Jan 16, 2025
My Watches May Be Strap Monsters, But I’m Not
I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions. Despite my own participation in the tradition, the idea of trying to tie major life changes or new habits to something as both arbitrary and specific as the New Year has always been somewhat anathema to me. Still, despite my resistance to making specific commitments at the start of a fresh calendar year, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the arrival of January can set the stage for a refresh. It’s in that mindset that I found myself spending much of the last week reorganizing basically my whole life. And by my whole life, I mean my desk (and the various drawers and organizers that surround it). A primary focus of this odyssey has been a set of metal Ikea drawers that operate as the functional center of my watch habit. One area in need of particular attention here was my strap drawer, in no small part because of its increasing annexation of other parts of my organizational ecosystem - a problem exacerbated by a shift in approach that existed in direct conflict with my existing storage logic. I don’t remember who first introduced them to me, but for the last few years, I’ve been storing my straps in a slowly increasing count of Muji Polypropylene Pen Cases (I think I first saw them on another collector’s Instagram, but for the life of me I can’t remember whose). With two compartments, one large enough for straps, the other perfectly sized for spring bars or loose links, these cheap plastic pencil cases make ...