Top 5 of 2018

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.

the handy travel pack you don't need to buy

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 (check out my book Less Clutter More Cash). In this post I give tips for a garage sale - including the best day (for Aussies) to hold one.

5. Tiny House, Big Living

This is about one of my favourite shows. People moving to smaller houses and talking about how freeing it is to finally have less stuff.

Thanks for being part of this journey in 2018. I hope your 2019 is a year of less. Less stuff, less clutter, less expenses, less debt, less pressure and less stress.

Comments

Don't dump on charities

Netflix causes mass dumping. Here's an alternative. January is usually a big month for physical donations to charity. In 2019 it's been over-the-top (literally) as charity donation bins have been overflowing with items. The Netflix series "Tidying Up" by famous declutterer Marie Kondo (see her book ) has inspired many to declutter their homes. But in the process they've cluttered the streets. What's so bad about donating? When the bins overflow the extra items are thrown away. Having been in the weather, the rain and on the ground, they are classified as contaminated and cannot be sold. To make it worse, much of what fills the bins is not good enough to sell, and is also dumped. Bad donations hurt charities 13 million dollars. That's how much it costs charities to deal with all the junk we dump on them - 60,000 tonnes a year. Lifeline says half its stores have stopped accepting donations. We might think we're helping, but that's a lot ...

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...

Are cooktops a waste of space?

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...

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