As I wrote in one of the posts leading up to this challenge, I spent a lot of time the month before starting thinking about what I’d get rid of. I had a mental list, and a few physical piles. I had things I’d made the metal commitment to part with, but hadn’t actually gotten rid of yet because the official “year” hadn’t started yet and I didn’t want to jump the gun. The year would begin soon enough I thought and then it could all go.

So today, two days into this whole thing I started to separate the stuff into two groups – stuff for donation and stuff for ebay. Before long I had two full grocery store paper bags full of clothes to donate. Specifically that’s 17 t-shirts, two pair of shoes, two pair of pants, two pair of socks and one long sleeve shirt. 24 things. Which is an awesome start, but also immediately presents a problem.

Is that 24 days worth, or 24 things on one day and then tomorrow I’m back at square one?

Can I game the system by getting rid of 365 things in one day and then saying “Ha! There’s my whole year done, boom!”

It seems kind of lame to create rules for myself and then figure out a way to get around them, so that won’t work.

So I could make a pile of 365 things, and then just get rid of one every day for the whole year, right? Well, yes, but… That’s more in the spirit of the initial idea, but then I’m stuck with a pile of things I know I’m going to get rid of all year, so in that aspect it’s not really in the spirit of the initial idea.

Crap, I thought I had the bases covered.

I realized this early on today and have been thinking about it and trying to decide the best way to approach this and I think that realistically it’s got to be one thing a day (or maybe 7 things a week if I’m traveling or something). So to clarify, I need to get rid of at least one thing every day. I can get rid of more, but I still need to get rid of stuff tomorrow regardless how much I get rid of today. I think that’s the best way to do this. I did say before that if by the end of this thing I’ve gotten rid of 500 things instead of only 365 that’s even better, didn’t I?

Right, so with that decision immediate panic sets in. Getting rid of 365 things is easy. Well, it’s not easy but it’s doable. Hell, I got rid of 24 today alone. I could sit down and go through a bunch of these old storage boxes and do that a few more times and hit 365 without an incredible amount of effort. But thinking about eight months into this when I’ve gotten rid of 500+ things and I’m scrambling to figure out what I can live without, what then?

And then I realized, that’s actually kind of the point of this.

So bring it.

*What is all this? Go read about day 1.