The ”100 item Challenge”, how well could you do it?
In a recent question I posted dealing with the smallest square foot a person would choose to live in, the thought came that to downsize significantly one would need to eliminate a lot of stuff. Somewhere around 2007–2008 (as far as I can tell) someone came up with the ”100 item Challenge”, where you reduce what you have to 100 items. There is no official formula but for clarity, consider an “item” as anything that is part of a set, or need to be used with something else, or makes something else useful. For example, your monitor and your PC tower would be one unit, as they are useless without one other; the printer or scanner can be grandfathered in. Tools would be a unit, a collection of baseball cards, deck of playing cards, etc. would also be one unit or item. Do you believe you could reduce what you have to 100 items?
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Hmmm…. Well using the set formula I’m not sure that I even own 100 items.
BOTH Clothes count, socks, underwear, ties, gloves are a pair same as socks, jackets, pots and pans that are not a set, books that are not a set like encyclopedias, etc. water hoses, balls of yarn, flower vases, etc.
When I was working full-time and also in school full-time I had a studio apt that may have been 400sq ft. There was not time to bother with much except necessities. I likely had little more than 100 items. A couch, tv, bed, computer, some dishes and regular things like a toothbrush & clothes. I had a car and mountain bike. If you counted CDs & books then it was well over a hundred. That could have easily been reduced to a few once CD’s ripped down to digital. Books could have been reduced to just what I needed to study. Only 100 items is easily accomplished.
@Hypocrisy_Central
Yeah. Still not sure I own 100 items. Most of what I do own is clothing. Of the few other items I own there’s stull like video games, but those are useless without the console, so I’m counting the PS3 console and the PS3 games as one. Pretty much all my books now are e-books on my Kindle. Likewise pretty much all my music is in MP3 form, and that’s all on an external hard drive. So that’s one item rather than a few hundred CDs.
After my second divorce everything I possessed was in the two suitcases I carried out to the waiting taxi. I didn’t stop to count the items I had. Far fewer than 100 I expect but I had my sanity.
I probably have 100 items in one storage box of mementos
Sure. Some years ago I reduced down to what I could fit in a back including a very small TV and an old fashioned typewriter.
I then took off from California and hitchhiked across the USA.
No way! I have more than that in just garden implements and tractors. My basement is loaded with test equipment. And the house….well frankly it’s an embarrassment.
I have stuff from my father when he moved from his house to a condo 30 years ago. After one son got divorced I got a pile of his stuff. the other son still uses the house as storage. Ugh!
I can even reduce to 50 items. Only things really necessary for me can stand. Things like clothes aren’t that necessary.
Side note: I can only complete the challenge for a certain period of time…
Tell you the truth, that is very hard when I look at all that I have, which isn’t much, but it would be hard to part with it and NOT think that I should have not tossed it.
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