Minimalism with OWNAMIC: Owning Less, Step by Step

Published by Adrian Vogel · Reading time: approx. 12 minutes · Last updated: October 2026

In short:

• You end up knowing the count and value of your things in one area.
• You need your phone and a starting area, such as your wardrobe.
• Ten minutes to prepare, then one method over weeks or months.
• OWNAMIC does not tell you how much is the right amount to own.

Minimalism does not mean owning as little as possible. It means you know what you have. And you decide on purpose what may stay and what comes in. Is your main goal to empty a full cellar? Then the room-by-room decluttering guide will help you more. Why letting go is so hard in the first place is covered in Why Letting Go Is So Hard. This article is the practical part for everyday life afterwards: counting, cutting back, questioning new purchases.

What you should know

The famous 10,000 things are not backed up. Many articles claim that a person in Germany or Europe owns 10,000 items on average. The Austrian newspaper Der STANDARD looked into the figure. Sometimes it refers to a person, sometimes to a household. Sometimes the Federal Statistical Office (Statistisches Bundesamt) is named. But no study turns up that anyone can check. It is also unclear what counts at all. Is a cutlery drawer one thing or forty?

For clothing there are surveys. Greenpeace asked adults in Germany in 2015. They owned around 95 garments on average, not counting underwear and socks. A new survey in 2022 found around 87. That time, 1,002 people aged 18 to 69 took part. The people asked rarely or never wear a large share of their clothes. The exact shares are reported differently.

Clutter and mood are linked, but read it carefully. The researchers Saxbe and Repetti (2010) asked 60 working spouses to describe their homes. Some wives talked a lot about clutter and unfinished projects. Their levels of the stress hormone cortisol followed a less healthy pattern over the day. Their mood was worse too. That is a link found in a small group. It does not prove that tidying makes you healthy.

Four methods have caught on. You only need one of them:

• 30-Day Minimalism Game (Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, The Minimalists): on day one you get rid of one thing, on day two two, on day thirty thirty. That adds up to 465 things. The rule: whatever counts must be out of the house by midnight. It is sold, donated or thrown away. Moving things around does not count.
• Project 333 (Courtney Carver): 33 items for three months. That means clothing, accessories, jewellery, outerwear and shoes. Underwear, sleepwear, loungewear and workout clothes do not count. Nor does a wedding ring or a piece of jewellery you never take off. You pack the rest into a box, tape it shut and put it out of sight.
• One in, one out: for every new thing, an old one of the same kind leaves. The rule has no single author. It is simply widespread.
• 90/90 rule (The Minimalists): have you used it in the last 90 days? Will you use it in the next 90? If both answers are no, it can go. The time span is not sacred. Seasonal items such as Christmas decorations are an exception.

Preparation: edition and structure (10 minutes)

1. In the header, switch your edition to Order & Legacy. This gives you Sort, Order & Legacy collections and What matters to me in the menu.
2. Tap Plus and, under Manual, choose Template. Choose "Home" for your rooms and then "Order & Legacy". The second template creates three collections: Keep, Sell or give away and Discard. OWNAMIC later reads your decisions from them.
3. Pick a starting area. A wardrobe, a bookshelf or a kitchen drawer is enough. If you start with the whole flat, you will often give up halfway.

Step 1: Record your first area

You can only count what you have recorded. For a wardrobe, the Photo series is the fastest route. That is up to five pictures with many objects.

1. Tap Plus, then Photo/Video.
2. Take one picture per shelf.

OWNY checks by itself whether several photos show one object or many. You can also set it yourself. In a series, OWNY recognises each item separately. For a whole room there is Video capture. OWNY analyses the first 30 seconds of it.

Then check the finds and correct names. Assign everything to the wardrobe or room it is in.

Two things to know beforehand:

• Valuation type: under "Adjust the analysis" the default valuation type is "Market observation". That is what an item would fetch second-hand. For minimalism this is the right figure. It shows what your wardrobe holds if you sell it. It has nothing to do with the price new.
• Cost: recognised objects use AI credit. Capture without a photo and manual entry are free. For 40 books, typing them in can be worth it. For a wardrobe, the photo series usually is.

