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In this video I talk about this year’s project. To explore my nerdy side for 1 year and vlog about it. Yay!!!!
I’ll be doing videos every week about the adventure so please subscribe 
My last “100 things” post revealed how indulging in little purchases sent my list well above the limit. In true fashion I have since overreacted to the slip up and trimmed my list all the way down to 77 items. How? Well, I found a way that makes maintaining your personal inventory easy. By shifting your focus to upgrading, repairing or replacing, rather than buying new things, it’s easy to maintain control over junk creep. I upgraded my laptop with 2 extra gig of ram and replaced the damaged charger cord, bought a very cool tooth brush I had long coveted, and replaced tattered clothing with more fashionable, better fitted ones.
It has been more satisfying, and easier to manage since there are no new things to keep track of or add to my list and now that my stuff is in tip top shape, I feel less distracted that nagging feeling that something was not quite right. And here’s another interesting paradox. Although I own even fewer things than before, I feel as if I have everything I need. Each item is now better suited to it’s job, works just right or fits perfectly.
I better appreciate each shirt and every gadget and with fewer items I’m even finding it easier to make everyday decisions. It reminds me a conversation I had at a dinner party once. I was chatting with an ex-Mormon (or No-Mo-Mo), eventually I couldn’t resist my urge to ask if she ever missed any part of the mormon faith. She said “the only thing I miss is always knowing what to do, fewer options made my chooses feel easy and correct. I almost never know if I made the right choice anymore.” That statement really stuck with me and now I feel I understand what she meant. It’s like the common belief that Einstein wore the same thing every day and had a closet full of the exact same suits, shirts, ties, and shoes. He didn’t want to take time or focus away from his work to spend on the repetitive task of decide what to wear. It would seem that having a few good choices is far better than having many mediocre ones.
If you learn from a mistake then nothing was really lost. My previous 100 thing failure has become, as one particularly insightful friend would call it, a teachable moment.
Grooming
Office and Electronics
Items Just For Fun
Every Day Items
Travel
Resources for this article:
Dave’s original post that inspired his later book
image of my meticulously organized Single drawer of clothing
Originally proposed by Courtney Carver of the Be More With Less book and blog, the 333 challenge is an effort to live for 3 months with only 33 items in your wardrobe, including jewellery, shoes and other accessories.
With the 100 items challenge having already whittled down my clothing collection substantially, reducing it even further is a significant challenge. A tangential issue is that I’m not actually doing all that well at keeping my possessions to 100 items, at the moment I’m sitting at around 110 since indulging in a retail therapy experiment for my “30 days to find my zen” challenge.
In July, I began the initial part of the 333 challenge by sorting through clothing and considering something I rarely had before, fashion. Actually making the 333 list exposed my deep fashion naivety when it occurred to me that I didn’t know the names for the types of clothing I owned, such as the shrug, the knit top or finding out that it’s a button down top not a button up. I still have a few weeks to finalize my list of the wearable items that will get me through work, play and travel for three months, but this is my preliminary list:
Pants
Skirt
Dresses
Shoes
Coats & Sweaters
Accessories
The challenge officially starts October 1st and I’m excited to use the limitations of the 333 challenge to spark my fashion creativity and passion.
Wish me luck
Edited by Patricia Taylor
After two months of doing the 100 Thing Challenge, I’ve run into some…well…challenges. My initial 97 items have ballooned into 112. It wasn’t even until I went through my things in preparation for this article that I noticed how many new items I had actually acquired.
How does this happen? How do we accumulate so much stuff without even noticing? I asked around and did some research and discovered that we are all suseptable to a few common traps.
Whenever we think about making a purchase, there are little justifications we use to convince ourselves the the item we want is really and item, we need. If you are anything like me the internal monologue of retail rationalizing sounds a little bit like this:
“Do I need it? It’s a bit pricy, is it really worth it? Can I get it cheaper? Well I’m here now and I have that money coming in next week from X, Y and Z. I deserve a little treat anyway, and I think I’d use it. Imagine all the stuff I could do with it. Yeah I should get it.”
Next thing you know you’re bouncing home, purchase in hand, confident you made the right decision and have enriched your life with this new trinkets. Fast forward a week or two later, where is that item you were so sure you couldn’t live without?? In a closet? In a drawer? Or in the trash?
At the beginning of May, around my birthday, two interesting “stuff” related things were happening. First, I was feeling very grateful that most of my friends were giving me digital gifts, or taking me to dinner or a shows for my birthday. Nearly no one bought me physical items that would count towards my list. I felt warm and fuzzy when I thought of how this reflected the support of my friends and family, though part of me suspect it may have actually more to do with convenience since I am notoriously hard to buy for.
