that-- is my bird of
paradise plant, which sucked. Here's a photo. I loved her. You used to see her
in these videos. And she died a painful and
probably ultimately avoidable death. We're trying to be very
conscientious about our plant care in this house. But one thing we really failed
to take into account when we bought our bird
of paradise was that they need to have a
very warm, humid climate. But they are, at the end of
the day, tropical plants. And we didn't realize that in
the summer months when we're using the air conditioner,
it goes directly onto where that plant is placed. And it was just too cold for
the baby-- too cold and dry. For those thinking
of getting one because they are
gorgeous plants, they are generally
easy to maintain if you have them in the
right kind of environment. But keep in mind, as
Gardener's World puts it, the "Bird of paradise
plant is not hard to grow, but it does need
specific conditions-- warmth, bright light,
and a humid atmosphere. A south-facing room, bathroom,
or conservatory is ideal. And it also needs
plenty of room, as the leaves can reach
up to 2 meters tall." So we did have to let
her rest in power. But now we've replaced her
with a fiddle-leaf fig tree, which some people are like,
oh, that's a bit passé. Whatever. I still like the way they look. And more importantly, it's
totally fine with the AC unit. And she's been thriving
for months now. So we're all good in here. But yeah, bird of plant was
definitely a good lesson to do a lot more research on the
plants that you bring in, not just for the immediate
environment they're in, but how that environment stands
to change over the course of the year, which taking
accountability here, we didn't. Number three is
my fear of TikTok. So I have avoided TikTok
for the longest time because honestly, I'm
old and it scared me. And also, I felt like
I was equating it too much in my head,
I think, to Instagram, which can, in its
worst iterations, engender a really
high level of pressure to present a certain
image, and to be consistent with that image,
and to seem perfect and very curated and all of
these other things. And I actually have
found in the five days now I've been using
TikTok as of filming, that it's actually
pretty much the opposite. I actually feel it's
more akin in some ways to Instagram stories or
Twitter, in the sense of you're just out here getting
awesome content. No one really cares
what it looks like. And it actually, to me, is more
antithetical to the platform to be overly curated
in your presentation. And when you see
someone on TikTok who's like completely perfect--
like it keeps recommending this British influencer
named Lydia Millen to me, who's like insanely perfect
in a very 2015/16 lifestyle influencer way. And I'm like, are
we still doing this? Like, what is this? So I actually find TikTok
relieves the pressure somewhat. I've been embracing
it wholeheartedly because for some
personal reasons I would like to have a presence
on the platform going forward. But also because it's a
really good outlet for me to just post my cooking
and domestic content that I really enjoy,
but doesn't really fit into what I do here at TFD. And I find that with
Twitter becoming more and more
unusable by the day, I really don't want to
just be left to Instagram. And while some people
might take the opportunity to just leave social
media entirely, I'm someone who really
does rely on social media for a lot of my work. And I personally enjoy the
role that it plays in my life. So I don't want to give it up. But I will say
that I was pretty-- that I did have a big
misconception about TikTok, and I've actually been
really enjoying it. Shameless plug-- my
TikTok is @faganchelsea. It's also linked
in the description. And you should
definitely go follow me because it's a very wholesome
side of my life, I think, personally. Number four is fancy sheets. Now, I am not going to call
this brand out by name, but I'm sure some
of you are going to know who I'm talking about
because they have saturated that DTC market on the sheets
and linens and bath towels and all that [BLEEP] with a
stunning level of universality. Like, I think I've seen in
my life in New York maybe 100,000 ads for this company. It's on every subway car. It's on every Instagram feed. It's just everywhere. And there are a few other
brands of sheets and linens that have a similar
level of ubiquity. But long story short is
that I have tried several of these higher end brands,
like semi-higher end brands, and those sheets are terrible. Like, I have had
genuinely so many issues with some of the nicer
sheets I bought-- like, horrible discoloration
no matter what I do. Like, one of them
just like-- the bottom of the duvet just
like completely ripped, like
buttons popping off. Like, it is just
[BLEEP] quality. And I've actually found
that my favorite sheets that I've ever owned are this
linen set that I actually got from Amazon,
unfortunately, but less expensive than some
of these competitors, and genuinely amazing quality-- 100% linen. I love these sheets--
can't get enough. I will link you to those
in the description. And it will not be an affiliate
link, so go forth and prosper, whether or not you
actually want them or not. But it's actually
not all in my head that a lot of these
sort of, quote, "higher end" sheet and linen
companies aren't actually all that higher end, and are
often the exact same stuff that you would be buying
on much lower end retailers and drop ship companies. And that's actually a huge