Step 2: Read off the count and the value

Open the Inventory list. At the very top is My inventory, with your rooms and collections below it. When you open a room or a wardrobe, OWNAMIC shows two figures:

• Count: everything inside it, including inside cupboards and boxes within. If a room holds further collections, such as a wardrobe, the wardrobe itself is counted too. So read the figure where the things lie directly.
• Value: the sum of the estimated values. Objects without an amount are missing from the total. No notice tells you so. And AI estimates are guide values. A dealer will not necessarily pay that much.

Write down your starting figure. OWNAMIC does not keep a history of the count.

1. Open the collection.
2. Choose Add Event.
3. Create a Special Event, for example "Count: 112 items, about €640".

The figure is then in the history with a date. In three months you can compare.

Then ask yourself three questions. What surprises you about the figure? Of what do you have several of the same kind? And which thing has a high estimated value although you never use it? Those are usually the first candidates.

Step 3: Set up a method in OWNAMIC

The 30-day game

Each day you decide on more things. The edition's start page shows the card "Next up in …" with the next open item. On a phone you swipe. Left means Keep, up means Sell or give away, right means Discard. If you would rather tap, switch to Decide with buttons. On a computer there are only the buttons.

The rule of the game is that things leave the house. A thing that only sits on a pile has not left yet. So in the evening you go to Order & Legacy collections. There you record for each thing how it left: Sold, Gifted, Donated or Discarded. At the top of the page, the Letting-go balance keeps count under Let go. Your target after 30 days: 465.

To be honest: old ballpoint pens and empty jars are not worth recording. Keep a tally of such odds and ends on paper. Use OWNAMIC for things where you will want to know later what became of them.

Project 333

1. In the Inventory list, open your recorded wardrobe.
2. Tap Select and mark the 33 items for the next three months.
3. Choose New collection and name it, for example, "Capsule autumn 2026". A capsule here means your small selection of clothes. Confirm with Create & put in. Under Place the wardrobe is already selected. The capsule then sits inside it.
4. Do the same with the rest. Name the collection "Box autumn 2026". That is your taped-up box.

When moving, OWNAMIC takes the thing out of its old place. It puts it into the new collection. The Count of the capsule now shows you whether you are at 33. On the box, use Add Event to create an Appointment three months later. Call it something like "Open the box". OWNAMIC gathers appointments under Calendar & deadlines. On that day you sort the box under Sort. Whatever you did not miss can go.

The 90/90 rule

OWNAMIC does not know when you last used something. There is no field for it. So you apply the rule yourself, with the tools that are there:

• While sorting, answer the two questions quietly for yourself. If you are unsure, tap Not sure yet, later. Nothing is saved. The thing comes back later.
• You may want to pack some things away on trial. For that, create a collection "On trial until January". Set an Appointment there in 90 days. Whatever nobody has looked for by then, you sort.

One in, one out

When you record something new, you decide about the old counterpart straight away. Open the old item and choose Add Event. Then choose Sold, Gifted, Donated or Disposed. There is also the type Replaced. The letting-go balance does not count it as let go, though. It belongs to care and condition. Use it in addition at most.

Step 4: Record properly what leaves

Open Order & Legacy collections. Under Sell or give away, every thing has a row of buttons:

• Sold: you enter the Price and go to Next. You check the date. Then tap Save and Done. The row then shows "✓ Sold" with the date.
• Gifted and Donated: the same, just without proceeds.
• Transfer to someone: this passes the object to another OWNAMIC account. Its photos, files and events go with it. The other person confirms via a link. After that, the object is no longer in your account. So it no longer appears in your balance either.

Under Discard there is the Discarded button. Did you make a mistake? Then take the decision back. To do so, tap the arrow icon Take the decision back at the end of the row.

A trap with the count: an event such as "Sold" does not change the Count or Value in your inventory. OWNAMIC shows no "sold" status. But the figure should show what you still own. So put what you have let go into a collection of its own outside your home:

1. In the Inventory list, mark the things with Select.
2. Choose New collection and name it, for example, "Let go 2026".
3. Set Place to Top level.
4. Tap Create & put in.

Later you add more things with To tray and Drop here. Your home and its rooms then only count what is really there. Do not delete the objects. Their events disappear with them. And the letting-go balance is calculated from exactly those events. If the thing lies on one of the piles, the balance on Order & Legacy collections keeps counting it. A room's balance only counts what is still inside it.

Step 5: Question new purchases

Owning less only lasts if less comes in. OWNAMIC cannot stop you from buying. But it can answer two questions.

