At the beginning of this month, I started the minimalist game with a few friends. Week four - in which I'm jettisoning from my life four items per day - has proven a bit more difficult than the previous three weeks: the low-hanging fruit is mostly gone, and now I'm getting to the things that I've had laying around but to which I haven't paid much attention:
Day 1: Netbook, Roku, TI-86, stack of Windows CDs
Day 2: Electric lawn trimmer, backup DVD from 2007, crutches and stabilizing boot from my foot break
Day 3: Balderdash, Scrabble, Awkward Family Photos, stray napkin ring
Day 4: Two undershirts, a pair of dress socks, and a pocketwatch box
Day 5: Bicycling backpack, motorcycle pants liner, two long-sleeved dress shirts
Day 6: short-sleeved dress shirt, another baseball glove, tent footprint, Windward Challenge medal
Day 7: Picture frame, Zombie Fluxx, motorcycle safety patch, decorative candle lantern
Why did I hold onto an almost six-year-old backup DVD of my hard drive? And a slew of Windows CDs? And the TI-86 from high school? And the Roku that we moved with us to Seattle but shortly thereafter lost the power supply? Mostly because it was all tucked away somewhere that we rarely thought about it.
Most of these items weren't even "just in case." I didn't hang onto them thinking, "Maybe I'll get use of it some day." Fluxx is perhaps the closest one; it was a Christmas gift last year, but I've played it twice in the last ten months.
As I start the last few days of this challenge, I expect I'll somehow find a few more items that I unconsciously kept. So far, nothing I've purged has really been difficult to part with -- maybe two carabiners from my rock climbing days. I am actually looking forward to hitting the point at which it becomes difficult for me to get rid of something, as I think that discomfort is a means by which I can grow.
