But wait... there's less!

Here are the But Wait There's Less Top 5 most popular posts of 2018. The ones you read the most. I considered a Top 10 but, like most things, less is better. 1. Minimalism: A Documentary Two long-time friends ditch "success" for happiness . They debunk the consumerist message and find we can have more happiness and less stress by simply having less stuff. 2. It's so good - we DIDN'T buy one Sharing items can be way better than owning them. This story also shows how you can share items in your area. 2b. Do we have affluenza? An oldie but a goodie. This post about consuming less and Buy Nothing New Month was written a while ago but still gets lot of reads in 2018. 3. Jerry Seinfeld and the finance guy I'm guessing the Seinfeld stand-up is the big drawcard here. Both guys give good reasons to have less junk at home. One very funny. The other very insightful. 4. The best day for a garage sale I'm a big fan of downsizing by selling online (che...

Often Christmas is about more, more, more. More spending, more gifts, more stuff. It's tricky for the person who is happy with less stuff. Three cheers for my family My loved ones have done exceedingly well this year. All the gifts I received on Christmas day could fit in one envelope - not including those that fitted in my stomach ;) . My free e-book 10 Great Gifts for People who Don't Want Stuff has a great range of gift ideas. Here are specific examples that are giving me joy rather than clutter. Hand-made gifts It's an unexpected treat to get something someone has put their time into making. A friend (and her 8 and 6 year old daughters) made us this collection of soaps. We'll appreciate them as we use them up. Held up to the light, they're amazingly colourful and bright. Even the bag they came in (courtesy of the kids) was fantastically cute. Vouchers Vouchers can be hit and miss. The tip is to go broad if you don't know the person well. Only ...

Sadly many Christmas present miss the mark. They are not at all what the receiver wants. They waste a bunch of time and effort - not to mention the money. That's part of why I wrote 10 Great Gift Ideas for people who don't want stuff. If you didn't get a copy (or you loved ones didn't) you may be receiving some less-than-welcome gifts. This novelty Christmas card has some out-there ideas on what to say when you open that gift that leaves you speechless. After Christmas, you may want to sell your gift online (and buy something you will actually like / use). Download my free guide Less Clutter More Cash .

What do you get your loved one when they don't want "stuff"? Why do we buy stuff? It's especially tricky at Christmas. All those Christmas images of big shiny box-shaped presents sitting under an enormous tree. All the ads and all the stores showing us objects that we can buy for each other. Everything points us that way. So much pressure to do the 'Christmassy thing'. Does it makes us happy? More people every year find they have enough stuff. Too much stuff. The thought of receiving yet more stuff is the opposite of a Merry Christmas. "I don't want any more stuff" they'll say. "But it's Christmas, and I want to give you something", you say. Here's the answer You can both enjoy Christmas if you give a gift that isn't "stuff". You can show you care. They get a gift they really appreciate. But we need ideas from outside the box. Ideas that we won't find in sales catalogues. That's what my new...

Yes, workplace Secret Santa sucks. Here's how to make it better. The dreaded email It's early December and you open the all-staff email about the secret Santa. Arrgh! As if the Christmas period isn't busy enough already, now you have to spend time, energy and money in the stressful shops-at-Christmas environment trying to find something under $10 that will be appreciated by Tim from the finance department. It's extra hard when you don't really know Tim from finance. Until you drew his name, you weren't even sure which of the finance guys was Tim and which was Steven. A waste of time? Is any of this necessary? Has anyone's life been meaningfully improved by a workplace Secret Santa gift? Are the token gifts worth all the time we spent brainstorming and buying gifts for near-strangers? I doubt it. And a time of waste How many gifts end up in the bin the next day? We buy stuff we never needed only to produce more garbage the planet doesn't need. ...

Downsizing can help others as much as yourself. Selling items is great, but donations can also have a huge impact. You've probably heard of Movember , the charitable movement that tackles men's health issues of cancer, mental health and suicide. Men around the country, and the world, grow a moustache for the month as a conversation starter about men's health and as a fundraiser for the issues. My mate Phil goes a bit further that most and hosts his own fund-raising cricket match. How Australian is that? I didn't play in the match, but did donate a new match ball I had sitting in a cupboard from my playing days. I could have sold it earlier, but I liked the fact that it would save Phil the full retail cost of a new ball. Cricket balls can be expensive ($25-$90) so the money saved means more funds raised for Movember. It's also good to see an item serving the purpose it was made for. In the same weekend, a lead singer bought my waistcoat for his performa...