I also found myself unable to resist a few birthday purchases. It was so easy to tell myself “well it’s my birthday, I deserve it” and buy a new iphone and other gadgets guilt free.
I suspect that this trap of rewarding ourselves with new stuff is a huge contributor to our mass consumption, crippling credit card debts and over stuffed houses and minds. There is nothing wrong with celebrating your successes, in fact doing so can contribute to overall better quality of life.; but what about taking a nice bike ride, having an lazy afternoon or curling up at your favorite coffee shop with a good book from the library. Why not start a habit of reward ourselves with experiences rather than things, it’s at least as satisfying, usually cheaper and better for the planet.
Whether it’s retail therapy issues, buying things to reinforce identity or being unable to resist a sale, it helps to know the “why” behind the things you buy. Take some time to do a little soul searching and ask yourself why you keep buying all that unnecessary floxum and jetsam.
In the last couple months I have fallen pray to many of these traps and I realize now that I’ll have to try a lot harder if I want to keep to 100 items.
Grooming
Office and Electronics
Hobbies
Every Day Items
Travel and Repair
Home Decor
Resources for this article:
Dave’s original post that inspired his later book
The Times’ Article About the 100 Thing Challenge
The Zen Habits’ blog article
A few weeks ago I posted an article about the “100 Thing Challenge” (a year long experiment to live with only 100 personal items) and my desire to try it out for myself.
Just in time for spring cleaning the “100 thing challenge” was exactly the kind of personal experiment I needed. The challenge would allow me to shrink my suitcase down to the essentials for the sake of my new travel lifestyle as well as explore my interest in larger issues related to stuff, such as minimalism, hoarding and environments impact. I buckled down and meticulously sorted through my various possessions, making detailed lists, hard decisions and giving a lot away. Going though and questioning the nature and uses of every possession was eye opening. I never realized how many things I kept for sentimental or odd reasons. For example, I found it difficult to give away thing I had never used (and likely never would) because I felt I hadn’t got the value of them yet. It was a hard process but my lighter suitcase and mind are more than worth it.
The following are my rules and guidelines for the challenge.
After ample tossing and sorting I have finally arrived at 97 items, which means I have 3 items of wiggle room. Success!
Grooming
Office and Electronics
Hobbies
Every Day Carry
Travel and Repair
Home Decor
Resources for this article:
Dave’s original post that inspired his later book
The Times’ Article About the 100 Thing Challenge
The Zen Habits’ blog article
Spring cleaning is trending on twitter which means nice weather is just around the corner. I have a deep love for the spring scrub and purge ritual that steams from childhood. Working together as a family to de-cluttering and downsize, wash and scrub is a cherished memory. Opening all the windows and doors to get the staleness of winter out and bring in the smell of spring that always gave me the satisfying feeling of a fresh start.
People just need to reboot now and again, a chance to feel free and clear of all that built up mental and physical junk. In high school and college the semester breaks cut your educational career into manageable chunks and I think we can use spring cleaning as a way to break our lives up in the same way. Every year around this time I make a big deal of getting everything under control; laundry, home repairs, the closets, the fridge, everything.
This year I thought, why not shake things up, why not do something a little more interesting, fun and introspective? Why not narrow my personal things down to 100 items and get ride of the rest?
The idea first came to me from the Zen Habits article on the 100 items chalenge, which sparked my interest and sent me on a wild google search for others who had challenged themselves to this practice in radical minimalism. Low and behold Dave Bruno, the originator of the idea, had written a book on the topic. In the spirit of minimalism I bought the kindle version and started to read.
I love the idea of the 100 Thing Challenge and want to try it out for myself, so I will. As of the end of this month I will own no more that 100 items. Over the next couple weeks I’ll be narrow my worldly possessions down to the bare essentials. If this sounds like something you might be interested in doing yourself I recommend you check out Dave Bruno’s wonderful book “The 100 Thing Challenge”
How I plan to explore this challenge:
Resources for this article:
Dave’s original post that inspired his later book
The Times’ Article About the 100 Thing Challenge
The Zen Habits’ blog article
Turning 24 was different. It was the first birthday I began to feel remotely grown up. This new sense of looming adulthood was alarming and made me call into question my efforts to become the woman I wanted to become.
After a 11 months travel binge, retuning home for my birthday was a great opportunity to reflect on what I wanted out of my next trip around the sun. I made a list, a go to solution, of important things I wanted to work on then spent the next few weeks working on all my resolutions, on and off, in an attempt to cram in personal development in the same characteristic way I used to study for finals. Vowing to eat better, get more sleep and answer all email within 48 hours then abandoning the me resolutions to watch an episode of Monk on Netflix and eat an entire bag of potato chips.
