Dealing with the inferiority, jealousy and boredom of maintaining a timeless wardrobe — In 2010, the biggest achievement of anyone striving for a unique style in Finland was to get on Hel Looks, a photo blog of street style in Helsinki. Or at least that was what the 17-year-old style-obsessed me was convinced about. My dream was to someday be discovered on the…

Rules of thumb for buying better — In Finnish there is a saying that goes, “A poor person can’t afford to buy cheap” (Köyhällä ei ole varaa ostaa halpaa). It’s a counterintuitive but wise rule of thumb. When I set out to break the cycle of shopping and decluttering about five months ago, I knew I would…

What I learnt about the human mind during a difficult time — When things are going well, we tend to pay little attention to our minds. The mind operates as a means to an end, when we think of our go-to meals in order to write a grocery shopping list. It becomes the stage for our delight, when we go on a…

We cannot always trust our present selves to act in the best interest of our future selves — It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon in Helsinki and I’m about to go thrift shopping. I bike to my favourite thrift store, the vintage UFF. Like all UFFs, it regularly hosts a sale where each item costs 7 Euros on the first day, 6 Euros on the second and so on…

Kicking off my journey to building a long-lasting wardrobe of primarily favourite pieces — It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m pushing a stuffed plastic bag down with my right knee to force the air out while pulling the bag’s handles into a tighter knot. It feels like a déjà vu. Once again, I’m shipping a batch of clothing to the green containers of the local…

If designers were the detectives of the business world, what could we learn from some of the best detectives in literature? — During the summer, I decided to take a break from reading professional literature. I guess many people switch to beach reads on vacation, but I had a good reason not to. I was about to start at a new job and, for the first time in my life, my job…

The case against blindly following good routines and habits — During one of the numerous pandemic-era walk-and-talks, I asked my friend how he likes to spend his free time. This may sound like a question you ask in a beginner’s Spanish class, but I was intrigued by his ability to constantly learn new skills. I knew he had transitioned to…

How different generations deal with negative emotions and mental health issues — Over the past year or two, conversations with my family have occasionally ended with one or more of my family members in tears. Since my sister and I moved out several years ago, these conversations have occurred over the holidays, when we have been visiting our parents. They often start…

We can only see progress by looking back, but the work gets done in the present moment — When I created a YouTube channel in May 2020, little did I know the hardest part about it would be being a beginner. At the time, I had only created one video for a job application and another for a class I took during my exchange semester in Berlin. I…