Home - Life with Less

What is Life with Less?

We are a blog packed with tips, ideas, questions, answers, suggestions and help for everyday people who want to reduce their carbon footprint and live a simpler, healthier lifestyle. We judge our life choices and therefore our recommendations on three core values:

Is it sustainable?

Is it practical?

Is it affordable?

We live in the real world. We care deeply about our environment, human rights and animals but we also have jobs, dreams, budgets and time constraints. We’re realistic about what will work with our lifestyle and are constantly weighing up options in order to find the best sustainable, practical, affordable solution.

We’re plastic haters, book lovers, writers, travellers, teachers, money savers, DIYers, coffee lovers, cooks, hikers and dreamers. In a world that’s constantly looking for more, we’re searching for a life with less.

What are we not?

We’re not perfect. We don’t do absolutes. While we strive to be as sustainable, practical and affordable as possible, we sometimes do things that go against all of these, hey, we’re humans!

We aren’t vegetarians, vegans, zero-waste or minimalists but we try to reduce our consumption of meat, dairy, plastic and we own very little.

We’re not here to judge. Everyone’s circumstances are different and change comes in small steps so even reading this is one little step towards your life with less.

Recent Posts

How to Make Almond Milk at Home

Dairy is the biggest part of our diet that needs work in the sustainability department. We are big on cheese, coffees with milk and yoghurt on our muesli. Although there are lots of alternatives to these we're still experimenting to find ones that are affordable, practical and meet all of our sustainability criteria such as coming in plastic-free packaging or ...
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10 Ways to Create a More Sustainable Wardrobe

Sustainable living can stretch to so many different areas of life and once you start thinking about it it's difficult to stop! We made hundreds of small changes to our weekly shops, our eating habits and the products we used before we even considered our wardrobes! Luckily we already bought a lot of our clothing second hand. But we hadn't ...
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3 Super Easy Bread Recipes to Make in Under an Hour!

Nothing beats the smell of fresh-baked bread and we’ve recently got really into making our own sourdough and having bread on hand for lunches. But it often takes a good day or two of preparation to bake a good sourdough loaf. So to make sure we’re prepared for any bread eating occasion we’ve perfected a few simple, quick bread recipes ...
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How to Make Lemon Curd and 5 Great Ways to Use it!

Last summer I found my parent’s lemon tree laden and in a desperate attempt not to waste any I started searching for recipes that make use of them. That’s when I came across lemon curd. At this stage, I only had a vague idea what it was let alone how to make lemon curd. I definitely thought of it as ...
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Your Guide to Tiny House Framing

One of the first and most important decisions you'll have to make when you start designing your tiny house is how you're going to build your tiny house frame. There are four main options (and I'm sure many others if you want to be creative) when it comes to tiny house framing and which you choose will depend on your ...
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10 Tips to Help You Eat More Sustainably

Changing to a sustainable lifestyle is not an overnight job. It takes time to slowly implement changes and find a way to make them fit with your needs, time and resources. We've shared some ideas that we've done or are working for being more sustainable in your bathroom/laundry and making sustainable choices in the kitchen but this post takes it ...
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Sustainable Flying – How to Reduce the Impact of Your Flights

If you’re like us, you‘re an environmentally conscious person wanting to do your bit to fight climate change but also have a love of travel and are finding it difficult to combine the two. We know, we’ve had this conversation so many times, how can we justify flights when we are trying desperately to reduce our carbon footprint. I come ...
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Sustainable Travel Clothing

Sustainable travel can be achieved in so many different ways but one easy and effective way is to rep some great sustainable travel clothing brands on your trips. It's surprisingly easy these days to find brands that will claim to be ethically made, use sustainable materials or care about the earth but it pays to look into it a little ...
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Tiny House Ideas and Inspiration

In our quest to design and build our own tiny house we have sifted through literally thousands of tiny house ideas. From the initial tiny house inspiration which just involved hours of Instagram scrolling to the more nitty-gritty of how people have done their trimmings, cladding or stairs. We're still making lots of our decisions about layout and materials but ...
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15 Ways to Create a More Sustainable Bathroom and Laundry

Choosing to make sustainable bathroom swaps is a really rewarding process. There are lots of simple changes you can make in the bathroom that can hugely reduce your environmental impact and don't take much time or effort. Lots of these things you might already be doing or have tried once or twice. Choose a couple and make them a sustainable ...
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Things to Know Before Buying an Electric Car

Everything you need to know about electric cars including reasons for buying an electric car and detailed information about the first-generation Nissan Leaf which is most common in New Zealand. Reasons to buy an electric car Our reasons to buy an electric car were mainly environmental. We wanted to be able to drive whenever we wanted and not feel guilty ...
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Tiny House Progress Update!

