"I learned what's really important and what's really worth stressing over. I also found that this simplicity echoed into other parts of my life, you know just walking more or cooking more food. I realized that - you know what? This stuff we let come into our world, physical stuff that we allow into our world, really jams up our mind. And our mind can be quite a powerful and positive thing if we cleared up a little bit."

Becoming a 'sixer'

Twenty-two year old Kristy Hogue, who lives in Seattle, Washington, learned about Hackemer's experiment through a magazine article. She says the idea appealed to her, so she decided to become a sixer.

"I felt I had too much of everything including clothing and a lot of it I didn't wear," she says. "So I thought it would be a great experiment to see if I could wear six items or less."

The experiment inspired Hogue to reexamine her wardrobe and get rid of the clothes she didn't wear. However, going for 31 days with only six outfits to choose from was quite a challenge.

"At the very beginning, my items were really easy to pick. They were items that I liked, that I wore a lot anyway. For the first week or so I was really excited and everything was working out perfectly and I never got bored. Then I started to feel a little bit constrained. I didn't have the freedom to look the way I wanted to look all the time. So that was really frustrating. Then I eventually accepted it and started to be more relaxed, not caring as much about how I looked."