Shop less. Live more.

October is Buy Nothing New Month, and that's their slogan: Shop Less. Live More.

This quote about consumption is doubly true.

There's the hours we spend to earn the money to spend. Then there's the hours bustling around shopping centres and malls searching out the thing we want (or that advertising has told us we want).

Of course there's also the issue of where we put all this stuff we buy.

Do we just buy a bigger house (with a bigger mortgage) or do we put it in storage?

"The Japanese may have tidiness but in America we have storage lockers - our only growth industry." - Marge Simpson.

I found these stats about the US storage industry.

I find it such a waste that after spending so much to buy all this stuff we then spend another $22 billion to store it. Shocking.

Clearly we need to be less addicted to purchasing. Buy Nothing New Month is a great way to start. Are you with me?

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Less Clutter More Cash - now available

Do you feel like you have too much stuff? Is your home full of things you never use? Would you like to swap them for cash? We did My wife and I have sold more than 550 items online as we downsize and we've learnt a bit along the way. I've put some of our best tips into this handy ebook. I hope you can use these tips so you too can have less clutter and more cash. Enter your email address below to receive the book for free. Less Clutter More Cash Get my new ebook for free. PS. This will subscribe to the But Wait There's Less email list, so you'll know when the new updated version of the book is available. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Big motivator for small living

It's been a while between posts here - mainly because we've been moving house. It's been a real motivator for downsizing. Packing each and every item we owned, really makes me wish there were fewer of them. Moving everything from the old apartment to the new one made me envious of those people who live in a "tiny house on wheels". For them moving house simply means towing it to a new location. No packing required. The whole process has reaffirmed our commitment to owning less stuff. So we're going to be intentional about downsizing. It will be an ongoing activity. My environmental heart couldn't stomach a spontaneous dumping of things into the garbage, but it's also more fun this way. Selling things online brings in some handy pocket money. Giving items away is also a great community activity, whether it is to friends and family, to charity or to people in the neighbourhood. I'm looking forward to it as a lifestyle rather than a task to do....

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...

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