Six items or less

After all the politics last week, I’m ready to talk about something more frivolous…

Have you heard about the Six Items Or Less challenge? The idea was that a group of people would limit themselves to wearing just six items of clothing for a month. Exceptions included exercise gear, shoes, underwear and so on, but they had to pick their six main tops and bottoms and stay with them for the duration.

They had different reasons for doing it: some were anti-consumerists, some wanted to see if they could still be creative within the restrictions, some of them enjoy the freedom that comes from not worrying about what to wear. According to Good website, the rest of them are just masochists : )

Image from the New York Times

You can see some of the items people chose in this slideshow in the New York Times. Interestingly, one lady found that no-one noticed that she was doing it!

I always like it when people set themselves difficult challenges: eating only local for a year, creating no waste, restricting their purchases. I do similar (but less out-there) challenges for G Magazine every second month, and blog about it there. I’d love to hear from you about any others you know of.

I find that going to an extreme for a little while makes me think harder about my everyday life and decisions. Usually when the challenge ends I don’t keep up every aspect of it, but I don’t go back to my old ways either. I’ve gained new skills and found new resources for living greenly.

But I don’t think I could do the six items challenge at this point in my life. It’s just a bit beyond my capabilities right now. Plus – wouldn’t you end up doing a lot more laundry? I’d have to be doing a mid-week wash for sure, when I normally only do a weekly one. Maybe it’s different if you hate laundry enough that you let it pile up until you have nothing clean left to wear at all, then do one big batch! Or if you have a family and are doing multiple washes anyway.

Are there other clothing-related green challenges out there? Maybe I can work my way up to something more hardcore…