Day 8: Harder than it Looks

Into the second week of the Minimalist Challenge and one thing has become abundantly clear: making it all 30 days is not going to be easy. In fact, I'm having serious doubts whether I'll be able to complete the challenge. Sadly, for me, part of the difficulty rests beyond the paring down of items but as much with the sheer volume and actual preparation of the process. It's not a coincidence the blog was quiet and I spent days catching up.

But I am up to date challenge wise with some difficult decisions made. That's the point, right? What do I actually use and/or need. Certainly not a lot of what was passed on though I wouldn't have minded holding on to some items had it not been for the challenge itself.

Without further ado, the details: five hats, six DS/3DS games, seven pairs of shoes, and eight neckties. I have done hat purges before and I still have more hats than I need or where. Some nostalgic hats remain in my collection (Berkeley and MIT as some friends' locations of work and study). The tough hat to pass along was a signed Chicago Bears hat. It was white and had a couple of signatures, notably, Gale Sayers. It was a gift but it didn't really fit and there were some odd, non-notable signatures on the hat as well.

I always have mixed feelings about trading in games because I never get anywhere near what I paid for them. But there are always new games to play and these aren't them. I did manage to squeak out $17 or so of credit for them at GameStop, but the value came from the New Super Mario Bros. ($10) and Monster Hunter 4 ($5), the latter the only one for the current GameBoy system. The other four titles were in the realm of $0.20 each. I did get to put the credit to my preorder for Pokemon Sun coming out next month.

Karla gives me a hard time because I have a lot of specialty shoes. Basketball shoes are not the same as tennis shoes. Walking shoes are not the same as running shoes. Mountain biking shoes are not the same as road biking shoes. I had a tougher time getting to seven pairs to pass along, but the truth of the matter is that five of these pairs of shoes had been in a big in the basement as worn out or not used often enough to keep upstairs. Probably the toughest to let go would be the blue Chuck Taylors. They are hardly worn, but I am past the days of regular Chuck Taylor use and I do have at least three more pairs, including the wine crushed velvet platforms that are a tad too small, but I can't seem to let go just in case.

Today was tie day. Sadly, I'd have loved to keep the two orange ones, especially the Thai silk one, but alas, the oil stains from dropped fried chicken bits just weren't coming out. Some of these have been worn quite often and are getting threadbare. The DePaul and the Winnie the Pooh weren't worn enough for me to justify holding on to them.

So there you have it. Day 8 in the books. I think Karla is up to date as well. Good luck this week, everyone!