{"id":506,"date":"2008-07-05T18:33:57","date_gmt":"2008-07-06T01:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.devinreams.com\/?p=506"},"modified":"2008-07-05T18:33:57","modified_gmt":"2008-07-06T01:33:57","slug":"im-taking-the-100-things-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/?p=506","title":{"rendered":"I&#039;m taking the &#039;100 things&#039; challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Jealousy\" href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/83476873@N00\/3825537\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: left;\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/3\/3825537_9167e2534b_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a> I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve heard of it already. If not, a bunch of people have vowed to give up everything in their life except for 100 &#8220;things&#8221; (loosely defined). This isn&#8217;t a new idea, Leo from Zen Habits <a title=\"Minimalist Fun: The 100 Things Challenge\" href=\"http:\/\/zenhabits.net\/2007\/09\/minimalist-fun-the-100-things-challenge\/\">talked about it<\/a> almost a year ago and it&#8217;s been circulating around the web in blogs and forums before that (but thank goodness we have <a title=\"How to Live With Just 100 Things\" href=\"http:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/magazine\/article\/0,9171,1812048,00.html\">TIME around to popularize it<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>I started cataloging all the items I have around the house and was quite surprised; I think you would be, too. But first, here are some of my initial thoughts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You should define a &#8220;thing&#8221; at first. I did consider a collection as one &#8220;thing.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Pay attention to all the things on all your shelves, in the closet, etc. You forget about things.<\/li>\n<li>List your things in the room or area they belong, this helps recognize where stuff clutters.<\/li>\n<li>That box sitting there that you haven&#8217;t touched since you last moved? Go ahead and get rid of it. No! Don&#8217;t even open it.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure you&#8217;ve considered every part of the house. Food didn&#8217;t make it on my list.<\/li>\n<li>I have nearly as many &#8220;things&#8221; in my office as my bedroom. But I only spend a few hours a week in the office!<\/li>\n<li>As I went through and cataloged things I made a pile of stuff I don&#8217;t want on the list (and will get rid of immediately), this is immediate gratification!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now the point isn&#8217;t to simply remove things from your life (even though that&#8217;s a big part of it). The point of the (arbitrary) number, 100, is to keep a sense of value in mind. What is it that makes it into my top 100? What can I limit myself to? How do I prioritize the &#8220;stuff&#8221; that is tied to my name?<\/p>\n<p>After a couple hours of rummaging around this morning I <em>easily<\/em> dropped my list down to 108 items. Thaaats right. There are only 108 things in my house. These things include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bed<\/li>\n<li>iPhone<\/li>\n<li>Lint roller<\/li>\n<li>Umbrella<\/li>\n<li>Golf clubs<\/li>\n<li>Big green fern<\/li>\n<li>Spindle of CDs<\/li>\n<li>24&#8243; LCD monitor<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/49143508@N00\/167212709\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/62\/167212709_ce34762e57_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>Once you get into it, 100 is a very reasonable number. What are some of the things I&#8217;ve done to minimize my &#8220;thing footprint&#8221;?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Digitize things!<\/strong> Documents, photographs, important receipts. Paper does not need to add to your list.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Keep the digital needs simple!<\/strong> One thing I&#8217;ve <em>tried <\/em>to do is decrease the number of gadgets \/ chargers \/ toys I own. The iPhone is awesome, it&#8217;s my phone, calendar, mobile internet device, etc. The Sonos is great, its my house-wide sound system (no need for PC speakers, for example).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Minimize the knick-knacks. <\/strong>I try to be very intentional about the things I put on &#8216;horizontal surfaces&#8217;. A lamp here, a fountain there. I had clutter and &#8216;simple&#8217; is so much more pleasing. Some cool knick-knacks I&#8217;ve kept are from around the world (India, New Zealand, Mexico)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Clean out the desk.<\/strong> I found a lot of junk I don&#8217;t use (I don&#8217;t have a tack board, why do I have tacks!?) in the many drawers around my house. Don&#8217;t think, just toss. If you feel bad about it, throw it all in a box and check back in 6 months. Didn&#8217;t open it? Nuff said.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Turn your hangers around.<\/strong> To minimize the amount of clothing in your closet you don&#8217;t wear simply put all your hangers in backwards. Then when you wear something for the first time, turn it around (thanks <a href=\"http:\/\/tlc.discovery.com\/fansites\/cleansweep\/bio\/bio_07.html\">Peter<\/a>). Every few months I take the unworn to Goodwill. Easy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now its nice becuase, no, I don&#8217;t own my own place. My roommate is the owner of the plates, knives, forks, etc. But that&#8217;s fine, if you use the &#8216;collection rule&#8217; you&#8217;ll see you&#8217;ve only got a dozen more things than I do.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m staring at my list. These eight things aren&#8217;t going to go without a fight.<\/p>\n<p><em>Have you tried minimizing the &#8216;stuff&#8217; in your life? How do you declutter?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve heard of it already. If not, a bunch of people have vowed to give up everything in their life except for 100 &#8220;things&#8221; (loosely defined). This isn&#8217;t a new idea, Leo from Zen Habits talked about it almost a year ago and it&#8217;s been circulating around the web in blogs and forums [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[15,57,62,71,585,80,87,111],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifehack","tag-100things","tag-list","tag-minimal","tag-organization","tag-personal","tag-property","tag-simple","tag-zen-habits"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.reams.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}