Black Friday is a contest. It's you versus the retailer. Read on to find out how to come out ahead. Here in Australia the 'Black Friday' sales have emerged in the last couple of years - but what does it mean? When is Black Friday? Black Friday is the first Friday after Thanksgiving. Yes, Thanksgiving - that American holiday we don't celebrate here. Pretty weird, huh? It's like having Boxing Day without Christmas Day. What happens on Black Friday? In the USA, and increasingly here, stores hold simultaneous sales in order to get shoppers into a buying frenzy. Some offer deals like 20% off everything. Other have big mark-downs on specific items in order to get you in the store - to sell you other stuff you never wanted in the first place. Isn't 20% off a good thing? Not really. There's a psychological effect called anchoring . If there's a jacket for $40 it's no big deal. But if the shop says it's on sale from $50, suddenly we think it'...

Clothes can be tricky to downsize. There's not a huge second-hand market for them. So much is donated - far more than the charity shops can ever sell to their handful of customers. What's the best thing to do? For me it's been an ethical dilemma. Unwanted clothes versus unwanted landfill. Until now Now there's a more planet-friendly option. One that comes with rewards. Drop-off at H&M stores Fashion store H&M has a zero waste goal for the clothes (and other textiles) that you drop off in their recycle stations. So far they've taken in the equivalent of 89 million T-shirts for their Rewear, Reuse, Recycle process. Rewear Clothing that can be reworn is sent overseas for second-hand use. Reuse Textiles no longer suitable to wear are converted into products such as cleaning cloths. Recycle Textiles that can't be reused are recycled into textile fibres or used to manufacture products such as insulation materials. Reward For each bag of used tex...

A memoir is normally someone's life story. For Joshua Millburn it's just 5 years. But a lot happens in that short time. Joshua and his best friend Ryan became "The Minimalists". They also made a documentary , which I asked my local library to stock. "In the meantime," said my helpful librarian, "would you be interested in a book they have written?" . The book is written by Joshua with short notes inserted by Ryan - an entertaining way to have co-authors. It feels like you're sitting in the living room with Josh telling you a story. In the adjacent kitchen, ostensibly doing something else, Ryan is close enough to throw in the occasional interjection - sometimes profound and sometimes just poking fun of Josh. Two women In a short space of time Joshua loses both his mother and his wife. In different ways the two events bring him face-to-face with the way we accumulate stuff to make us happy (which it doesn't) and the degree to which we o...

How early is too early for Christmas trees? I was bemused to see these three at my local shopping centre - and a nativity scene just out-of-shot. It was Monday 29 October, but I'm guessing they went up a few days earlier - before the weekend rush. Does your local shopping centre have decorations up yet? Let me know in the comments. Reli-gious? I'd like to believe that the centre CEO or managing staff are just so full of the joy of Christmas, that they just couldn't wait to put out the Christmas decorations. But does anyone even have their home tree up yet? Or Really-just for money? I can't help but think this is just a sneaky sales tactic. Decorations prompt shoppers to put something extra in their trolley "for Christmas". The longer decorations are up, the more action they get at the cash register. While the nativity scene depicts people worshipping baby Jesus, the intent is more about worship of sales figures. Later in the year, look out for news in...

Buying things we don't need. It makes us poorer, so we have to work more just to break even. Often we'd be better off not buying. The biggest household expense , other than our house, is health / medical costs. Is private health insurance worth it? Finance expert Scott Pape ( The Barefoot Investor ) says in many cases the answer is no. He reckons if you're under 31, or earn under $90,000 ($180,000 for couples) you're probably better off without it. Why? Australia has "one of the best public health systems on the planet" that's already paid for; so you may as well use that. (Note: This may be a different story in the USA and other countries). The exception is if you're over 30 and a high income earner. What's wage got to do with it? Health insurance is one product the government punishes you for not buying. If you're a high income earner you'll be taxed more if you don't buy some. If you decide to buy some later in life (later t...

