But wait... there's less!

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.

According to research by Gumtree, the average Australian household has $5,200 of unwanted goods sitting around the home. Why not cash it in? I'm sure we'd all much prefer to have a few thousand dollars rather than all that clutter we no longer use. So far we've made over $1,630 We didn't have many valuable items - just a fridge and a lounge suite. Most of the cash came from lots of little items (around 170 of them) for 2, 5 or 10 dollars. It all adds up - to a surprisingly high amount.

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.

They were in a few different places so we didn't realise until today that we had 22 towels. That seems a lot for two people. So we had a cut session. It's a bit like the sports coach who has to pick the final team from a squad of players. In that spirit, we picked our final line-up of 4 bath towels, 2 guest towels, 4 beach towels and one guest beach towel. As I write this, even 11 sounds like a lot. But we're making progress. Also, we know of someone in need who could use a towel or two - so that's also a great incentive to lighten our load. PS. As I wrote this I assumed that 22 was an unusually large number for two people. It just seemed big. Perhaps it's normal. What do you think? How many do you have?

I do 3 days of paid work per week. I find it to be a good balance between earning some income and having free time to do the things I enjoy. Today I discovered another advantage. An average 5-day worker pays around 18% tax. An average 3-day worker pays just 9%. Here's why. The more you earn the more tax you pay. Here in Australia we pay no tax on the first $18,200. But after that each chunk of money is taxed at higher rates. Tax-free Mondays Think of it this way. The average wage is $231 a day. Working just one day per week, that would be tax-free. Work a second day and you lose $20 in tax. By the time you get to a 4th or 5th day the tax (on those days) is about a third of what you earn. I think this is partly why some new parents work fewer days. After paying all that tax and then childcare fees, it's just not worth their time to do a fourth or fifth day - because their true wage is hardly anything on those 4th and 5th days. The same goes for people who just have ot...

We buy way more stuff than we need. Advertising plays a big role in that. I reckon they're quite tricky, and sometimes more than a bit manipulative, in getting us to buy more stuff. So I was stunned to see these survey results on Planet America . Only 1 in 9 Americans trust Census data while the majority are happy to swallow what they are told in an advertisement. That should, at least, be the other way around. By definition advertisers have every reason to give a biased view of the whatever it is they are advertising. I'm struggling to think of any information source LESS trustworthy than an ad. What do you think? How would you rank these information sources?

This is every mug I own. How many did I buy? Zero. They seem to just appear. I don't even drink tea or coffee. In winter I have might have a hot chocolate or cocoa. So 9 mugs seems like a lot. How does this happen? I reckon most mugs are gifts. There are two reasons for this. 1. It's a safe bet. People need to drink. It's kind of like buying your dad socks for father's day. But the difference is that socks wear out and need replacing. Cups don't. One of these mugs i received as a kid in the 90s. It still works fine. Now it has 8 friends. 2. It's often for what's on the mug. It might be a greeting card-style message, or a sports team logo, or something humorous. It's a good thing that something functional can also provide an inspiring message or pleasant memory as you use it. But the problem comes when we have too much. If I use the cup my sister gave me at Christmas, then I'm not using the 'awesome brother' one she already gave m...

My wife and I currently work about 3 days per week. Even just typing that feels like a rebellious act in a society that herds us towards five days a week of work. My wife was recently doing one of those "graduate outcomes" surveys that the university arranges. It asked how much she works. When the answer was less than 5 days, it asked if she was looking for more work. She said no and was asked to choose one of the following reasons. They thought up 10 options and not one was even close to "this is how much I want to work". Each option was just a variation of 'There's no work for me' or 'I have no time'. It's as if they couldn't even imagine a person who doesn't long to hand over even more of their life to work. I reckon that surveys like this, and about a hundred other things, herd/lure/peer-pressure us into working 5 days per week even though there's no real reason to.

One of the reasons we work so many hours and buty so much stuff is the constant message from advertisers that money can buy things that make us happy. But is that really true at all? There's probably more than 50, but this list is a good reminder that so many really valuable things can't be bought.

On Saturday night I saw British comic Josh Widdicombe's comedy routine which included this bit about parental gifts: My parents go on holiday and they bring me back gifts of their holiday that I haven't been on. I've got a key ring from Morocco so that every time I get my keys out I can go "Oh yeah - I haven't been to Morocco". My parents came back from York. They brought me a collectible teaspoon. Who is collecting teaspoons from places around the UK? On Sunday I saw my Dad who has recently been on a cruise. Sure enough there was a keyring from a place we haven't been - along with half a dozen other items. It's great that he thinks of us while he's travelling and wants to get us something. It's nice. But these cruise gifts, combined with Christmas and birthday presents, make it hard to downsize. I now have to get rid of 7 other items just to get back to even. Sometimes it would be way better just to see a photo.