A favorite pastime is to browse the library shelves for crafting and home design/decorating books. During a browse the other day I found a book Living with Less: how to downsize to 100 personal possession by Mary Lambert (2013).
I am really into the “Tiny House” movement and I am known to blow a weekend afternoon looking at “Tiny House Porn” on YouTube. I love the idea of scaling back and scaling down your life and “living with less” in exchange for quality of life. Ms. Lambert’s book provides an excellent process on scaling back your life to 100 personal possessions. In exchange for this downsizing you can gain an “ordered life” and “liberate your mind, body, an spirit”. After reading 1/2 of the book and skimming the other half – I was sold on this wonderful concept.
Until a casual conversation with my husband…
My husband Terry has been very tolerant of my obsession with tiny houses and scaling back our lives. We already live in a 1300 square foot house (having scaled back 9 years ago from a 2800 sq. ft house) and we have a fairly simple and thrifty lifestyle. Still I fantasize about being able to “quit my day job” in health care and dedicate myself full-time to tierneycreates.
Terry, the Realist, quietly nods his head while I give him an enthusiast summary of the book Living with Less and idea of each of us pairing down to 100 possessions. Terry gets up from his chair and begins to start counting out loud the quilts hanging on the wall, hanging on the quit rack, on beds and chairs, and then in a cabinet. He states: “do these all count as one item or 25?” Then he begins to count the craft books I have on the shelf, and I tell him to stop (as I do have an issue with craft books).
He sighs and states: “So will you just be keeping a pair of underwear, a pair of socks, a pair of shoes, and 1 outfit in your scaling down? And, do all those fat quarters of fabric count as one piece of fabric?”
So, as much as I admire Ms. Lambert’s concept of scaling down I do not think it can happen anytime soon.
My pile of scraps for making scrap quilts: Do they each count as 1 item or can I group all the scraps together as one item?
tierneycreates 
It is good we don’t have to be absolutists; we can scale down to less than we have without heading all the way to 100 items. I suppose the 100 item goal could lead to more scaling down than just the general “less,” even if it doesn’t get us to 100. I probably have 100 pieces of fabric in one of my 10 plastic tubs.
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That is awesome Knit and I do feel like I have scaled down. You got me laughing over your 100 pieces of fabric in 1 tub – BUT maybe you can count that as ONE!
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In my Opinion, all your quilting stuff counts as 1 item.
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Rose you are a person after my own heart – so maybe I can go down to 100 items as 1 item = fabric, tools, scraps, etc!
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