100 Things Challenge

Goal #106 on my list is to minimize my material possessions.  Until recently I maintained a typical consumer mindset in which I felt good about my situation in life by owning Stuff.  The more I was able to amass, the better I felt.  I was making money & buying Stuff to show my financial strength.

In the process of searching for a solution to my personal financial crisis I began reading about frugality & the power of less.  The financial impact of reducing my consumption was obvious; don’t buy Stuff that I don’t need & I will have money for the things that matter.  Even more than this economic impact on my life was the idea of finding comfort & peace with what I already possessed.

At times, accepting the idea that I could be happy without buying Stuff seemed ludicrous.  How would I cope without the newest DVD?  No more shopping sprees at the mall!  Opting out of the consumer lifestyle would require serious changes & at times, struggle.  I had moments when I doubted the whole idea of minimalist living yet I persisted.

Once I gained control over my compulsion to spend I began to analyze my possessions.  I questioned how my Stuff was affecting me emotionally and mentally.  I began to realize that having more Stuff couldn’t bring me happiness & satisfaction.  Each purchase I made was an external attempt at filling an internal void & each purchase left me feeling even more empty than before.  Almost like a drug addict, each time the endorphin rush wore off from my new purchase, there I was searching for my next fix.

Once I understood the affect that Stuff had on my life I knew I needed to do something.  I began sorting through my Stuff, looking for things that would be easy for me to get rid of.  Anything that no longer provided purpose & meaning to my life was on its way out.  I sold as much as I could on eBay & donated the rest to Goodwill.  Anything that couldn’t be sold or donated was sent to the trashcan.

This process of selling, donating & trashing had a huge impact on me.  It made me realize exactly how much I was living a life of excess.  I had collections of everything imaginable, from records to trading cards, action figures to comic books, DVDs & CDs to coins, even old Playboy magazines that I never looked through.  I had so much Stuff that I needed to rent a storage unit in order to contain it all.

Over the last 9 months the process of selling, donating & trashing has now reached a point where I am able to look at each item I own with a feeling that in some way, that item brings value to my life.  Whether it is the stone Buddha statue on my living room floor or the Camelbak I use while hiking, each item offers utility.  I still have some paring back to do; some items I haven’t had the ambition to try to sell still linger throughout.  I hope to have these few things taken care of in the near future.

This brings me to the point of my post today, I’d like to share with you a website devoted to living simply, with as few (one hundred) personal possessions as possible.  David Michael Bruno is attempting to live for one year with 100 personal items or less.

The idea of doing this myself began to bounce around in my mind.  With all of the purging I have been doing recently, I might already be below the 100 mark.  I looked around my living room & started making a list.  By the time I was done with the list I found myself well below the 100 item mark.  Then I realized I had forgotten a space in my closet with my winter coat & sweatshirts, which put me at 111 items.

All in all I would say that I have done a good job at reducing the amount of things which I own, yet I feel there is much room for improvement.  In my count there were things which I intentionally ignored such as hygiene products & trinkets I’ve collected through my travels.  I counted collections as single items and anything which is shared property didn’t make the list either.

I hope to be able to further reduce the number of material possessions I own.  There are things which, while I enjoy to some extent, I could easily live without.  I challenge you to look around you and find the things that you could live without & live without them.  Opt out of the consumer lifestyle & harness a life of simplicity in which you thoroughly enjoy what you already have & don’t worry about the things you don’t.  In time you will begin to appreciate the simplicity and as you remove yourself from a lifestyle of consumption you have the resources (money) to pursue those things that matter to you the most.

For those who are interested, here is my list of 100 Things.