Monday, August 04, 2008

What Happened to Those 41 Items?

Last year this time I was lamenting about how much stuff I had. 147 items to be exact. That was when I made the grandiose goal of reducing my stuff by 5% each time I moved. With this wonderful target in site I made a few runs to my local Goodwill stores, and several runs to the dumpster.

Now I’m down to 106. Perhaps I went overboard. Or, more likely, the crew who packed my belongings to leave California did a much more thorough job than the crew who packed me to return. Leaving: each pair of shoes was wrapped in packing paper before being placed in a box. Returning: a large glass vase was wrapped in a single sheet of paper, then placed in the corner of a box holding a whole lot of other stuff. Suffice it to say, the shoes made it in better shape than the vase did.

I haven’t even attempted to start a charity pile this go around. It doesn’t necessarily feel like I have any less stuff than I did a year ago, but it also doesn’t seem like I have anything extra. (And foils to that day I sorted my closet in Stamford! I really wanted to wear a green shirt today that I apparently decided to donate to the local charity. Word to the wise: never make these kinds of decisions while under an unpacking deadline!)

So I think I’m done getting rid of things. I’ll always be a perpetual closet cleaner, but no more full carloads of stuff to donate. I’m too busy trying to figure out what I can wear in place of that green shirt.

2 comments:

RobRoy said...

Sounds like the 100 items movement. The idea that you can survive with just, well, 100 items, and the rest is superfluous.

Congrats!

Kelly said...

Unfortunately, I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the items I still have could be classified as superfluous.