Marie Kondo would have to be the queen of the decluttering world. Her book The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up has sold millions of copies and her KonMari method is much talked about. It wasn't long before comedian Kitty Flanagan came up with her own version - FlanMari. It's satire but also makes a good point. Kitty quotes Marie Kondo, " The purpose of a gift is to be received ", but then adds that once a gift has been received then its job is done. No need to bother with placing it anywhere. She immediately sets fire to it. It's funny because it would be so mean to set fire to a gift seconds after receiving it - and right in front of the giver. But in a way what we do is worse. We falsely pretend to like it. We stash away the gift - sometimes for years - and then it ends up as landfill. Or we re-gift it; which can be good or it can start the whole problem again for someone else. So what can we do with it? Perhaps the best option is to sell it. It ...

Even if things are wonderful, we don't have to buy them. The pregnancy dress In the Minimalism movie , one woman tells a story of needing a nice-looking dress to wear to an event (while very pregnant). She had pregnancy clothes and nice clothes, but nothing that was both. Rather than buy something (for a one-time wear) she called up a few friends and borrowed a dress. She avoided a pointless purchase and hours in a shopping mall and instead spent time with her friend. The travel pack Amongst holiday stories, my sister-in-law mentioned her handy mesh travel bags. You can categorise and separate your items within your suitcase while still seeing what is where. No more rummaging through the whole suitcase to find one particular item. They sounded very helpful. For her next trip my wife, rather than buy another set, borrowed her sister's collection. Triple benefits There's three reasons this turned out to be a great move. Shop-free - We didn't have to go to sh...

Gumtree did a survey to find out how much unwanted stuff Australians have. The answer was $4,200 of per household. That's a lot of money to be tied up in items that we don't even want. Across Australia this adds up to 34 billion dollars worth of unwanted stuff. $34,000,000,000! That's a lot of stuff just sitting around. It's probably even more The survey said the average household has 25 unwanted items. So far my wife and I have sold more than 300* items, with another 60 already listed and more items still to be added. Surely 25 items per household is just the tip of the iceberg. What do you think? How many unwanted items do you have at your place? Do you reckon it would be more that 25? People are cashing in It's estimated that 100 million items were sold second-hand last year. Millenials are leading the way making almost $2000 per person. In the last year 56% of Aussies have sold something second hand, including 1.3 million people making their first o...

A big part of downsizing is finding new owners for your no-longer-needed items. These items are still fantastic. Many of them are little treasures. It's just time for them to find a new home. For tips on online selling, grab my free e-book Less Clutter More Cash . Today's topic is garage sales. Are they worth it and when's the best time to have one? They do take some work Let's be frank. Garage sales can be a bit of work. Moving all your items to your garage or driveway. Pricing the items, or arranging them in boxes or on tables according to price. Promoting the garage sale to your neighbours - either online or with cardboard signs around the neighbourhood. Sitting around for hours on the day (not really hard work but time-consuming). Packing up after it's all over. Are they worth it? Garage sales can be worth it. If you have a lot of items to sell and they are fairly mainstream items then a garage sale can be worth the time. It's still a lot of work b...

Minimalism: A Documentary About The Important Things follows the story of Ryan and Josh. Friends since childhood, they each found 'success' in the high-flying corporate world but were desperately unhappy. Until they discovered minimalism. The film is about the story we are fed - especially in the USA - that buying things will make us happy. That earning more, and working more, will makes us happy. That our lives are all about buying things. Ryan and Josh (The Minimalists) bust apart this myth - through their own story and talking to authors, economics experts and normal people who have decided that enough is enough. They say they're not evangelising or trying to convert anyone, but it's hard to see the movie and not be motivated to declutter your life. Perhaps I was already a convert. Either way, the documentary definitely opens our eyes to the consumerist message - how pervasive it is, and also how flawed it is. Check out the trailer and see if your local...

I love hearing the stories of people on this show. Tiny House Big Living screens Sundays at 9.30pm on Channel 94 (in Australia). Each week there's two half-hour episodes. While it's fun seeing (and critiquing) the various designs, I really get inspired when someone is making a big positive life change. Recently we got two good stories in one night. Paul and Bekah Dreisbach Paul and Bekah each grew up overseas. Their families were in the Philippines and Africa. Paul shares how this changed them. "Our backgrounds of growing up in a third-world culture and country have affected why we're going to go tiny. People living in shacks or the smallest little places are just as happy and we've realised that it's not necessarily the place you live in or how many things you have but it's the people you're around." Bekah reflects on the moving back to the USA: "Here it's just a struggle to have more and buy more things and you surround yours...

