An extra special giveaway

What do you do when you have 80 pens? Help save someone's life.

Most times we give away an item we feel we're helping someone. Even selling an item does the buyer a favour by providing what they need at a bargain price. But this was a step above.

At a local church, lawyers and other volunteers help refugees seeking safety in Australia. They have a mountain of government paperwork to do to demonstrate who they are and the serious danger they face in their home country.

Recently they needed more stationery supplies for the paperwork and applications. It was a great chance for us to declutter our stationery and help people in real need.

I was surprised to find we had at least three staplers and 80 pens. Almost half the pens no longer worked - either broken or had dried up while waiting to be used.. We have much less now - but probably still more than we will ever use in our lifetime.

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!

Search This Blog