Modern Simple Living

DIY & Home DIY Desk Upgrade Transforming a Coffee Table into a Spacious Desktop +1 ft Extra Width +3 in Extra Length $few Total Cost The Idea A Simple Yet Stylish Upgrade Sometimes, the best DIY projects come from a little creativity and repurposing what you already have. Recently, I found myself with a spare Bankesta coffee table and an old desk that felt a bit too cramped. That's when inspiration struck—I decided to combine the two, and the result was surprisingly perfect. The coffee table added an extra foot of width and a quarter foot of length to my old desk, giving me a lot more workspace without sacrificing style. The color combination also turned out great, blending seamlessly with the rest of my setup.   The Build Easy Assembly with Minimal Tools Putting it all together was a breeze. All I needed were a few 1.5-inch #10 wood screws—jus...

Tech Breathing New Life into My HP 2016 Laptop Windows 11, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD — a nearly decade-old machine still going strong 5–7 yrs Life Extended 16GB RAM 1TB SSD ~$12 RAM Cost (DDR3) I recently managed to upgrade my trusty HP 2016 - ab292nr laptop — featuring a 6th-gen Intel i7-6700HQ processor — to Windows 11. Considering I primarily use it for minor tasks, this upgrade easily extends its life by another 5–7 years. It's pretty satisfying to see a nearly decade-old machine still going strong! The biggest benefit: it's proving very useful as my iPhone backup system. I'm now hitting over 100GB on my iPhone storage and don't want to pay for more iCloud storage, so this is proving to be a cheaper solution.   The Hardware Maxing Out Upgrades: RAM and SSD To boost performance, I upgraded the laptop to 16GB of RAM and swapped in a 1...

Style My 2025 Wardrobe Refresh A balanced, minimalist approach 50 Total Items ~$450 Annual Budget 360 Shirt Wear Days 4 Sneaker Pairs Table of Contents ① The Shirt Rotation ② 50-Item Wardrobe ③ Sneaker Rotation ④ The Takeaway ⑤ Current Inventory ⑥ Future 2025 Acquisitions The System The Shirt Rotation For 2025, I've given my wardrobe a major refresh, replacing almost all my shirts. Some of them had been in rotation for four years and no longer looked their best. Since shirts are relatively inexpensive to replace, I've decided on a simple rule: each shirt gets 30 daily wears before being retired. With 12 shirts in my rotation, that means they'll last me a full year (360 days). I've also replaced both my jeans and shorts. As they are also inexpensive I'll replace them annual...