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. With Could you get by with 100 things?
Time Magazine reports on a guy who is trying to whittle down his possessions to a mere 100 things.
[Dave] Bruno keeps a running tally on his blog, guynameddave.com of what he has decided to hold on to and what he is preparing to sell or donate. For instance, as of early June, he was down to five dress shirts and one necktie but uncertain about parting with one of his three pairs of jeans. “Are two pairs of jeans enough?!,” he asked in a recent posting.
Time suggests this is a “grassroots movement,” although even Bruno seems surprised by that assertion. (“Now it’s a ‘grassroots movement,’ according to Time. Wow!”) Even so, his 100 Thing Challenge is an interesting variation on the whole voluntary simplicity idea, and also on the probably more useful notion of simply thinking harder about material culture — about what really matters, and what really doesn’t.
[Thanks for the tip, Orli!]
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Reader Comments
Very nice idea. But, if you one day decide you’re only going to have 100 things in your possession, what happens with the 5062-odd other things you had lying around before your new ‘voluntary simplicity’ mission began? Did all that other stuff go into the dump?
Doesn’t seem so green after all, huh?
I had a similar thought — I believe he’s selling things off, as I understand it. But you make a good point.
Selling things off or donating them (see: All My Life for Sale); either would be fine.
I don’t know how much of either this person is doing though, since so much of personal belongings “don’t count” towards the 100. Hygiene, anything he shares with his family (TV, house, car, plates, food), his books, his family bible, his childhood trains, and on and on: they don’t count.
I would like to see someone do this with ACTUALLY only 100 things where everything counts and manages to make it work in modern day America. In fact, that sounds like a reality show.