About

Welcome to But Wait There's Less. You've probably guessed what inspired the name.

It starts with the infomercials

It's their catch-phrase. "But wait, there's more" they say, knowing how that lures us in.

Does the "more" bring any extra value. It seems not to matter. We've been conditioned to think that more must be better - so out come the credit cards.

They say it every time because it works every time.

The "more" world

It seems there's no problem for which the answer is not more. Buy more stuff, you need more space. Buy a bigger home, you need more debt. To pay off more debt you need to work more. More income also means more of it goes in tax.

More work means more time away from friends/family. More spent on childcare. More of our life traded away for dollars. More of our life spent complaining about the boss/work we don't like.

Does "more" make us happy?

Often we just have more clutter, more maintenance, more debt, more stress and more worries. Perhaps it's time for a different way.

A life of less

We've reached the point of realising that generally less is better. Less clutter. Less stuff. Paying less for a home. Spending less time at work. Less stress. Sounds good doesn't it?

Who are we?

My name is David. My wife and I discovered just how much stuff we had (way too much) when we got married and combined our apartments into one. How on earth did we accumulate so much stuff?

Jerry Seinfeld is right - it makes senses that the words garage is almost the same as garbage. It's the place we put those things that will be handy "someday" (ie. never).

Our declutter

We discovered joy in decluttering: extra space in the home, the cash from selling unwanted items (grab my free ebook of tips), and the joy of someone else appreciating the item we give them. It's been said that decluttering is getting rid of what you don't want, minimalism is discovering how little you need. That's probably where we are now.

Minimalism

It's not about depriving ourselves, it's about discovering what brings us value. Spending less time and money on things that don't really add value to our lives (even if advertisers insist they do) frees us up to focus on the things that do.

Finance

Recently I've also been sharing what I learn about finance. The better we manage our finances and invest our savings, the less dependent on work we can become. It's amazing the difference that a few small changes can make.

If you'd like to follow our journey, subscribe to my monthly-ish email or follow us on facebook.

Comments

5 Reasons why we hoard - and they're wrong

"Less is More" is one of the catch-cries of downsizing. Often the fewer things we have the more we value them. So it's a great title for a book that's basically a manual for how to de-clutter your home. The introductory chapter of Less is More: How to De-clutter Your Life gives some great insights into why we find it so hard to reduce our stuff. Here are 5 of them - the last one is one of the biggest for me. 1. The cost of holding on. We were raised by our parents and grandparents and in their day items were expensive and space was cheap. It made sense in those days to hold onto stuff just in case you ever needed it. But today housing is expensive and items are cheap. It's hard to change a habit, but now we save much more by downsizing. 2. Keeping it in the family. For some reason we prefer to give things to those close to us. Again this was viable in the days of big families and lots of children to receive hand-me-downs. But these days we have smaller fa...

20 unplugged ideas

May 1-7 is Screen-Free Week . It's about spending time away from the screen and more time with each other - or doing things we love. It's a great chance to break the work-tired-watchTV-ads-shop-work cycle. This list of twenty alternative ideas is great for screen-free week. It's also a great reminder of things we could enjoy if we're shopping and spending less - and maybe working less and enjoying life more.

The Little Treehouse craze - why I hate it but joined it

Supermarket collectibles. Parents go crazy for them. This time I'm in it. Instead of rolling my eyes at the craziness, I'm purchasing, collecting and even trading. Why? Read on. The dogma of more A big key to happiness is to ignore the dogma that more is good. Instead, to be satisfied with what we have. To have enough, but not too much. To ignore the never-ending quest for more. The Little Treehouse series is a classic example of the culture of more. (To explain for international readers, an Australian supermarket is currently giving away a small kids book with every $30 spent in store.) Each book is about the size of a bank card and maybe 3 times as thick. Manufactured desire The (very) short stories are an extension of the Treehouse series of books, which are popular with Australian kids. If the supermarket had not done this promotion, we would all be blissfully satisfied with the original series of full-length books. But that's not how it is. Instead, swarms of parents, ...

But wait... there's less!

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