Many of today's jobs will disappear. Will they be replaced by newer cushier jobs? "No" says this video. at least not in significant numbers. I was reminded of this 15-minute documentary (it seems even quicker) by the agriculture analogy in Will Robots Take Your Job? (see my summary of the book ). This short film also compares the disappearance of horses from agriculture to the current technological advancements. Many will worry about this, but it could actually be good news. If we sort out the details then many more of us could have a better work-life balance and enjoy our lives far more. A 4-day or 3-day work week is one option. Of course the government will also have to properly tax these robot-driven companies (to replace the income tax that human workers used to pay).

The future could be very different. It's one reason I started this blog. What will technology mean for jobs? For incomes? For society? So I was excited to find Will Robots Take Your Job? at my local library. What does the book say? There's always been technological change and we've always found jobs. As the more laborious jobs were taken by machines, we took on higher skilled jobs, moving further up the "skill ladder". The main question is whether this time is different. Will the "skill ladder" continue to have higher rungs for humans to move on to? Will these rungs appear as quickly as the current rungs disappear? Either way we're headed for significant disruption. Either large-scale re-training of our workforce or massive unemployment. The author despairs that our leaders seem not to talk about this - and worse still, not have a plan for it. Farmers or horses? In 1870 about 75% of Americans worked in agriculture and used 25 million hors...

Our place has a great view. That and saving almost $2000 a year are benefits of decluttering. My visiting friend Today, upon seeing the view, my friend's phone appeared in seconds. Not our first visitor to impersonate a tourist and definitely not the last. Later in conversation he commended my wife and I on recycling (by selling our excess possessions) rather than adding them to landfill. He was also glad that we were making some handy money from it. But it's even better that he knows. This is not about selling Is this another story about how much you can make by selling your unwanted items? No. At least not this time. Today I'm talking property and how to save on what is probably your biggest expense. How to shrink your rent When my wife and I were looking around to find our current place it came down to a final two. This one has a great view. The other was in much newer condition. Those two things cancelled each other out. The other place also had a slight...

Who has ever had four saucepans cooking at once? So why do we have four hotplates on cooktops? Back in the day of all-in-one units, four hotplates were a nice fit on the top of the oven. These days the cooktop and ovens are usually separate but we've stuck with four hotplates. In many homes and apartments it's worth re-thinking. Is this is a wise use of bench space? Two-saucepan cooktops are making an appearance and freeing up some bench space in smaller kitchens. Aldi are taking it a step further with the Induction Cooking Plate . It's a stand-alone single-hotplate device that can be packed away when not in use. Aldi says it has 8 temperature settings, 5 preset cooking functions, a timer, touch controls and overheat protection. Could this be the future of smaller kitchens? Cost-savings in building. More bench space. Less energy consumption with the efficiency of induction cooking. Another great example of less is more. I don't mean this to be an ad, but...

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld says "all things exist in different stages of becoming garbage" and describes our home as a garbage-processing centre. Demotion "Objects start at the highest level - visible in the living area. From there it goes down to a closet, cupboard or drawer. That's why we have those - so we don't have to see all the huge mistakes we've made." The garage "No object has ever made it out of the garage and back into the house. The word garage seems to be a form of the word garbage." Paid storage "Now instead of free garbage, you pay rent to visit your garbage. It's like a prison visit when you go there." What if it all burnt down? Last week I mentioned Scott Pape's book ( The Barefoot Investor (2018 Update): The Only Money Guide You'll Ever Need ). He's a finance expert who lost everything in a bushfire. The insurance cheque was a chance to start over. It was also a chance to realise that much...

There are three things that happy people have. Is more money one of them? Nope. Once your basic needs are met, extra money doesn't really make you happier. The three things are purpose, relationships and financial control, says author Scott Pape. I've just finished his popular book The Barefoot Investor (2018 Update): The Only Money Guide You'll Ever Need . I expected mainly tips on saving, investing and the sharemarket. Those topics are covered, but a lot of his advice is 1. Don't buy so much stuff, 2. Buy the basic stuff not the flashy stuff, and 3. Don't get sucked in by advertising and salespeople. He says millionaires drive average cars. People with flashy cars are generally not doing as well. ("All show and no dough") Stop making the bankers rich Credit cards don't help you get ahead or buy more. In fact they lock us in to a lifetime of debt and often people pay more in interest than they spend on the purchases. This mean our pay packet d...

