100 Things

The 100 Thing Challenge is hardly a new, novel concept.  In fact there's a book called the 100 Thing Challenge put out in 2008.  In internet terms, that means it's pretty ancient.  But I liked the way it sounded.  A good jump start to cutting back on the stuff we had to move.  I had seen people do similar things on different blogs and figured I could manage.  It might be a little harder since we've only got a couple rooms in an apartment to pull from instead of a whole house but I was optimistic.

And then I read what the 100 Thing Challenge actually is.

It is NOT, as I had thought, a get-rid-of-100-items challenge.  Instead, it is about cutting down to only owning 100 things.  So ya, let's talk about how that is not going to happen.

I mean, we're a household that owns 6 bikes (yes, you're only seeing half of our total bike collection).  Obviously we are never going to be that "uncluttered".  And I'm totally okay with that.  I like having multiple types of eating utensils (instead of one spork).  So while I appreciate the thought of living so simply, ya no.

Instead I'm doing the version of the 100 Things Challenge that I had originally imagined.  I'm clearing out 100 items as a sort of detox to get us ready to clean up, pack up, and head out.  I figured once we started getting rid of stuff to hit our 100 things mark, it would make it easier to keep going and get rid of more as we boxed everything. 

It seems to have been successful!

Our 100 things includes:

• Old clothes, bathing suits, underwear (eew), socks, and shoes
• Magazines
• Curling iron, assorted makeup, jewelry, and purses (Can you tell I'm a total girly girl? no?)
• Very old camera and an (almost) 1st gen iPod Mini
• Blender (SO loud)
• Bike Trainer (bought used and it turned out to be slightly broken, a fail for me)
• Printer (got for free but never even opened the box)
• Roomba (also bought broken but we thought we could fix it, fail)
• Basketball (really? I'm 5ft tall, what was that thought process?)
• Assorted college-era lamps, posters, picture frames
• Bike parts of a variety of flavors
• A bug?  I'm not sure what I was referring to when I put that on the list

All in all, we beat our 100 thing goal and now we're on a roll! (haha, that rhymed)  Everything is being listed on Craigslist, given to Goodwill, and thrown away.  Yay!