Overwhelmed by my own overcompensation, I needed a beter solution.
One late night, whille ignoring my resolution to sleep better, I decided to watch some TED talks. A video by Matt Cutts about creating 30 day challenges struck me. I decided to chose a year of fun 30 day challenges that would help me work with more focus and hopeful more success.
I am naturaly an obsesive person so this apealed me me.
Bellow is a table created to make it easy to follow my challenges, new articles will be added for each area. I hope you will watch the video embedded at the end of the article and consider starting a 30 day challenge yourself.
| Month | Challenge Of the Month | Post Links | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| May | 100 Items Challenge | Challenge Inspiration Deciding to Do It - Post 1 The Game Begins - Post 2 Too Much Stuff Fail - Post 3 The Pendulum Swing - Post 4 | Finished(1 year) |
| June | The Meatless Month | Challenge Inspiration Getting Ready - Post 1 | Finished (1 Month) |
| July | 333 Challenge | Challenge Inspiration Deciding to Do It - Post 1 Getting Ready - Post 2 | Finished (6 Months) |
| August | The Girly Challenge | Girly Nails - Post 1 Gender Issues - Post 2 | Finished (1 Month) |
| September | My Happiness Project | Challenge Inspiration | Finished (2 Months) |
| October | My Happiness Project .. cont | Finished (2 Months) | |
| November | Write a Book in 30 Days | Challenge Inspiration | Abandoned |
| December | No Negativity for 30 Days | Challenge Inspiration | Half Finished (1 Month) |
| January | 30 Day Photo Challenge | Challenge Inspiration | Abandoned |
| February | 30 Days With-out Sugar | Half Finished (1 Month) | |
| March | 30 Days to Waste Less | Challenge Inspiration | Finished (1 Month) |
| April | Create Next Year's Project |
This is the “try something for 30 days” Ted Talk referenced above. Matt Cutts is an engineer at Google, where he fights link-spam and helps webmasters understand how search works. Read more at Psychcentral.com.
If you want to follow along with my challenges, book mark this page as the table will be updated with any new post. Let me know if you’re doing any challenges your-self I’d love to read about your experience. Please email me at info@carisahendrix.com.
Resources for this article:
Ready For A challenge Via Psychcentral.com
Matt Cutts’s Inspiring Ted Talk
How Long to Form a Habit? Via PsyBlog
For my second 30 day challenge I decided to tacle my unfortunate meat-etarian diet. Inspired by the book the Omnivore’s Dilemma as well as a recent rounding of my belly area (a symptom of having a boyfriend who can whip up 5 star meals at a whim) I figured it was a good time to give meatless meals another try.
This was not the first time I had experimented with vegetarianism. I had tried once durring my “get out and protest” phase at the age of 15. I had managed to stay off meat for 6 month before the alluring smell of sizzling bacon one morning beat out my desire to feel in-group and superior.
Later on, after moving out of the house and reading Fast Food Nation, I tried to go veg again. But working full time while trying to jumpstart my career in entertainment left little time to plan or make nutritional meat-less meals. As a result I would often skip meals or rely on cheese wis and ichiban (early bachelorette staples I now avoid). After 6 month I looked ill and my hair was beginning to thin out. I returned reluctantly to eating meat. It was much easier, with options like deli meat and frozen dinners, to maintain the very basics of nutrition.
Since that negative experience things have changed. I have more free time now, and a much better understanding of basic cooking and proper diet. I am in a much better place to explore vegetarianism again and am excited to get started with this month’s challenge.
When ever someone catches you avoiding the meat dishes on a menu they usually ask “Are you vegetarian? Why? Are you an animal activist or is it a diet thing?”
As much as I like the ideas of being nice to cute piggies and cows, it is not the motivating force behind why I want to stop eating meat. The environmental impact of our over-consumption of beef, pork and poultry is stagering and the impact on our national health is equally bad.
Bacon or sausage with breakfast, deli meat at lunch, and steak, burgers or a roast with dinner, our meals revolve around meat. The majority of North Americans consume 1/2 pound of meat a day, 7 times the recommended daily amount. I experienced this first hand. Born in northern Saskatchewan where pork abounds, and raised in Alberta on Alberta Beef, meat has been the central part of every meal.
These stats made me realize that the environmental impact of my lunch was not worth the momentary pleasure.
How I plan to explore this challenge:
Resources for this article:
the Omnivore’s Dilemma
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