Each day in the month of February, I’m going to get rid of one thing I own.
When I moved to Korea, before I moved to Korea, I had to pare down my stuff. I got it down to one suitcase and a messenger bag. I left a few items back at my parents’ place, but mostly everything I owned or used for a while could fit in that suitcase or messenger bag. Here’s the full list from back then.
I did something similar when I moved to other countries around the world or traveled for extended periods of time.
But then I came home, got married, started a family, bought a house, added another child. My packing list, what I currently own, is nowhere near what it once was.
There’s a permanence to buying a house, settling down, and starting a family that’s wonderful. But there’s still a benefit, I think, to keeping possessions light. Or even if it’s not completely light, at least curated.
Right now, I have stuff I don’t even know about.
(And what’s cray cray is that that’s totally normal in the United States.)
I mentioned the idea of paring down one item a day for the month of February, and Meagan’s on board too. She’ll be subtracting with me, her own item each day. Combined, we’ll jettison 56 items next month.
We asked Gage too. He’s not on board. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe the sheer example will be fun enough to get him into it. We’ll see. We’re not pushing him into it. (Yet.)
In the grand scheme of things, subtracting 56 items won’t put much of a dent in our overall collection of possessions. I’m hoping it will create more awareness for us about the things we own, the things we keep, the physical objects that matter. I’m hoping it will spark a habit of subtracting for us. Or maybe just for me again.
I haven’t decided how frequently I’ll update about this throughout the month. I’ll certainly do a wrap-up post at the end. I’ll probably check in a couple times during the month as well to let you know how it’s going for us.
I also haven’t decided what we’re doing with this stuff either. I work right down the street from a Goodwill, so some of the decent stuff will end up there. There might be a couple things we’ll want to give to people directly as well. And then of course we’ll have some stuff we’ll just trash.
If you’d like to join us for the experiment, let me know. I think it could be fun to swap stories about how it goes. Happy subtracting!
