Have you heard about this? My fiancee sent me the link to the site of a guy who was mentioned in Time magazine. Seems Dave Bruno took a good, long look at his life and, feeling weighed down by too many possessions, has decided to live one whole year with only one hundred items. That’s it. One year, one hundred items. Now, this, to me, is the definition of insanity. I’m a tech junkie and a stuff whore. One year with only a hundred things? Madness. Couldn’t do it. I’m all ready to be impressed by Dave’s fortitude, and then I visit his site and discover that he’s basically full of crap.

This guy has so many loopholes and cop-outs in his “challenge” that he’s not giving up anything. To start, anything “family” or “household” doesn’t count. So any and all furniture—couch, chairs, bed, tables, even the piano—and apparently the TV, stereo, VCR, DVD player, and everything in the kitchen all get to stay. Talk about roughing it. Next, only his personal items are being purged, nothing his wife or daughter owns. So he still has access to all his wife’s stuff. Needs to borrow her car? He can. Realizes one month down the road he got rid of something he needs? Use hers. Hardcore, dude!

But it gets better. One of my first thoughts when I considered living with one hundred things was my books. I’ve got a lot of books. The fiancee has even more. It would be extremely hard to part with those. Well, Dave thought so, too. His solution? Books don’t count. They’re simply not part of the challenge. He says he “might” pare them down but they’re “not a focus.” I also worried about my collectibles and memorabilia. Dave’s solution? Why, he gets to keep them! All of them! Woodworking tools, family heirlooms, his model train sets, they all get to stay. But he’s going to put them in a box he can’t open for a year. You are just sacrificing left and right, Dave! Oh, and anything in a “group” like socks and underwear counts as one item, no matter how many individual items he actually has.

But here’s the best. He comes right out and says this in the opening: “I get to set the rules and decide when a rule can be stretched or outright broken. Basically I’m going by the spirit of the challenge not the letter of the challenge.” So, essentially, if it gets hard or he doesn’t like it or he sees something he really wants, well, he can just change the rules. Can’t get by with one hundred things? Ahhh, make it one-fifty. Still in the spirit, right?

So, Dave was so disgusted by his cluttered lifestyle that he’s rebelling by living in a fully furnished house (with piano!), with a completely stocked kitchen and loaded bookshelves, while keeping all the personal items he doesn’t use everyday in a box for a year. Wow. Inspiring. Way to declutter your life, which, I believe, was the whole point of the endeavor, right? Or were you just looking for a little publicity?

You want to see people truly living with only one hundred things? Visit any college dorm in the country. You’ll find dozens of them. I’m willing to bet I spent my dorm years with about one hundred items to my name. Less if empty pizza boxes don’t count. Better yet, check any alley in Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York. You’ll find a lot of people there living with far fewer than one hundred items.

But they’re not going to get into Time for it.