The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul Paperback – December 28, 2010

Feeling weighed down recently, I purchased 4 books about decluttering: Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less , The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life , Unclutter Your Life in One Week , and the 100 thing challenge. Here is a comparison of them.Less is not really about decluttering so much as Zen. The book is more about less busyness than less stuff. It is about mindfulness. It is about facing fears. It is business-oriented. For someone interested in cultivating a minimalist approach to living, Less does not have that much to offer.The 100 Thing Challenge is more the sort of book I had in mind to buy. Written by a man who spent a year living with only 100 possessions, it is an anti-consumerist tract. It has some limited practical advice, but it is more about the experience of doing without things than a how-to. And even at that, it is more memoir and less analysis. The author repeats himself a lot, including the fact that he hates American consumerism and gained so much emotionally and spiritually from decreasing his reliance on things. And he does make some interesting observations about the way people use purchases to address emotional issues. But by the end of the book, I could not say how, exactly, the author had benefited by not having the things that weren't on his list of 100 possessions. The author strikes me as being slightly neurotic over his own history of purchasing and being tied to consumer brands, and the primary benefit to him seems to be an easing of his neuroticism. I was annoyed at first, as some other reviewers have noted, that his 100 things did not include everything he holds in common with his wife. But that's the only realistic way he could have lived. I was reminded that when Pope John-Paul II died, they said his only personal possession was a razor. This book was not outstanding but I got sucked into it eventually. Some reviewers have complained that he didn't write about the hardships of reducing to 100 things, but he did. He says that there was nothing to say about it because it simply wasn't very hard, and that is part of the point. I just wish the author could have written a little more specifically about the benefits of avoiding purchasing and accumulation.The Joy of Less and Unclutter Your Life in One Week are both how-to books, but they are rather different in focus. The Joy of Less takes a single systematic approach to decluttering (represented by the acronym STREAMLINE) and shows how it might be applied to decluttering various parts of your home. Unclutter Your Life in One Week has a more shot-gun approach, suggesting a variety of different methods for organizing and reducing clutter.Are any of the books worth buying?What I was really looking for was a book that would delve into research a little and identify what areas of life make the most difference in minimalizing and what that difference might be. None of these books took that approach. The how-to books are based on sensible advice and suggest that you will feel better by living in a simpler, more organized space, but that is all hearsay. Maybe you are a creative person with a lot of hobbies. Will throwing things out really improve your life?These books might be helpful to you if you aren't good at organizing your things already. At one time or another, many of the suggestions in Joy of Less or Unclutter Your Life are things I figured out on my own. I think if you have a natural propensity to live a minimalist and organized lifestyle, none of these books are going to have anything of value for you. But if your living space is overflowing with things you can't figure out how to deal with, you might learn something from either of these how-to books. If your problem is that you buy too many things, you might want to check out the 100 Thing Challenge. Other than Less, all of these books also have accompanying websites such missminimalist.com, unclutter.com, and guynameddave.comIf you are interested in the sustainability impact of minimalism, you might also be interested in  No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process  or  Better Off : Flipping the Switch on Technology , by a Christian who goes to live with an Amish-style community.

First of all, it is not a how-to book, but rather one man's challenge to himself to break the bonds of American-style consumerism and in the process he becomes more self-aware through analyzing his relationship to stuff. He invites us along on his journey and shares his personal insights over a year of living with 100 (or less) personal possessions. Like any good journey, it is not the destination, but how you get there that really matters.Some interesting points:What we really want, we cannot buy.Owning stuff won't make you a master artisan or change something about your past.American-style consumerism isn't meant to provide us with things we need, but to tempt us to buy more than we need.When we constantly expect our things to make us happy, we will never be content.Stuff cannot possibily live up to our expectations because it is only things.Our obsession with stuff sometimes blinds us to how good life really is.Having begun my own journey a few months ago, I had reached many of the same conclusions Dave Bruno reached during his challenge so none of his insights were a new and wonderous way of thinking to me, but he did put into words concepts that were only vaguely floating about my brain. Rather than the enlightened master teaching the student, I found Dave Bruno to be a kindred spirit whom I could relate to and reading his book served to reinforce my new way of thinking.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. A recent convert to minimalism and fairly familiar with the new wave of bloggers that have publicized the value of living simply (Everett Bogue, Colin Wright, etc), I was interested in hearing the perspective of the man that started it all with the 100 thing challenge.In this book Dave Bruno chronicles his experience weaning down his personal possessions and living with 100 things for the duration of a year. An exercise in changing the mindset of consumerism, he weaves personal anecdotes both from childhood and during his adulthood in with his account of trying to get out of the mindset of buying.I agree with his notion that Americans have fallen into the trap of thinking that one can buy happiness and fulfill long-held and dreams or aspirations through a cash register. I appreciated his insights about how the most beneficial thing he gained through the challenge was not feeling the pressure or inclination to buy every time he set foot in a store. I too have found this through pursuing his challenge. It's a welcome mindset change of not always wanting more.The author seems like a perfectly nice guy with genuine notions about making the world a better place. I have nothing to say against him personally.However, I found reading his book to be less than enjoyable at times. Basically the structure is this - 1) thinks up and events leading up to the challenge, 2) the logistics of conducting the challenge, 3) post-challenge thoughts. It feels like an overly drawn out premise with not enough content to justify the one hundred some-odd pages. Points were repeatedly reinforced to the point where I felt like every other word was "American-style consumerism" or "100 thing challenge guy". And his other supporting points seemed muddled in the process. The shifts between his point of view and the points of view of his family and friends seemed clunky at times. Although, his wife sounds like a mighty intelligent and lovely lady.Part-biography, part-retelling of an event, and part-reflection, I feel like the book would have benefited from more stringent editing to really solidify and streamline his prose. I think the idea was an excellent one. The writing, however, could have been better. And I personally do not anticipate keeping his book on my list of 100 things.

This was a gift for the Love of my Life. Still, I was very pleased with the efficiency of this entire transaction.Cheers :o)

Apesar deste livro ter sido escrito com foco no consumismo desenfreado dos americanos, nós brasileiros também podemos aprender muito com os questionamentos do autor, já que este problema também nos afeta. Mesmo que a pessoa não queira encarar o mesmo tipo de desafio de viver por um ano com apenas 100 itens, ele pode servir para um aprendizado muito maior que a conquista de concluir o desafio: nossa sociedade está doente, e precisa parar de usar o consumo como remédio para outras coisas, como solidão, falta de autoestima, para mostrar status, etc. O problema não está em comprar coisas, está em comprar coisas sem precisar realmente delas.

I transferred one’s beliefs to my own and enjoyed this book alot. Alot of people need to read this book for sure. Glad i was all ready on my journey and have gotten through the hard times. I now utilise what i have and just need to pass on what i have packed up and ready to free myself.

I plan to read this book again, not just because I might attempt the 100 Thing Challenge but because of the sanity of Dave Bruno’s perspective. The Challenge May be unrealistic for me but it does make me think about what I do and do not want to do with my time, energy and money. That is worth it. Who knows I may be able to attempt the Challenge after all…

I liked the sentiment of this book but unfortunately this was just a bit dry for my liking.