problem in the retail world. Now, don't get me wrong. Some really high-end sheets
can really be worth it. But I am not going to be
spending $1,000 on sheets. So when we're looking in
the mid-range section, a lot of times you are
getting these honestly not that great
products that are made with a lot of synthetic blends
to cheapen the production methods, and are often
literally identical and made in the same facilities
as ostensibly lower end products. And as I mentioned,
this is a big issue in retail, not just in sheets. Designer brands often source
their cosmetic products from the same manufacturer
as drugstore brands. If you knew your $25 mascara
came from the same source as the $2 drugstore
mascara, would you think twice before buying? Spoiler alert. Much of your makeup comes from
China, not Paris or Milan, as the brand's
advertising might suggest. And here are just a few examples
of how absolutely ubiquitous this problem is across all kinds
of manufacturers and brands. So long story short
is that if you are paying a premium
for a brand name, do everything in your power
to research that that brand name is actually worth it and
not literally the same product you could be buying
for half the price. Number five is my old kitchen. Now, to get the full
breakdown on my kitchen saga, you're going to need to watch
this members only video-- ahh-- where I go through the
whole financial and logistical reality of that experience and
share kind of all my insights and stuff like that. And it will be linked
in the description, but you can also just hit
the Join button and get it. But long story short, just
to kind of summarize this. So I did do a kitchen
renovation this year. And overall, I would
classify that purchase as having been worth it. I wouldn't do it in exactly
the same way next time, but I definitely
would do it again. I really, really
enjoyed the outcome. My kitchen is my favorite place. I love being in there every day. I love cleaning. it's just-- it's my happy place. And now with my TikTok
being like heavily food and domestic
content, that [BLEEP] getting some shine
on social media. So all of that is
to say I definitely think it was a good investment. But I have also
become quite chastened about the entire prospect
of home renovation. For example, we had a few
other planned renovations over the course of the next
year and a half to two years in our apartment
that I'm now like not stopping, but definitely
pumping the brakes on. We're planning to open
up a portion of a wall to create a breakfast bar. That I still definitely
think is worth doing. But I'm probably not going
to do it for at least a year, if not more. Just because I know how, a,
expensive and budget this stuff tends to typically be. But also, how long it
takes compared to what you're initially planning. And you really have
to plan for your life to be substantially disrupted
when this happens to an extent. But the one I'm like not totally
100% sure will never happen, but at least not for
the next few years, is a bathroom renovation. We have wanted to switch to a
stall shower from a bathtub. If there's a way to do that
is minimally invasive, maybe. But it's likely that it will
not be minimally invasive. And honestly, given
that our bathroom was fairly freshly renovated
before we moved in, and given that it's probably
the most disruptive part of your home to redo and has
so many components in it that are really potentially
complicating, such as plumbing and
all of that other stuff, it's just not worth it
right now for us to do. So I think I'm going to
make some other changes, like probably put some
wallpaper up on the walls and do some stuff like
that to make it feel fresh, change out some light
fixtures and whatnot. But yeah, I'm very realistic
denial about the fact that when you do a
renovation in your home, you have to expect it to take
twice as long as you thought, go at least 30% over the budget
you had initially planned for, and have all kinds of issues
that you could literally never have predicted or budgeted for. Like, for example,
basically, a wire short-circuited in
our refrigerator during the renovation. And it's a model-- it was an extremely
expensive refrigerator. It was like almost $10,000. We didn't buy it. It was here from
when we moved in. But it's like custom
fit to our cabinetry, so we couldn't change it. And it's really expensive
to replace parts for it. So it was $1,000 just for
that one refrigerator issue. Just poof-- gone. And we never could
have foreseen that. So I am not in any rush to
do something like that again. But I did get rid
of my old kitchen. And despite the pain, I
think it was worth the gain. But hold up on doing
any more of that. On a better note, another
thing I got rid of pretty much forever now is ever working
five days a week again. So we have discussed
a fair amount at TFD about our four-day
workweek experiment, which we're more accurately
calling our 32-hour workweek because sometimes you do
work a little bit on Fridays. Or like tonight, I'm actually
doing an event for TFD, so I won't work much tomorrow. But I'm working kind
of late tonight. It just really depends. But we didn't do
any salary cuts. We didn't really change
any of the workload. It was really just
about working smarter. So we put all kind of
parameters around how we meet, for example. Like, 30-minute meetings
can be 15-minute meetings. 15-minute meetings
can be emails. They only fall in
certain days of the week. Basically, just finding
