Part 1: Thor Svaboe

I first discovered Thor through his Fratello, I'm pretty sure via WatchCrunch, article on finding beauty in 36mm (or thereabouts) watches.

I found it totally enlightening, and he was absolutely right. The focus for me for so long was to discard what I thought were watches too small for my wrist, this included shunning a beautiful Longines dress watch I inherited from my father. It was just too small, I thought, but after reading this I realised how wrong I'd been.

Small is classy.

This totally opened up a new way of thinking for me, and my wallet.

Intrigued, I looked for other articles from Thor and found another equally inspiring piece. This time about one of my watches I'd also not worn because of its size. The Casio F-91W.

Another great read! Namely as I'd been contemplating to re-evaluate my own collection, as many of us watch nerds think to do, for some time now.

So I decided it would be fun to do my own experiment. I decided to wear my F-91WG, that's been collecting dust in the bottom of my sock drawer for years, for a solid week to see how it would affect me and make me feel about the other watches in my own collection.

It's odd. So the first thing I noticed, or had forgotten about, was just how comfortable it was. The strap is amazingly comfy, then about 3 days into it I started not to notice I was wearing a watch at all, I don't know if you can relate to that? It isn't something I've been conscious of for some time.

The little Casio just sat there, and because of its diminutive size, it was always under my sleeve so wasn't even in my peripheral vision.

5 days in I genuinely started to fall in love with the little thing, all over again, which reminded me of the feeling I had when I first bought it almost, roughly, 15 years prior.

It dawned on me then that there's just something about smaller watches, that are tucked away, but there ticking along for when you need them.

What's the time? Date? Day? (For the latter I have 2 little kids that won't let me sleep, those of you who know, know)

Actually I noticed that I get a lot of use from all of the Casio's functions because I have children. We try to limit time in front of screens for example, so I found delight in actually making use of the stopwatch or alarm functions regularly.

Utility, it's a powerful thing, and thinking about this reminded me of something else entirely. Tom Sachs.

Tom Sachs

Now Tom Sachs is considered 'the handyman of high art' and is one of my favourite artists as a result (thank you Tom for introducing me to Knolling). Every once in a while I check out what's happening with him online and remembered one particular article about his love of the G-Shock, specifically the DW-5600E.

Essentially, what struck me, was that he boasted about having the same watch for over 2 decades and I remembered finding that idea incredibly inspiring.

No anxiety filled decisions to be made, whether to purchase or to sell, you can just put your one watch on in the morning and get on with your life.

Is this how Thor felt?

I was certainly feeling this way after my week experiment. I didn't even think about my other watches for that week, and this was freeing. I spent less time looking at or reading about watches online, among other things, I was also spending more time with my family and this made me feel really good.

I seemed to be able to get my priorities straight.

I don't know about you but sometimes I can be a little obsessive about watches. It's why we're here, right?

In conclusion I decided to continue the experiment. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to put lots of my watches for sale, ones that I hardly wore or didn't have any sentiment for.

The only change I have made, going forward, was to change the colour of my watch. I loved wearing my Casio, but I wasn't as fond of the colour as I used to be, and so put it for sale along with the others.

Instead I picked up a 'jelly' model, in grey, that I felt would go well with most outfits, whether at home in comfy clothes, in my workshop usually in jeans, t-shirt and jersey top, or in the office in formal attire.

I will continue to write about how this experiment is going and provide updates, but in the meantime I have a feeling that life is pretty great.

I guess I should also say a big thank you to Thor for starting me off on this journey.

Have you ever considered something so drastic?