The Minimalists – more about them here – have a game whereby two or more people commit to getting rid of Stuff over a period of 30 days. The idea is to find and dispose of – by throwing away, donating or selling – excess material possessions at an exponential rate, e.g. one thing on day one, two things on day two, 15 things on day 15 and so on.
Ultimately, the aim is to get rid of just under 500 items in one month.
As part of my personal long-term goal of getting from hoarder to minimalist*, I’m giving it a go. G, who got us onto this minimalism kick in the first place, will be my challenger for the 30 days. We haven’t decided on a prize for the winner yet but I imagine it will involve sushi.
I’m expecting it to get harder as I go along, but I’m also expecting the first few days to be tricky too – restricting myself to just throwing one or two things away while my mind rustles up ideas for more and more will be a challenge in itself.
I’m bending the official game rules a little:
- They state that “each material possession must be out of your house—and out of your life—by midnight each day”. While I’ll happily chuck out anything wheelie-bin-suitable as I go along, I’m not planning on visiting the charity shop, post office or tip every single day, so will instead create a space for donations/saleable items/items needing a tip run and dispose of those once a week.
- I was planning to start the game on 1st Jan but as work has wound down significantly just recently in the run-up to Christmas, I may as well make use of this time and start it now. I will be pausing the game for a few days over actual Christmas.
I’m also going to, as far as makes sense, lump like-items together so they count as one object, e.g. all those ancient ball point pens in my office drawer can count as one item rather than be counted individually.
I’ll be keeping track of what I’m getting rid of each day but I’m only aiming to update here roughly once a week, unless I have a particularly spectacular day I want to shout about. For both this and my longer-term goals, I won’t be evangelising about it all on social media very much so, if it is of interest to you and/or you want to ask me questions about it or join in yourself, do check back here from time to time to see how it’s going.
Right then. Today’s one item is *drumroll* a silicone case for a 4th gen iPod:
* Epic post to follow about why I’m doing this, where this ‘journey’ started and what I plan to get out of it, along with why I feel I have a claim to the word ‘hoarder’ and how I am choosing to interpret that other highly-charged word ‘minimalism’ to fit my own needs.