ways to eliminate redundancy and waste and unnecessary work
that ultimately leads people into thinking they need to
spend a lot more time at work than they actually do. And this is, by the way, a very
well-demonstrated phenomenon. Like, most people
in professional jobs don't actually work
the full 40 hours that they're being
contracted to work. The Wall Street Journal
actually recently had an article about
white collar workers who shuffle between two or
more full-time jobs carefully aligning their schedules
to avoid meeting overlaps and doing their best
to keep multiple gigs secret from each other. Many of the workers
in the article noted that only a small share
of their time at the first job was spent doing productive
work, enabling the multiple job bait and switch. According to the Journal,
one software engineer said he was logging three
to 10 hours of actual work a week back when he
held down one job, with the rest of the time
spent on extraneous meetings and busy work. And when we look at all of the
different metrics of success at TFD-- our profitability,
our productivity, our number of successful
contracts and clients and business--
everything is way up since switching to
the four-day workweek, again, without having
to reduce salaries. My colleague, Caitlin, who
heads up finances at TFD, has actually written a few
really fascinating articles on our LinkedIn about this, and
I'll just quote from her now. "At first glance, these
results seem counterintuitive. In fact, shortening
our working hours actually increased our
team's self-measured ability to meet deadlines and
manage their workload. As I wrote previously at
the start of the experiment, we had agreed as a group that
if we can't get our work done in the allotted 32 hours,
we'll move the deadlines and deliverables so that we can. Instead of creating stress,
this allows the team to own their time
and set deadlines that feel realistic
instead of restrictive. Interestingly, our employee
survey actually showed a decrease in the metrics
related to work-related satisfaction, including a 9%
decrease in agreement with the statement, 'my work gives
me a feeling of personal accomplishment,' and a 6%
decrease in the statement, 'I am proud to work
for this company.' While this may not
be the ideal result, I'm quite intrigued by the
idea that our team is perhaps deriving less satisfaction
from their identity as part of this company and
more satisfaction from their ability to find
satisfaction outside of it. An unintended consequence of
our transition to a shorter workweek may in fact be that
our work defines us less when we spend less
hours doing it, allowing us to explore
our full selves and feelings of accomplishment
from endeavors not related to work." I definitely have been
experiencing this myself. I've been branching out into
all different kinds of side projects and hobbies that
I feel enrich me and define me in many ways just
as much as my main job. And I actually think that's a
really great sign, personally. But she's dead on in
the fact that we've been doing more with less. And there's absolutely
no reason to go back. And as far as any
decrease in satisfaction, our employee retention has been
100% since we started this, so no one seems that unhappy. Lastly, something I got
rid of permanently in 2022 is [BLEEP] plastic Tupperware. So my Tupperware
collection used to be an absolute mess of
leftover containers that were repurposed, and
really crappy mismatched stuff that was like stained
from spaghetti sauce however long ago and
half-melted in the microwave. And just like--
it was atrocious. And now in my current
kitchen, the cabinet that houses my Tupperware and
storage and stuff like that is actually glass front
so you can see it. So I was like, this
is reason enough. Let's let vanity drive a better
decision here and actually switch to much better stuff
for a long-term storage solution, especially
as someone who cooks big batch
pretty much as a rule and is constantly storing food. So some of the items
that I have now are these kinds of Le
Parfait glass jars. I like to reuse
these larger milk jugs from Ronnybrook Farms. I have a few sets of
Pyrex storage, which are also really
functional because they can go into the oven. And aside from not having all
of those potentially hazardous chemical-seeping issues
with plastic containers, glass is also a much better
long-term storage solution environmentally. When it comes to durability,
longevity, and its ability to be recycled, glass
outperforms plastic on environmental impact. If properly cared for, glass can
outlast the lifespan of plastic in the kitchen. Where plastic is prone to
melting or discoloration, glass remains a durable
and long-lasting solution for food storage. Additionally, glass
is 100% recyclable. And so long as it is
properly disposed of, you can recycle glass at
a designated facility. Unfortunately, due
to the wide variety of plastic products available,
many recycling plants only offer recycling to
a few types of plastic. Anything nonrecyclable is
tossed into a landfill, where it remains for many years. Therefore, glass
wins the argument for most environmentally
friendly, and chic as hell, which is what we're going for. Anyway, that's just
some of the stuff that I got rid of in 2022. Bye, [BLEEP]. And I would love to
hear in the comments some of what you
guys got rid of. And otherwise, I am so
excited for a lighter and more productive 2023. It's all about doing
more with less this year, and I'll see you there. Bye, guys.
