Century mark

11/8/09 One hundred items from around the house, recycled or trashed

We have reached Day 100 of the Downsizing Challenge. Yes!

To celebrate, I strolled around the house and found 100 things I could live without. Not a bad way to mark the occasion, if I do say so myself. With the year more than a quarter over, let's review.

As the "How am I downsizing?" box on the right side of the blog shows -- if you're reading this on Facebook, you really need to click here and check out the real blog -- the most common way I've downsized is by giving stuff away. Who knew I was so generous?

Here's the breakdown to date:

Given away: 38
Sold: 19
Recycled: 17
Trashed: 17
Consumed: 4
Returned: 3
Other: 2

Regardless of how many items I downsize in a day, I can only count it in one place on that chart. For example, today I got rid of 100 things, but it only counts as one. Bummer, huh?

On days when I get rid of things in several ways, I have to choose one category in which to record it. Do I call today's downsizing method Recycling or Trashing? While I'd rather sound green and count it as recycling, more than have of the things went in the garbage, so I recorded today as Trashed.

It would be interesting (and probably impossible) to get an actual count of the number of things I've downsized. With all those corks I've gotten rid of (see this post and that post), the count would be impressively high. (By the way, the cork story isn't over yet. I just found another one in a random drawer -- can you spot it in the picture above?)

As interesting as it might be, however, I'm not going to undertake such an accurate accounting.

Ultimately, the only number that matters in the Downsizing Challenge is 365.

One hundred down, two hundred sixty-five to go.