Just a few days ago, I came across the 100-Thing Challenge at www.GuyDamedDave.com and was really taken by it. Essentially Dave’s idea is to reduce his personal possessions down to 100 things and live for a year without exceeding 100 possessions. It’s an interesting concept – one that bucks modern day consumerism and promotes a sustainable existence. For the past couple years, I have been thinking about consumption, my impact and what my personal possessions say about me and my commitment to ecology and theology for that matter. So over this past weekend, inspired by Dave, my wife and I decided we would take a first step and each get rid of 100 possessions.
It was much easier and more satisfying than I ever anticipated.
Over the past eight years, my wife and I have moved six times: five times here in Arizona and one time across the country from Pennsylvania. In each of those moves we thought we had lightened our load of stuff. But consumption will get you if you keep buying and never getting rid of more than you consume. You end up in a situation like we had last fall when we moved into our current house. Our problem was easily defined and boiled down to exactly four 26-foot U-Haul trucks, eight hours with our friends and three professional movers. Since that time, we have tried to be more conscious in our consumption, thinking more about durability and how often we would use an item instead of just the price.
But we still have a problem with stuff. In many cases we have created an emotional bond to it. It was interesting this weekend how many times I felt bad getting rid of something because I had attributed some intrinsic, emotional or sentimental value to an item, of which I probably have not seen or cared about in years. Had those items been stolen, I would have never known or cared, but since I had them in front of me and was considering ridding myself of them, my mind was trying to convince me of why I needed them.
One epiphany I had was that each item I held on to was an item I was withholding from someone else. If I had the DVD, then someone out there that wanted that same DVD would need to buy a new one. If I had a file full of old newspaper clippings, then when the newspaper needs paper they have to cut down a tree to get it.
The other thing that struck me was the percentage of items I owned that were made in China and other countries known for their human rights challenges. Keeping these things was not only a burden to me; it was harming the environment and causing suffering of other human beings. No thanks!
So how did we do? Well, in total, I estimate we got rid of around 400 items (between Goodwill and the local book store that bought some of our DVDs) and that is not counting hundreds of items we recycled (mostly cards from our wedding and past events). It was about 2 ½ SUV’s full of stuff—but this is just the beginning, once things cool down (it is still summer in Arizona) we can tackle the garage and backyard do a lot more.
Take a look. (Check out a few of the “things” we gave away on our flickr photo stream.)
Do you think you could do without 100 things?
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[...] thought I might as well pose the challenge (below) in the form of a [...]
The Digital Revolution (or “evolution” as I call it) has really allowed us to free up a lot of “things” we held on to in the past.
My non-digital photos from “back in the day” are going to iMemories to be stored digitally and arranged to my hearts content for a small monthly fee. Not lugging around photo albums will be well worth that fee. Old VHS memories of daredevil feats like bunging jumping, sky diving, getting married and our honeymoon (yes, I include those last two as dare-devilish), will now be digital and online for viewing and sharing instead of taking up shelf space. Heck, I can actually watch them now since we don’t even have a VHS player.
CDs were uploaded to our iTunes account. Now, I just need to download them to my iPod whenever I want to hear them. Swap out this one for that one and I’m good to go. No more schleping those in the move either. Now, I can free them up for someone else to enjoy.
With how many times we move, we are not only putting resources back into the stream for reuse or recycling but we are saving future resources by packing fewer boxes needing less packing material and less tape; and saving on trips made (gas, pollution, etc).
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