It's so good - we DIDN'T buy one

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.

the handy travel pack you don't need to buy

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 shopping to find them.
Enjoyable - The three of us caught up for a nice afternoon when my sister-in-law dropped the bags around.
Clutter-free - We returned them after the trip and don't have to store them. (We've got plenty enough items in our house already).

Reason 2 brought more joy to our day. Reasons 1 and 3 were about less. Less stress and less clutter. Even a handy travel item is clutter for the 50 weeks a year when you're not travelling.

How can we do this more?

Family members are helpful. Sharing between friends can also be great. My wife has also borrowed a friend's dresses for weddings.

It's easy to put a call out on social media. Couple friends of ours requested moving boxes. We had quite a few left over from our last move and were able to help out. I was so glad they didn't have to buy any.

When good neighbours become good friends

Taking it a step further, Streetbank is a site that helps neighbours share with each other. I've listed a tennis racquet, a basketball, DVDs, and tools. People can use these items when they need without having to buy their own.

For more about Streetbank, see my story The Keys to Happiness about our best borrowing experience. Also check out the Streetbank short films made by students to promote the idea.

Comments

What to do with 128 pens?

I never need buy a pen again. Ever. The pen round-up. I searched the house for pens and gathered them up. We had 128. Woah - that's more than I expected. Then it was test-time. (You can get a lot done watching summer sport ;). Good ones went on the table. Broken ones in the box. Pen operations I saved a few 'broken' pens, by taking working insides and matching them with functional outsides. Particularly much-loved pens, for sentimental reasons, were given a life-extending 'ink transplant'. Final Tally We ended up with 67 broken pens and 61 good ones. And about 10 pencils. What to do with 67 broken pens? In my city Biome recycles pens . It's as easy as taking them into the store and dropping them into the giant collection box. Decluttering and recycling together - I love it. A lifetime of pens An average pen writes 45,000 words. So that dedicated shopping list pen on the fridge could write a 20-word shopping list for 43 years. Our 61 pens repre...

How to waste a year's wages

A friend recently asked me why it is that so many people (on good incomes) are struggling to save. Often the big three money areas are housing, transport and food. In one sense these are necessary items. But what we spend on them is often way more than necessary. I crunched some numbers on how much extra my wife and I could spend on these things - if for some reason we wanted to burn our money. 1. Housing Our apartment is fairly nice, but also cost-effective. I've mentioned how choosing it saves us $1,800 per year , compared to a similar one we saw. The high end of 2-bedroom apartments in our suburb is $305 per week more than our apartment. Not $305 per week. $305 per week more than ours is. I cannot get over that. Sure it's new and modern-looking, but that's a lot of money. It's an extra $15,860 per year above what we pay. 2. Transport The Australian Automobile Association lists the costs of owning and running a car. It includes many often-overlooked c...

Why millionaires don't "feel" rich

We're wealthier than ever - so why don't we feel like it? Australia has gone almost three decades without recession. The stock market recently hit a record high. Our wages are record highs. Home loan rates are at record lows. We live in one of the richest countries in the world at the richest point in history. So what's wrong? Comparison Wealth is relative. So what do we compare to? Where we expect to be? "When your wages growth is only 2 or 3 per cent, you don't feel as well-off as when it's going up 10 per cent. That's that nominal distortion that people often suffer from" , says economist Shane Oliver, and that "expectations have grown a lot faster than reality." We're earning more than last year, but we want even more. So compared to our imaginary situation, we see ourselves as worse off. What we see around us? Shane Oliver again. "If you think about it - Australians today are a lot wealthier. They're living far ric...

But wait... there's less!

Search This Blog