What is clutter anyway?

Today we're doing some cleaning up of the apartment, so this quote about clutter is quite pertinent.

Clutter is the physical manifestation of unmade decisions fuelled by procrastination.

Even as I look around the desk where I type this I can see examples of that. Perhaps that's why it feels good once we do get around to clearing the clutter. At tidy home (or office) with less mess is appealing - but perhaps it's mental as well as visual.

The satisfaction of completing the things we want to do is such a good feeling. So much better than staring at physical reminders of half-finished (or not yet started) actions.

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The 'keys' to happiness

At the moment my wife is practising a song. She'll be performing it on piano at the upcoming wedding of a friend. She wants to do lots of practice so it can be just great for the day. But we don't own a piano. At this point the material world says "Well, go out and buy one". But these days there are many more options. After a couple of practices on a friend's piano we put out the call on Streetbank - a community site for people to share things with their neighbours. Within a day we had a couple of offers of a keyboard to borrow. It's a great solution as it was free for us, and made use of keyboards that were just sitting around unused. One was so unused that the owner said he would test if it still worked before he lent it to us. I'm told that Aristotle once said that joy was in use not in ownership. I think this is a good example of that philosophy in action. Although sometimes I question if it's "joy" to hear the same song pract...

Where is the best place to live?

Where we live determines a lot about our life. So today I'm going to share a resource that can help you decide where might be a good place to live. It started with an article ranking Brisbane suburbs from 1 to 260 . That ranking was based on a set of 17 factors. Here are some of them. But all 17 may not be relevant for you. And some might matter more than others. So they developed a tool where you can rank the 5 factors most important to you and it will give you a personalised list of Brisbane suburbs that would be the best for you - based on those factors. There are also Sydney and Melbourne versions. On the results page, there's also a map that colour-codes each suburb by star rating, for each factor. For instance here's the map for public transport. Five-star suburbs are in blue. When you click on a suburb, you get the name and the star rating of that suburb - for whichever factor you select. I find this to be so enlightening. I choose not to own a car. Some...

The Latte Factor

For the first time ever I'm reviewing a novel. Latte Factor is a short story - around 120 pages - and is equal parts of inspirational story and financial education. The combination of the two is quite rare, and done quite nicely. The story is about Zoey Daniels, associate editor for a travel magazine. Although she's never been outside the USA - "a travel editor who's never travelled". She struggles with money and is considering a higher-paying job at the company her friend Jessica works for. The job would provide more income, but would also be more stressful and demanding. She already has a nightmare about being on an increasingly-fast treadmill that she struggles to stay on. Her current boss Barbara - aware only of the money situation - suggests she talk to Henry at the coffee shop. This peculiar suggestion is where Zoey's life begins to turn a corner. Spoiler Alert Being a book of fiction, I don't want to spoil the story for you. It's a book you ca...

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