Inspiration From “The 100 Thing Challenge”

The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul, by Dave Bruno, Harper, 2010.

I liked this book more than I thought I would. I never foresaw myself whittling my possessions down to a specific number for the sake of it, but I have been voraciously reading on modern minimalism and this book was referenced by so many others that I thought I would check it out.

I thought it would be a how-to book, a framework for performing a “100 thing challenge” in one’s own life, but it was really a record of one person’s foray into minimalism.

Some of Bruno’s insights that stood out to me:

“… [C]ontentment is a virtue we can aspire to rather than a state we can achieve. … I go after more and more unless I decide to rest, content in what joys can be mine.” (p. 23)
“…American-style consumerism. We acquire possessions that are just barely but not quite exactly right. But we behave as if all of our consumer intentions and purchases can come together to create a nearly perfect life. The trouble is that no store keeps ultimate contentment in its inventory. We cannot buy what we need for an ideal life in stores, so we have become habitual shoppers who come up short again and again and therefore have to head back for more.” (p. 29)
“It’s tempting to buy the materials we need to build what went unfinished in the past.” (He uses the example of collecting hobby items to complete a project from childhood that was never completed. p. 64) So another set of questions to ask when deciding to buy or keep something: “Is this attached to something from the past? Is there an old issue related to this somehow?”
On dealing with what Miss Minimalist calls your “fantasy self”: Cultivate the freedom to be the kind of person who is impressed with someone who does whatever craft or sport or has whatever skill you appreciate without having to become one. (p. 68) Along with that, the freedom to appreciate your own former interests without worrying about actually participating in them. Bruno makes the case that, while we may have dreams of honing a skill to the point of mastery, we associate that mastery with contentment: “Neither the skill of woodworking nor the sense of contentment I thought it would bring me was for sale. Tools were for sale, though. And so I bought tools.” (p. 84)
We buy clothing and possessions that we hope makes us seem a certain way (smart, cool, outdoorsy, etc) without being aware of whether we actually are that way. “American-style consumerism promotes the action of shopping for ourselves without nurturing the attitude of knowing ourselves.” (p. 96)
“Our best possessions, if we use them well, … provide us an opportunity to connect with the world and with other people.” (p. 123)