We came out roaring with tiny house plans and ideas and I feel like we’ve been a bit quiet on that front as we’ve settled into working life. Everyone is constantly asking about how it’s all going and what our plans are so I thought I’d write a quick update of where we’re at, where we’re heading and some of ...
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10 Simple Ways to Make Your Kitchen More Sustainable

The kitchen is one of the most used parts of the house and also the place in a household that produces the most waste. There are many small things you can change in your daily routines to have a more sustainable kitchen. This article gives you inspiration and easy product swap ideas to head towards a more eco-friendly and sustainable ...
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14 Tips to Help You Travel More Sustainably

What is sustainable travel? Travelling sustainably and eco-friendly travel are new buzzwords but what does it actually mean and how can you change your travel habits to make sure travel remains positive and beneficial for the places you’re visiting? Sustainable travel means different things to each person but we like to think of it as covering everything from environmental issues ...
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Make Your Own Natural Homemade Deodorant

It is very easy to make your own homemade deodorant! You just need 4 ingredients and you can mix it up in just a couple of minutes. The best thing about this natural homemade deodorant is that it works! Actually, I've never used anything better. It absorbs any perspiration and doesn't smell at all for at least 24h. On top ...
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How to Use Solid Shampoo and Other FAQs

Solid shampoo and other solid toiletries are becoming more and more mainstream these days. Lots of people are making the switch and shampoo bars are increasingly easy to get hold of. But many people are put off by the change to such a core part of their daily routine and the great unknown. We had lots of questions when we ...
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14 Minimalist Packing Tips to Help You Pack Light

Minimalism can carry through to our holiday planning too and packing light isn’t just a great way to save some money, it’s also better for the environment. Save yourself the extra cost of checked-in luggage and reduce the fuel needed to move your things around the world by challenging yourself to some minimalist packing on your next trip. It’s easier ...
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How to Make Your Own Yoghurt Without A Yoghurt Maker

I had never considered making yoghurt at home but the lack of options in glass jars here in NZ sparked me to start researching exactly how it’s done. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s really easy to do and besides the simple preparation it really is just a matter of waiting. Making your own yoghurt can take a ...
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A Guide to Sustainable Gift-Giving

The idea of giving is such an important part of many religions, philosophies and ways of life. However, it feels like we’ve all gone a bit overboard with the consumerism surrounding gifts and giving occasions. Nowadays we need copious quantities of presents for every birthday, baby shower, wedding, milestone, anniversary, housewarming, next door neighbour’s dog's birthday... You get the point. We give a lot of gifts. Don’t get me wrong, I love presents. Nothing ...
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Five Simple Things to Make Yourself That Will Save You Money

Growing up in a busy, suburban family, I never gave much thought to growing, producing or making food myself. Supermarket convenience was in full swing and my parents had little interest in cooking combined with minimal spare time after carting three kids around to various after school activities. But in our search for a more sustainable lifestyle we’ve been experimenting ...
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The Best Natural Deodorants and How They Work

My switch to natural deodorant was born out of a desire to reduce our plastic waste, in fact, we went entirely plastic free for a month and hope to continue those habits. It wasn’t until doing further research into my options that I found the potential benefits of going natural under my arms. The chemicals in many deodorants are not ...
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Why We’re Going Tiny!

Our biggest realisation over the last couple of years of travel is that anything is possible. We don’t mean in a ‘the world is weird and wonderful’ kind of way, although that too. But more in a lifestyle sense. In that any way we want to live, job we want to have or lifestyle we choose is possible if we ...
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Natural solid toiletries bars, soap bar, solid shampoo and solid conditioner

Five Reasons to Switch to Solid Toiletries

Solid toiletries are the new craze in the beauty world and not just for environmentalists. I switched to solid shampoo about two years ago and have slowly swapped out all of my shower products for solid equivalents. I'm completely sold and don't feel the need to use liquids again. So if you're still on the fence or aren't sure what ...
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10 Simple Ways to Reduce Your Plastic Waste

Reducing our waste, in general, is a huge goal for us this year but nothing is worse than single-use plastic. Using the key principles of Life with Less (sustainable, practical affordable) we've come up with this list of ten quick switches that can reduce your plastic waste easily and affordably. Reusable Water Bottle I kind of thought this would be ...
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