Can you live with only 100 things?

July 11th, 2008 Posted in Day to Day

I read this article on time.com a few weeks ago called “How to live with just 100 things.” It is an article about a self-imposed challenge by a guy named Dave. His goal is to reduce the number of items he owns to 100 and live that way for a year. Here’s the post about the challenge. He’s keeping a running list of his stuff there as well. There is also a FriendFeed room and Facebook group dedicated to the conversation.

I’ve often thought about how much stuff I have and what it’s all for. Moving (every year for the past eight years) only emphasizes it. I’m a pack rat. I keep stuff to use for art and creative projects. A lot of stuff I keep “just in case.” Some stuff has a memory or meaning attached. Thinking about this causes me to dread the day when I have my own house. Moving constantly is one way of keep clutter down… kind of.

I’m looking around my apartment right now at the number of things still in boxes. Do I keep them? What about the stuff that has been in boxes since two moves ago? Do I need it if I haven’t taken it out of it’s box in two years? Probably not.

I think it is time to seriously prune my nest.