Recently, I found an article on Jezebel.com about the “Six Items or Less” challenge. When I first started reading, it sounded like a cool project: wear the same six (or fewer) pieces of clothing for a month. I thought, “that would be kind of hard, maybe a little stinky, and toward the end of the month I’d be sick of the clothes, but I could do it.” Then I read the rules:

Underwear, bathing suits, work-out clothes, work uniforms, coats, shoes, and accessories don’t count. Also, you can get multiple copies of the same item (say seven identical black shirts) and these seven shirts, provide they look exactly alike, count as one shirt.

After I read that, it didn’t seem like a fun challenge anymore. It didn’t even seem that challenging. While not counting a work uniform, underwear, and your winter coat toward the six-item total makes sense to me, and exceptions for workout clothes and bathing suits are understandable, the shoe and accessory allowance seems like a cop-out. And I’m sorry, seven identical black shirts are not the same as one black shirt. In no universe are seven and one the same number. That is not simplifying, that is cheating. In order to get identical copies of a pair of jeans or a shirt, you have to go out and buy more clothes. I really like shopping, but I’m with Thoreau in this case: “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes” (19).

While I sometimes find Thoreau preachy and lacking in empathy, I do like his ideas about trying to live simply and deliberately. I love the idea that making your own things and having as few possessions as possible can open you up to new ways of being in the world. His advice to “simply, simplify, simplify” and to “keep your accounts on your thumbnail” is genuinely good (65). I know that I spend way too much time thinking about what I’m going to wear, so I wanted to design my own Six Items or Fewer challenge.

When I started, however, I freaked out a little. My version allowed me one pair of shoes, no accessories, and no separate workout clothes (I was just going to wash them a lot). It seemed simple until I started trying to pick stuff out and couldn’t make up my mind. I started making my rules more and more lax—I was allowed to have separate workout clothes, I could have two pairs of tights and two pairs of leggings and they wouldn’t count toward the total, I could have just one accessory, etc. The more I planned, the more anxious I became. I kept thinking, “What if I get sick of this? What if it gets cold? What if I spill something?” I didn’t like losing any options. I also really didn’t like the idea of committing to something that would change the way I go about my day-to-day life. Because, actually, only wearing six items of clothing for a month would change my routine and my thinking. The panic I felt at making such a little change and at limiting myself in such a minimal way gives me a lot of respect for Thoreau. I can’t even commit to limiting my wardrobe. How did he commit to giving up civilization? It’s much harder than I realized (at least for me) to give things up, even little things.