Before you buy: do I already have something like this? Open the Inventory list. Under Search inventory…, type the thing you want to buy, for example "pan" or "charging cable". The search covers names, descriptions and tags. There is no wish list and no purchase freeze. Maybe you want a waiting period before you buy. That could be 30 days for anything above an amount you choose. Note the wish outside OWNAMIC.

After you buy: where did my money go? Record new things with a purchase price and date. Upload the receipt with Upload File as a Purchase Receipt. The Income & expenses page uses this to work out your spending per category, for a month or a year. With Budgets you set a budget per category, per month or per year. A bar shows how close you are. Sales count as income there. Under What did I spend on… you pick a tag. Tag impulse buys with "impulse buy". After a few months you then see what they have cost you.

Budgets only warn by colour. They block nothing and send no message.

Step 6: Count again regularly

Minimalism is not a project with an end date. Three habits are enough:

• Every three months, read off the Count of your areas. That fits the rhythm of Project 333. Record the figure again as a Special Event.
• After every larger purchase, ask yourself "one in, one out". Record the result straight away.
• Once a year, sort every room once. Under Sort you mark a room as done with Mark collection as finished. The start page shows how many collections you have completed.

Common mistakes

• Moving things instead of letting go. A thing on the Sell or give away pile is still there. Only the event with a date shows that it has left.
• Starting with keepsakes. Photos, letters and heirlooms are the hardest. Save them for last. For what stays, you can write down its story under What matters to me.
• Using the estimated value as a reason to keep something. Say a thing is worth €80 and has sat in the cupboard for years. You only get that €80 if someone buys it.
• Buying new storage. More boxes make room for more things. They do not mean owning less.

What OWNAMIC does not do

• OWNAMIC does not tell you how much is the right amount to own. It counts and estimates. You decide what stays.
• OWNAMIC does not know how you use your things. There is no "last used" field for the 90/90 rule.
• OWNAMIC has no wish list and no purchase freeze. Budgets only warn by colour.
• OWNAMIC keeps no history of the count. You record your counts yourself as an event.
• Sold things stay in your inventory until you move them. The totals are only as good as your upkeep. Objects without an amount are silently missing.
• An AI estimate is not an offer to buy. What a thing really fetches only shows when it sells.

Checklist to take away

• Edition switched to Order & Legacy
• "Home" and "Order & Legacy" templates set up
• First area recorded with a photo series or video capture
• Count and value read off in the Inventory list and recorded as a Special Event
• One method chosen: 30-day game, Project 333, 90/90 or one in, one out
• Appointment set for the box or the trial period
• Every thing that left recorded as Sold, Gifted, Donated or Discarded
• What you let go moved into its own collection outside your home
• Inventory searched before the next purchase
• Budgets and a tag for impulse buys set up
• Reminder set for the next count in three months

Read on: Decluttering room by room: the guide · Why Letting Go Is So Hard · Bring order with OWNAMIC

Sources

• The Minimalists: Play the 30-Day Minimalism Game: https://www.theminimalists.com/game/
• The Minimalists: 90/90 Minimalism Rule: https://www.theminimalists.com/ninety/
• Courtney Carver, Be More with Less: Project 333 (rules, what counts and what does not): https://bemorewithless.com/project-333-challenge/
• Der STANDARD: Do we really own 10,000 things? (German): https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000132723089/besitzen-wir-wirklich-10-000-dinge
• Händlerbund: Germans are buying less new clothing (Greenpeace survey 2022, 87 instead of 95 items; German): https://ohn.haendlerbund.de/themen/unternehmen-maerkte/136731-deutsche-kaufen-weniger-neue-kleidung
• FashionUnited: Greenpeace survey – 340 million fewer garments in German wardrobes (German): https://fashionunited.de/nachrichten/mode/greenpeace-umfrage-340-millionen-kleidungstuecke-weniger-in-deutschen-schraenken/2022072747596
• German Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt): fact sheet on clothing, citing Greenpeace 2015 (German): https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/2503/dokumente/fact_sheet_kleidung.pdf
• Saxbe, D. E., & Repetti, R. (2010). No place like home: Home tours correlate with daily patterns of mood and cortisol. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(1), 71–81: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19934011/

The clothing figures come from surveys and are sometimes reported differently in follow-up articles. The rules of the methods are suggestions by their authors, not fixed requirements.