Hey All!

I'm putting up a self-help website pretty soon and one of the articles I have put together is about getting your house the way you want it. Could I please have some feedback on this article, before I put it up on the web?

I would appreciate that very much.

Thanks everybody.



Here is the article:

From cluttered to clean

Take a pen and paper, and write out a list of all of your posessions. See, I knew you couldn't do it from the top of your head.
Most people in the west, have far too much stuff. we even call it 'stuff'. its deeply embedded in the language, in the culture.
"oh let me just move my shit" and so-on. It doesn't have to be that way.

What most people don't realise is that they are far more valuable than their stuff could ever be. Your entire house could burn
down and assuming you and your loved ones were okay, you'd start all over again from tomorrow. Think about that.

This leads us to two different approaches. You can either rise above it all and be happy anyway, or you can go about changing it
until everything is made the way you want it. In actual fact the best thing to do is a sort of combination approach, going inside for
happiness and coming outside to tackle the areas which drain it from you.

So, assuming that you want your house to reflect this simple idea (this is my house, and here is me!) just follow my guide and you
will have an approach for getting your life exactly the way you want it.

Wants are infinite - but needs are finite. What happens, is that people tend to run around satisfying their wants first, and then their
needs become wants, and so their wants always reflect their needs, and then in that cycle, there is no scope for wanting what
you really want: that new holiday, to have a clean and minimal home, to have time to start painting again, etc.

We must make a concerted effort to try and only satisfy our needs and let our wants compete so that we can save the resources
(time, money) for the things that we want the most. As a bonus, If all of our needs are satisfied, we tend not to want the same
things as we would want if all of our needs were not satisfied.

None of your stuff has any value. You are the most important item. So, take your list, go around your house, and make a list of
everything that you have. I'll give you a minute. Stop reading now. Where is that A4 Pad? You see, it most definately should be
in the stationary box. Im serious. Stop reading. It'll take twenty minuites tops. Whats twenty minuites compared to a lifetime in
the future?

Okay, I'm assuming that you've been around your house and made your list. now, examine all the items on your list and notice what
patterns you have. Everybody has different multiple different aspects of themselves, like a starfish. These will naturally be expressed
in your posessions. Oh look, theres the dress from when I was really into salsa, then I started to dress a little more latin/urban, and
now I mostly prefer comfy slacks. In that creative process though, you have still retained all of the different parts which make up
your ideal image, and your past ideal images.

When you look at your list, what you're witnessing is the toolkit that you have been using for creating yourself. No one tries to thin
their items out, without finding something that they had forgotten about and then becoming re-attached to that thing. The main thing
though, is that you will find a hoard of things which you will never use again. Things you can be free of, forever. Give them away,
If they are clothes, drop them off at a clothing recycling point. If its broken electronics, take them to an electronics recycling collection (you can find them by googling.) If its rubbish, hire a skip!

Most of our 'wealth' is actually put on display to show other people how wealthy we are. (seems kind of pointless, doesn't it.) I would
like to emphasise the power of being humble. If you think about it, what do you really need to live in a house? Six plates, six knives, six forks, six bowls, six spoons, six wine-glasses, six juice glasses, six chairs, a table, a sofa, a television, a desk, a computer. You get the idea.

If we can separate who we are right now from who we will never be again, we can give ourself extra space and extra scope to recreate ourselves in the future; making us happier people - and consequently - benefiting the world and the people around us. hopefully, doing this technique will also make you realise how horribly materialistic everyone is, all the time, and hopefully, make you have a look at the way we are treating the planet.

Feedback? Certainly. Thank you for making the effort to write such an excellent article. I noticed a bunch of edits, sorry for the pettiness: "Im serious" needs an apostrophe "I'm serious", "now, examine" needs to be capitalized to "Now, examine", "Posessions" is spelled "Possessions", "theres" is "there's", "latin" needs to be "Latin", "comfy" could be changed to "comfortable" depending on your intended audience, "Give them away, If they are clothes" needs to be "Give them away; if they are clothes...", "its" needs to be "It's" in a number of places, (you can find them by googling.) should be (you can find them by googling). , (seems kind of pointless, doesn't it.) needs a ?, emphasise is emphasize, you DON'T need a television (or computer for that matter, I keep that for trips to town), "ourself" should be "ourselves", "to recreate ourselves in the future; making us happier people - and consequently - benefiting the world and the people around us" seems kind of awkward, here's a suggestion: "...we can give ourselves extra space and extra scope to recreate ourselves in the future, making us happier people, and consequently, benefiting the world and the people around us." hopefully needs capitalizing, and I think you could do this article justice with a better written final sentence. Actually on a second read the final sentence looks better, it brings the (quite appropriate) self-centered nature to a broader and universal conclusion. Maybe change "make" to "help".

Sorry for the long run-on, that was the most efficient way for me to do that. Also, my spell-check caught a lot of your strange British spellings but I presume that's your audience.

Other than that I read the article through a few times, both for total effect and by individual paragraph and you've done a very nice job. When I'm home I plan to take your advice, write the list, and make suitable changes. I look forward to reading the rest of your website as well.

-Lyserge.

Hahaha, WOW.

Thankyou, alot,I'll take those on board. I realise my spelling and grammar is probably terrible, it has however been spell checked. Emphasise is the British (read: ORIGINAL) spelling of emphasize...

I guess not everyone needs a television or a computer, and I for one would like to see what life would be like without them. I might give it a go for a while.



Thankyou this one means alot to me, because yeah It is walking a pretty thin line; very materialistic and self-centred, "how to help your self" type thing, but what I really want to achieve is a more universal and cosmic type of progress.

If anyone has any more feedback, about the idea itself, the process etc, fire away.

Nice article.

I think it has inspired me to clean my room, but more importantly, go through the stuff I don't need/could do without. The room's a mess as it is.

I'd like my room to be more of a simple temple. A reflection of me....but then, it is a reflection of me at the moment.

Guess I'll have to do some internal cleaning too.

Let me just say this: living a simple life is a real challenge. Because, its not just you and your own endlessly shifting priorities and changing focusses you have to deal with, it is also other people coming in and cutting you up, changing your system, etc!

But it is a challenge, atleast, im viewing it that way.