If you had to strip your life down to only owning 100 things, would a notebook be one of them?
If you’re reading this, I can’t imagine it wouldn’t! At mnmlist.com, Leo Baubata writes about living a minimalist life, and he lists his 100 things. The 100 count can be a bit flexible– he counts clothing articles individually except for underwear, but he doesn’t count books, household items, or shared things, for instance… but he does have a Moleskine on his list! But does he just count the one he’s currently writing in? What if he finishes it?
I like to live a fairly minimalist life in some ways myself, and the 100 things concept is appealing… but I’d so completely blow that with notebooks alone!
» 100 things | mnmlist.com.
Life without a notebook (or several…dozen!)?! It’s not possible! ;)
Yes I’d have to have several notebooks on this list. And I’d get specific. At least one or two moleskines and a couple of piccadillys too!
-Victoria D.
While I strongly agree about wastefulness, I also don’t feel like I can live a minimalist life, I find empty homes very depressing, I enjoy surrounding myself with things. But I surely live a more “green” life than a minimalist, most things I own are used, and if not I use items until they are completely and utterly worn out. Also my furniture was mostly found in the trash, along with some other items. Though this 100 list is interesting, I’m at 34 and I realize this is more of a list separating the important things from the junk. Out of the huge pile of notebooks I have, I only listed two.
My problem is attachments, I can never let go, therefor can never live a minimalist life….
A great post and question. I had been playing with the 100 things as well for the past 2 years and struggled with the “collections” issue (all books as 1 item) versus the counting or each clothing article. If you live in a 4-season area (me) you need 3 sets of clothes (winter, summer, & fall/spring) vs those of you living in sunny Calif (assuming you do). As for notebooks – I tend to think of them as 1 item – simply because I have so many of them, both being used and archived. Counting each one would serioulsy challenge the 100-things limit. Another thought I had – and I would love to hear people’s thoughts on this one – is, the idea of scanning the pages of the older (archived) notebooks into a PDF format. This way they are forever and create minimalistic space and help in the goal of 100 things.
Thoughts??
PS – a latest fav of notebooks are the new oversized Moleskins!
I don’t see the point of 100 things. Sure, it’s nice to clean house and narrow down, but why 100? (Yes, I’ve read his blog.) Why spend so much time, energy, and effort to widdle things down.. for no reason? Why not simple set aside a few days every so often to clean and organize your house? I see nothing wrong with collecting things (within reason) or filling your home with fond mementos of vacations or life. If there is a need to get rid of them as time goes on (moves, whatever), go for it.. until then, why waste the mental energy and time? Why live your life without.. when you can just as well buy wisely, save wisely, and live organized anyway?
Dinitro,
Digital is a fallable format. File formats change over time. Hardware fails. Software gets updated. Files themselves fail as bytes become corrupt or missing. Files can also be corrupted by invalid drive sectors (failing hard drive, often goes unnoticed for a long time) or failed copy transfers (such as if the file transfers over but is missing even a mere 10 bytes… out of gigabytes, the fail can fail). Unless you want to risk losing your previous notebooks (as scans) or constantly back them up and convert to new formats and verify your backups and gamble with it, keep the paper. Scanning the notebooks as a BACKUP to the paper notebooks is fine, but those notebooks will last longer for the average consumer than any digital scans will. Digital is NOT forever: there are too many fallables in it, as I’ve noted.