Don't buy things you can borrow

We all tend to fill up our homes with all kinds of more-or-less useful things. Books, DVDs, CDs, magazines - all the things we enjoy. But not only are they filling up our shelves and adding visual clutter to our rooms, they also reduce visual clutter in our purse. I don't know about you, but my purse is the only place I enjoy seeing cluttered. As long as the clutter is caused by banknotes.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to reduce the clutter in your home, save money and still have all the things you enjoy? Fortunately, there is a simple way.

• Head over to your bookshelf and count all the books in there.
• Start again, this time counting all the books you've read more than once.
  

Notice the difference? As much as we enjoy our books, we only read most of them just once. This might not be true for a reference book, but I don't know many people that read "Lord of the rings" twice.

I bet you get a similar result if you start counting your DVDs.

You don't have to buy all this stuff. You can borrow most books in a public library. While they might not have the latest and greatest "Harry Potter", they surely have lots of other books that you'd enjoy reading. If you don't believe me, make a list of your 10 most wanted books in your shelf. Head over to a public library and ask if they have this books. I guess it's a save bet they have other interesting books when they have some (if not all) books on your list.

You can borrow DVDs in your local video store or use services like Netflix. Think about how often you could borrow a DVD for the price of a new DVD, which will just be collecting dust in your shelf...

How much have you spent on books and DVDs the last year? Would you say that was a good investment?