Here's a question that came my way: "I plan on parting with a lot of things. But do I attempt to sell or just pass my belongings onto an op-shop? It feels overwhelming that I could be drawing out the length of the process by trying to sell." It's a good question. Here are four reasons why selling is great - and really helps you declutter. 1. You know it goes to someone who'll use it. There's something reassuring about an item you once loved going to a "good home". My wife sold her old money box to a mum and daughter for a small amount. It's nice to imagine the kid cheerfully saving up her pocket money in it - and makes it so much easier to part with. She'll get far enjoyment from it than we ever did. 2. Selling makes saying goodbye easier. My once-beloved jacket had not been worn for years and was an obvious candidate to be given away. Still, to see it go was difficult. Thirty dollars made it a whole lot easier. Many other items are in th...

Should people serve the economy or should the economy serve people? Because dollars are easy to measure, politicians and the media measure our economy by whether more dollars are changing hands. I think this is a poor way to measure how well we are going. It completely ignores other aspects like our happiness, the amount of free time we have and the amount of pollution that occurs. I recently saw the documentary Fixing the Future, and it contained this great illustration of how money is only a small part of the equation. By spending less we can improve our lives and other people's too, even if it can't be measured in dollars. We should look at the bigger picture if we want to live better lives.

We meet many people through selling our excess stuff. Some are fascinating. Some funny. Some odd. Some a little weird. Today a local buyer declined to pick up their desired item. Or to have me bring it to him/her. I say him/her because even their profile name sounded more like a code name, giving away no information. The instructions were to wait for the all-clear and then deposit the item at a designated letterbox (presumably theirs). The money would be in a side compartment. This was definitely a first. Unexpected and a little strange. I might not have done it, but being very local I did it during my afternoon walk. I'll probably never know who the buyer was - or why they wanted this secretive method. In my free ebook Less Clutter More Cash I said selling to people can be fun and interesting. At the time I didn't expect that to include doing a spy-like drop-off to a secret identity. Now that I've done it, I think they're onto a pretty good idea. Letterboxes...

Advertisers say some ridiculous stuff to manipulate us into buying useless items we don't need. The Checkout took a quick look at some of ludicrous items for bikes . Would you pay $1100 for a watch? How about $491 for a bike pump? It's funny, and slightly jaw-dropping, but the sad part is that we sometimes we are lulled into buying this stuff. Then we have to work more - or sacrifice other things - to pay for it all. PS. If you regret stuff that you've bought, why not sell it online? Download my ebook Less Clutter More Cash for handy tips.

Choosing to live small has many benefits. The positives are obvious: less overhead, less clutter, fewer financial commitments, less stress and more time. That's one of the first statements of the book Living the Airstream Life . The author goes on to the consequences of these benefits. ... learning more about yourself through having the perspective to consider the bigger picture rather than having to focus on the chores of daily living ... those who live this lifestyle for a long period of time find other ways to make positive contributions, figuring out what their true skills are and how to use them to be a productive member of society rather than having to focus on paying a massive mortgage and credit payments or keeping up with all the chores of modern day living. That bit resonated with me. I recently left a job to now figure out what my next 'positive contribution' might be. A number of people told me how lucky I was. How they'd like to do that, but can't ...

One of the struggles of decluttering is when people give unwanted gifts. A particular couple I know are often given gifts of alcohol. But they hardly drink - or at least not at home very much. This collection of part-used and untouched bottles was cluttering up the kitchen and probably losing quality. Solution: cocktail party! A friend of theirs is a professional bartender and mixed people some drinks. There was also some great food. About twenty people showed up. So even without over-indulging, it was an effective way to halve their alcohol collection and have a nice night along the way. Cheers to decluttering and downsizing!

When I shared the quote "The first step to getting what you want is getting rid of what you don't" I didn't realise it came from this book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying: A simple, effective way to banish clutter forever . Marie Kondo's mission is to help people experience more joy simply by having fewer things and things that bring you joy. Ms Kondo's clients really do find this to be life-changing. It seems to be as much about mindset as it is about actual tidying techniques. The physical clutter, and often the mental clutter and other factors that go with it, holds us back from achieving what we want. The approach A handy tip for downsizing is the order in which we approach our clutter. She suggests leaving the more sentimental items to last. They take the most time and if we start there we'll lose momentum before we even get going. Her suggested order is clothes, then books, then papers, then miscellany, and mementos last. I struggle with ...