100 things

I have challenged myself to whittle down my worldly possessions to a grand total of 100 things.

The first thing that most people ask is why. My answer has multiple parts.

If you’re anything like me, you haven’t thrown anything out since you were 16. This includes clothes; when I wear a grand total of about 25 things on a regular basis, it seems silly to have a whole closet full of clothes. Clothes that don’t fit, clothes with holes, clothes that have too many embarrassing memories of awkward years tied to them for me to ever wear again. But you still have them, and cling to them with a strange nostalgia that doesn’t make sense when you think about how awful high school was in the first place.

Also, if you’re anything like me, you have 10 old cellphones that you kept in case you lost your current one (which I do frequently). You also have a whole shelf full of random knick knacks, and find that people give you little cute glitzy boxes as gifts because, well…you need a place to put all that stuff. You have 25 scarves, 10 pairs of shoes with holes in the bottom, and sweatpants from water polo that are three sizes too big but that you still keep in case you ever manage to somehow catastrophically lose your other four pairs of sweatpants that actually fit.

And finally, if you’re anything like me, you haven’t stayed in one place for a period of longer than two years since you were seven years old. Most of the time, the accessory stuff just vanished, or got left behind. But then you got to college, and you finally had a semi-permanent home, and maybe you felt a little more settled. The problem is, your new home is about 1/4th the size of your fairly large room you had in your house in Los Angeles and you, once again, haven’t thrown anything out in eight years.

Too much stuff.

I know you’re out there, you people-like-me. We are many, and we hoard in a socially acceptable way. We cling to our stuff because we can’t or don’t want to cling to other things, or we like to think of our hoarding as a sort of virtue—why should I throw it away when I might someday in the far future need it? We cling because we have nothing else to cling to, or because in this time of huge transition and upheaval in our lives, our stuff is our last clinging to home, or to something we are slowly gravitating away from.

But no, my friends. Clinging is not the answer. Because while you might wear those sweatpants once a year, there are people who don’t necessarily have warm pants to wear at all. In this time of recession, people are clinging to their stuff even more—when your savings account is no longer growing we seem to gravitate towards other things to latch onto and obsess over as measures of our wealth, or what we “have”. When I started to slowly chip away and donate things a few weeks ago, the profuse thanks that I got for what I had given, because “hardly anyone has been donating lately,” made me realize how ridiculous my mentality had been. Not only are we constantly forgetting what we have, and how lucky we are for that—we are also constantly forgetting what other people need, and that sometimes their dire situations trump our need to clutch onto those fraying jeans.

Not enough room.

This is much more than a one-week endeavor. I have been working on donating a large donation of my things for the past three weeks. I have already donated more than half of my clothes. I have begun to list my possessions. Everything. From my skis to my French press, from my knife block to my fish food.

But what do you count? For my first stage, I don’t think it makes sense to count every single thing. Do I count my fish, or my cats? I’d like to think of them as friends rather than material possessions. When I count my fish tank, do I count my filter and heater and gravel and decorations, or do I count them as one thing? You can get pretty specific with this stuff if you want. Rather than end up with clothes and a fish tank, I decided to count them as one thing. I think I am also, rather than eliminating most of my clothes, attempt for reasonable numbers in each category. I might even need to count my chargers along with the things they charge. If I counted the individual photographs and posters I own I would already be out of luck. And keeping track of the things that I’ve left at either parent’s house is difficult.

I will do my best to document my parting with these worldly possessions that I have chosen to give up, in the hope that it will be freeing and insightful. Stay tuned.