Over on 43 Folders, Merlin is asking people about their favorite minimalist wallets. Anyone who has lived with me in the last 15 years or so knows this is something that's been a constant battle for me - trying to find the perfect wallet. I have to preface this with the fact that I hate carrying a lot of stuff around so I'm constantly trying to cut down the bare minimum - what could I need today, scrap everything else. In college I started making my own wallets because I couldn't find what I was looking for in stores. I got a Sir Mix-A-Lot Money Clip when I was 18 and used it all the way up until last year when all the graphics had completely worn off so a wallet has mostly been just the other stuff for me. Basically I made something like a box that would hold a deck of cards, only scaled down to hold about 8-10 credit card sized items. I usually started with some kind of thick cardstock or rigid plastic, and kept it together with assorted tape and skateboard stickers. I made a ton of these over the years with different materials and different sizes. They were great for a while but they usually got pretty ratty pretty quickly and eventually fell appart, or held one less card than I needed and I eventually abandoned them switching to just a rubberband. Again, this worked for a while but rubberbands break (often at the worst times) and get stuck in your pocket so I scraped that idea as well. I looked at all sorts of off the shelf options, like the Jimi Wallet that is all the rage in the past few days but this stuff is just too big. Or too restrictive. Or too big and still restrictive.

Then I found the ultimate solution, actually inspired by Merlin's Hipster PDA - about 6 months ago I started using a simple binderclip for my cards and it's absolutely perfect.

About a week into using the crappy giant clip I had sitting on my desk I went to Office Depot and found silver mini clips which I've been using ever since. I usually carry around 5-6 cards which fits perfectly, but since the clip is just that, it can hold twice that many without issue. And minimal? Binder Clip FTW!

And, for the accessory minded, you can get the matching money clip:

I've been psyched on my walletary choices in the past but nothing seems to stand up or do exactly what I want like the simple binder clip.