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Her Days Are Numbered
The Quantified Self is a Web site where "self-trackers"—people who record, and look for patterns in, the empirical data of their lives—can post their findings. One self-tracker, Hulda Emilsdottir, detailed the methodology she and her husband, Josh Klein, used to clear out their Seattle apartment before moving to Iceland a few years ago. They logged every possession on a spreadsheet, then assigned each item to one of five categories: "I love this thing, and I use it all the time," "I love this thing because it's a good memory," "I love the way this thing looks, and I'm going to keep it," "This is useful but it's lacking somehow," or "This is useful, but I don't love it." Anything in the first three groups stayed; everything else went. "We got rid of about half of what we owned," Emilsdottir says. "And we get more joy out of what we kept," Klein adds. (Watch Emilsdottir's video about her remarkable seven-month wardrobe-simplifying project.)
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