The 100 things Challenge

I was reading over at Zen Habits about the 100 things challenge, thinking to myself "how in the world could I possibly ever do this???". In fact, the first comment was along the lines of "this is insane and stupid!". I agreed, at first. Then I went back and re-read.

This is NOT a single person challenge. I mean single as opposed to married. My bet is that the first commenter was single.

In the "challenge" you exclude non-personal things (dishes, detergent and the kitchen sponge, for example) and anything you share with other family members. Wow, that's a huge loop hole.

I'm single. The couch? Mine. TV? Mine. Tivo? Mine. Computer? Mine. Shampoo? Mine. End table? Mine. Laundry basket? Mine. You see where I'm going with this, I'm sure. These, for someone with a family, are things they get to exclude.

I'll also give you that this is something that is probably done more for fun than anything else, but even giving that, the whole "collections count as one item and books don't count at all" rule is a complete cop out. 1 DVD is 1 item. Don't believe me? Go to WalMart, get a cart, stack 300 DVDs into it. Go to the 10 items or less line. Explain to the people behind you that you don't have 300 items, you have one "collection" that counts as a single item. See what people say.

I'm probably not a good person to ask about that - I got rid of almost all of my DVDs recently. I'll likely get rid of the last few in not too long. I'm using it as an exercise in simplifying as well as an exercise in patience. If I want to see a particular movie, I now have to put it on my list for netflix and wait. Well, technically, I'd have to restart my netflix, then put it on the list. Patience.

I am, however, now curious as to how much I actually own. I think I'm going to count this weekend, then pick a number of items I feel would be a good number and see if I can make it!