100 Things, I am challenged

If I were a Sesame Street character, I would probably be one of three muppets.  If you ask my parents, they would say Oscar the Grouch.  <wink> That's a whole 'nother blog to write.  If you ask me, I'm either Cookie Monster (gosh, what is it about cookies that is so tasty!) or for the purposes of this post -- the Count.

I love to count things.  Perhaps it comes from working in the lab and counting bags upon bags of nails, glass, pottery sherds, flakes, and more nails.  Actually, my love for counting started way before that, probably with that iconic muppet, the Count.  My mom used to come into my room (if I was being unusually quiet) to find me sorting my toys in various corners of my room by type (Snoopy toys over here, Star Wars over there, bottle top collection (?!?) over yonder) and counting each item in that collection.  Needless to say, 30 years later when I started hearing about the book, The 100 Thing Challenge, I was intrigued.

Wow, someone else has combined my goal of minimizing with my love of counting.  Man, am I digging it!  There are some caveats that the author, Dave Bruno, makes.  For instance, he did not pare his whole house down to 100 things.  That would have been difficult for his wife and kids.  He simply pared his personal possessions down to 100.  He also allowed himself group categories that, as a whole, stood for one thing such as 1 library (with presumably many books) or underwear, undershirts, and socks.

As someone who loves to keep a running tally of almost anything, I love this idea.  I love that although Bruno chose 100 items as his goal, I am free to choose any number of items to be my goal.  I love the flexibility of grouping multiple items in one category.    But mostly, I love the idea of challenging myself, and hey, if it means I get to count items along the way, even better.  I'm off to go count!  One, ah ah ah.  TWO ah ah ah.