The 5 items experiment

The story of the [insert weird nation here] fellow that wasn’t happy with his home is pretty straightforward. The guy went to the spiritual leader to complain about how small his house is—and his life is hell because of it. He was given advice to move all his chickens inside and come back after two weeks. He came and said that his house is a mess and hates it. The spiritual leader advised him to move his cows into his house as well. Again giving him two weeks time frame to adjust and report the outcome. After those passed, our eager-for-change fellow was absolutely demolished. He told his spiritual leader that he can’t sleep, nor can his children and wife. His house was made a mess by the animals inside.

The smart-ass spiritual leader told him to go once more to his house and, this time, remove the chickens and the cows. Then, again, report in two weeks. When time came to see the leader, our protagonist was thrilled. He kept raving that now his house is spacious, clean and all he wanted all along.

The moral is simple: we are always unhappy with what we possess. But sometimes our unhappiness is not related to how few items we have, but how many. It may be that we accumulate all this mess slowly over time and we suffer from the boiling frog syndrome.

Lately I started to turn, obsessively some added, to a more minimal lifestyle. Because I don’t know what things I need in my life I will start an experiment. It may seem like an overdose of craziness but this is my plan and the rules are simple:

1. On December 1, I will start with an empty room and I will be allowed to only have 5 items in it.
2. Every 5 days I am allowed to bring another 5 items.
3. An item is a unitary utility object—that means that the object can be useful by itself.
4. Every 5 iterations there will be an item removal stage where I must renounce 5 items.
5. Everything will run for 12 five-day iterations.

This will bring me to 40 items at most in my room in two months—everything I need and nothing I don’t. I believe there is plenty of time and the rules are clear enough so I can get to that perfect number.

My first five will be a mattress, a pillow, a blanket, my Macbook Air and my sound system. But why not count the mattress, the pillow and the blanket as one bed and free up some slots? It’s because rule number 3. All three of the aforementioned items can be used on their own without the need for the other two.

I can’t wait to see what this experiment will bring. I will certainly follow up when I complete this nonsense.